SIGHTINGS TIMELINE

(SELECTED) 1882 The body of a headless, partly devoured prospector is found by Maori in the Martha Mine region.

c1900 An immigrant reports seeing a tall creature covered with greyish hair stealing vegetables from his garden.

1903 Large footprints are found by miners in the Karangahake Gorge district of the Coromandel Range. The size suggests a creature over 2.5m tall.

1952 After decades of sightings in the area, a sighting of an ape creature by two hunters in the Moehau Range is reported in The Taranaki Daily News. 1960 In another New Zealand connection with ‘man-beasts’, Sir Edmund Hillary leads a large expedition to Nepal to gather evidence of the yeti. He returns with a ‘ceremonial scalp’ made of antelope pelt which has since been shown to also contain ‘monkey-like’ hair matching a sample from a 2008 yeti sighting.

1969 After a sighting by Vera Marshall while holidaying from Sydney, JP Grey organises an unsuccessful Australian expedition to find the ‘moehau monster’.

1970 Campers in the Milford Sound area claim to have been forced to abandon their camp after harassment from a large, hairy man-like creature.

1971 A ranger in the Nelson Lakes National Park discovers a trail of large man-like footprints on snow-covered ground leading into a forest.

1972 Pig hunters in the Coromandel Range sight a 2m hair-covered creature in distant scrub, and discover large footprints upon reaching the spot.

1991 Lake Mahinapua pub owner Les Lisle reports a man-ape raiding his vegetable patch. Afterwards he is reportedly enthusiastic about capitalising upon the potential for tourism.

1994 In 1994, Australian cryptozoologist Rex Gilroy and his wife Heather mount a search in Coromandel Peninsula’s Karangahake Gorge. They report the discovery of large fossilised footprints and an appropriately scaled tool.