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zoobyshoe
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I don't think this has been discussed here.
The Yowie is, to my mind. indistinguishable from bigfoot, except it lives in Australia. I did a little googling last night and discovered that historical reports of the Yowie by whites in Australia go back quite far, and that the Aboriginal stories about it are almost more interesting.
Here's what one site had to say:
Bigfoot Encounters
The Yowie
Its profound geographical isolation makes Australia an unlikely habitat for a missing link that could exist for millions of years without being documented by science, especially since no primates are indigenous to the continent. Nevertheless, the land down under claims its own version of Bigfoot, the Yowie, which has been reported primarily in New South Wales and the Gold Coast of Queensland. The creature's long history can be traced back to aborigine legends.
The earlier name for the creature was the Yahoo, which according to some accounts was an aborigine term meaning "devil" or "evil spirit." But more likely, the indirect source of the name was Jonathan Swift, whose Gulliver's Travels (1726) includes a subhuman race called the Yahoos. Hearing the aborigines' fearful accounts of this malevolent beast, nineteenth-century European settlers probably applied the name Yahoo to the Australian creature themselves.
The first recorded sighting of a Yahoo by a European came in 1881, when an Australian newspaper reported that several witnesses had seen a large baboon-like animal that stood taller than a man. In 1894, another individual claimed to come face to face with a "wild man or gorilla" in New South Wales bush. A 1903 newspaper printed the testimony of a man who said he watched as aborigines killed a Yahoo, which he said looked "like a black man, but covered all over with gray hair."
In 1912, George Summerell was riding on horseback between Bombala and Bemboka when he saw a strange creature on all fours drinking from a creek. The animal rose up on its hind feet to a height of seven feet and looked at Summerell. Then it disregarded the horseman, finished its drink, and peacefully walked away into nearby woods. The following day, Summerell's friend Sydney Wheeler Jephcott rushed to the scene of the sighting and discovered an abundance of handprints and footprints. Jephcott described the footprints as humanlike but huge, and having only four toes per foot. He said he made plaster casts of the tracks and turned them into a local university, but there is no record of a scientific analysis being rendered. Sometime in the 1970s, the term "Yowie" supplanted "Yahoo," for reasons that remain as mysterious as the creature. One possible origin of the newer name is the aborigine word youree, described as a legitimate native term for the hairy man-monster. The Australian accent could easily contort "youree" into "Yowie."
More:
The Australian Yowie
Address:http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/yowie.htm
The Yowie is, to my mind. indistinguishable from bigfoot, except it lives in Australia. I did a little googling last night and discovered that historical reports of the Yowie by whites in Australia go back quite far, and that the Aboriginal stories about it are almost more interesting.
Here's what one site had to say:
Bigfoot Encounters
The Yowie
Its profound geographical isolation makes Australia an unlikely habitat for a missing link that could exist for millions of years without being documented by science, especially since no primates are indigenous to the continent. Nevertheless, the land down under claims its own version of Bigfoot, the Yowie, which has been reported primarily in New South Wales and the Gold Coast of Queensland. The creature's long history can be traced back to aborigine legends.
The earlier name for the creature was the Yahoo, which according to some accounts was an aborigine term meaning "devil" or "evil spirit." But more likely, the indirect source of the name was Jonathan Swift, whose Gulliver's Travels (1726) includes a subhuman race called the Yahoos. Hearing the aborigines' fearful accounts of this malevolent beast, nineteenth-century European settlers probably applied the name Yahoo to the Australian creature themselves.
The first recorded sighting of a Yahoo by a European came in 1881, when an Australian newspaper reported that several witnesses had seen a large baboon-like animal that stood taller than a man. In 1894, another individual claimed to come face to face with a "wild man or gorilla" in New South Wales bush. A 1903 newspaper printed the testimony of a man who said he watched as aborigines killed a Yahoo, which he said looked "like a black man, but covered all over with gray hair."
In 1912, George Summerell was riding on horseback between Bombala and Bemboka when he saw a strange creature on all fours drinking from a creek. The animal rose up on its hind feet to a height of seven feet and looked at Summerell. Then it disregarded the horseman, finished its drink, and peacefully walked away into nearby woods. The following day, Summerell's friend Sydney Wheeler Jephcott rushed to the scene of the sighting and discovered an abundance of handprints and footprints. Jephcott described the footprints as humanlike but huge, and having only four toes per foot. He said he made plaster casts of the tracks and turned them into a local university, but there is no record of a scientific analysis being rendered. Sometime in the 1970s, the term "Yowie" supplanted "Yahoo," for reasons that remain as mysterious as the creature. One possible origin of the newer name is the aborigine word youree, described as a legitimate native term for the hairy man-monster. The Australian accent could easily contort "youree" into "Yowie."
More:
The Australian Yowie
Address:http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/yowie.htm
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