YOWIE SUIT GUY A DEAD RINGER

WHEN the SAS sergeant returned he handed in a patrol report and a sketch of something he had seen, a sniper he presumed, while laying silent and still in his camouflaged hideaway on top of the ridge.

An archaeologist told me that there was talk of a hairy woman raiding fruit farms in the Murray Upper valley.

No one goes into the mountains behind Tully much except maybe the Special Air Service soldiers on training exercises.

Jirrabel tribal elder Ernie Grant says his father, brother and nephew came face- to- face with a yowie in scrub alongside Davidson Creek not far south of Tully way back in 1956.

This is the same vicinity as the Tully River cattle station which was taken up and developed by King Ranch of America.

Work started in 1963, using bulldozers with huge scrub pulling chains strung between them, clearing thousands and thousands of hectares of virgin rainforest. The bulldozer drivers at the time spoke of seeing gunyahs made from grass and leaves.

The gunyahs turned to dust under the weight of the chains.

They saw the short rainforest Aborigines running from the roaring machines that were bringing their world to an end.

These were the Negrito or rainforestdwelling Aborigines and they fled deeper and deeper into the mountains, away from the machines and the sounds of crashing trees.

After listening to stories told to him for the last 15 years by his Aboriginal patients, Innisfail medical practitioner Dr Rod Catton is convinced the hairy man exists.

Aboriginal people have told him they can smell the hairy man.

His says the hairy man could be arboreal, living in the canopy where he can’t be seen.

Dr Catton has collected a wealth of stories. Accounts of pig dogs, terrified, running back to their masters, yelping with fear, their tails between their legs.

One of the most convincing yowie stories I’ve heard comes from Tom Floyd, a former instructor at the Land Command Battle School at Tully.

It was in early 1987 and the army was running a course for Special Air Service soldiers.

Tom sent one soldier, a sergeant, up on to a ridge where he was to maintain an observation post ( OP) looking down into the upper reaches of Liverpool Creek. It was a three- day walk up and over formidable terrain to get there.

This was in the middle of nowhere, right up in the ranges, deep in the jungle.

He stayed there in the same position, looking down into this top section of Liverpool Creek for three days.

“His job was to observe enemy movement,’’ Tom said.

What Tom hadn’t told the sergeant was that there would be no enemy movement because no “enemy’’ had been sent into the area. The sergeant was on his own.

When the sergeant returned nine days later he handed in a patrol report and a sketch of something he had seen, a sniper he presumed, while lying silent and still in his camouflaged hideaway on top of the ridge.

In the Australian military the suit worn by snipers to break their silhouette and to provide camouflage is called a “yowie suit”.

He told Tom when he returned he had only seen one person the entire time he was on the ridge. He said the only person he saw was another sniper in a yowie suit.

Tom told the sergeant there was no one else there. That he was alone. No one else had been sent into the area.

What he had seen was not a sniper in a yowie suit.

There were no other snipers, no soldiers, no “enemy” anywhere near that ridge or along Liverpool Creek.

The SAS sergeant, taking it all in, looked down at his sketch and said “this is what I saw’’. This was in 1987.