Yowie investigator claims to have found 'nests' around Eden

Wayne Lewin was frozen, like “a rabbit in the headlights”.

“I’m guessing it was like three metres tall, possibly bigger, standing in the shadows of the tree line. No mistaking it was there. I could see its arms, its legs, its dome-shaped head. He was massive.”

The retiree had a camera in his hand, but he says he was so shaken by what he saw he never thought to lift it up and snap the be-all-and-end-all proof of what he’d been looking for.

“I can’t explain it – I just turned and walked away slowly. I was like a rabbit in the headlights.”

Wayne has been investigating the elusive Australian ‘yowie’ for more than six years, first in south-east Queensland and now around his new home in Eden, on NSW’s south coast, where he claims to have found their nests.

“Arches where the trees have been bent over and anchored down on one end. You’d need a hurricane-force wind to snap a tree in half. I’ve also found twigs or branches impaled into the ground, buried a good four to six inches.”

Stories of big and hairy ape-like men abound all over the world under various names such as big foot, sasquatch, yahoo, yeti and abominable snowman. Here in Australia, they’re described in many Aboriginal tales and claimed spottings go back hundreds of years. But there has been no concrete evidence to prove the ‘Australian gorilla’ exists.

The earliest account by the Europeans, published in the Australian Town and Country Journal in 1876, mentioned an “unearthly or inhuman creature”. In an article six years later, an amateur naturalist claimed to have seen an “indigenous ape” between Batemans Bay and Ulladulla, “tailless and covered with very long black hair”.

Closer to today, Tim ‘The Yowie Man’ claimed his moniker after he declared he spotted one while on a camping trip near Canberra in 1994.

Two years later, while on a road trip between Braidwood and the coast, a couple from Newcastle described seeing a “shaggy creature, walking upright, standing at a height of at least 2.1 metres tall, with disproportionately long arms and no neck”.

And in August 2000, Canberra bushwalker Steve Piper described seeing an unknown bipedal beast in the Brindabella Mountains. He caught the incident on video and the result went on to become viral as the ‘Piper Film’.

There’s also still an unclaimed reward of $200,000 from the 1970s to whomever manages to find and capture a yowie, courtesy of 2CA.

For Wayne, the fascination began during a camping trip in Bellbird National Park in northern NSW. As he and his wife were setting up camp and getting the fire going, they heard the sound of a “tree getting torn apart”.

“It went on for about 10 minutes and we thought, ‘What the heck was that?’ Maybe a ranger clearing trees, but it’s unusual – it’s almost dark and they would use a chainsaw.”

Since then, he claims to have found many proofs of their existence, starting with curious shelters constructed from snapped tree branches, large human-like footprints, trails and the elusive creatures themselves.

“One day, I photographed out the side window as I was leaving an area, just thinking I might catch one, and I was surprised – there was one in the tree, with a very black face. I showed a fellow yowie investigator and he was amazed.”

Another he claims to have seen in a tree. Measuring about 1.5 metres tall, he says it was coated with thick grey fur and had a “half-human, half-chimp” face.

“It gave me the filthiest look … so I got a couple of quick photos and took off,” Wayne says.

“There’s a lot of people who post about how they were attacked by a yowie, and how they’re mankillers and cannibals, all that sort of stuff. But they’re just curious. I don’t think they like you going into their territory and interfering with their home.”

Another he describes an “ape-life figure with long ruddy orange hair on him”.

“We stared at each other for a few seconds, so I reached for my camera and put it up to take a photo and in that split second, he was gone. All I got was an orange blur running back into the bush.”

As such, he’s yet to capture a clear photo of one. His word to sceptics? Wait and see.

“They only discovered gorillas in Africa last century – there were lots of stories, but the science community didn’t believe them. The only reason they did this in the end was that someone managed to get a live body to America. It will be the same with yowie. We just need a body.”