Tracking Australia’s Bigfoot
A chat with Gary Opit on his Yowie encounters, the natural environment and navigating skepticism
The Yowie is often described as Australia’s Bigfoot, but the longer explanation is more interesting and resists easy comparison to America. Yowies have been featured in Indigenous oral history for thousands of years, sometimes portrayed as shy and elusive or dangerous and aggressive. Commonly described as a 7-12 foot tall, human-like figure covered in brown/black hair, living in remote bushland and escarpments mainly on the east coast. Modern accounts range from footprint finds to fleeting sightings, leaving the creature suspended between dreamtime story, and scientific research.
Gary Opit is a cryptozoologist investigating reports of hidden or unverified animals. Gary is a tireless advocate for the unexplained, specifically the Yowie. He speaks of shared reports and his own encounters on his weekly radio show Wildlife Weekend. I reached out after seeing an ad on my phone for a Yowie convention in Lismore that Gary was speaking at. I couldn’t attend, but Gary agreed to talk.
How did you get into Cryptozoology?
I've been interested in the natural environment since I was a child. And I was particularly interested in the identification of animals and plants. By the time I was a young teenager, I could identify, almost, every mammal bird, reptile amphibian, and most plants. I spent much of my time at zoos and museums, and in the bush. After I left high school, I got a job as the National Park Ranger up at O'Reilly's and Lamington National Park behind the Gold Coast.
In 1971 our rangers cabin was attacked by some animal at around about 9 o'clock at night thumping on the walls. It's pitch black. Something began throwing things around, we could hear a commotion under the cabin and tools were thrown out from under the house, big heavy axes, rakes, hoses, shovels and what have you, and then, all went quiet, and we never had any idea what it was. The next morning we went down to get timber, and we found that our huge timber log pile, which was about 2 metres high, about a metre wide, had been tossed around and destroyed. That was what opened me to the idea of cryptozoology
Are there other known encounters from around that area?
The old rangers talked about the Mountain Bunyip, an unknown animal that no one had ever seen, but people had heard screams and yells, and people had often been followed by something in the rainforest. You'd turn around and try to see what it was, but you could never find it. It was just a complete mystery until several years later. I think it was 78’ when the head ranger of Springbrook, the next national park over, had a face-to-face encounter with this huge gorilla-like animal standing about 2 metres tall.
He came in, white as a ghost. He’d spent 10 minutes standing face to face with this bloody huge thing, which was completely harmless. It wasn't aggressive. He'd heard it grunting and then it just walked off. And so he knew then that there was some unknown big animal that could stand on its hind leg, something like bigfoot or whatever.
There were a few other reports on Springbrook and we eventually discovered that the indigenous people, the Yuggera and the Bundjalung people, knew well of this animal. The Yuggera people call it a Bunyan and the Bundjalung people call it a Jurrawarra.
Have you had any encounters since the cabin?
Yeah, I've had much closer encounters on Tambourine Mountain where I lived for years. One night I was woken up by a series of incredibly powerful bellowing roars for about 5 minutes. About 100 of those roars. I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, this Yowie; this Jarawara or Bunyan, it really exists’. I was naturally sceptical because I'd seen no sign of it. But the neighbour had said that he'd found small wallabies that had been killed and dragged off, and their intestines pulled out by an unknown predator.
Then in 1996 my family and I were living in Upper Main Arm, and one night, once again, another massive series of calls started, emanating from the bush not too far from me, but it was quite different. They were a series of barks with gurgles, nothing I know calls like that.
Then in Billinudgel Nature Reserve, I encountered an animal that was crashing through the vegetation towards me, cracking 2 large sticks together, and that went on for about 20 minutes as it approached me. I got a glimpse of it with binoculars and I went after it because I'm not frightened of these animals because they're not dangerous, we'd know about them if they were dangerous.
What do you say to the deniers of these reports?
It's like with anything, if you haven't studied the situation and it sounds unusual, you won't believe in it. Of course, the majority of the population; they're spending their time, working and educating and raising a family and what have you, and so to most urbanites living in suburbs and cities, the reports of something unusual out in the bush somewhere, is always regarded as an urban myth. And that should be expected, that's perfectly normal. You wouldn't deride somebody because they don't believe this or they think it's completely rubbish because that's normal. You know, a lot of people still can't get their heads around evolution.
The fact that there's people who have come from different cultures and have different beliefs and different religions and everything and some people don't even understand that we're all just humans. To be angry at another population of people who've grown up in a different culture, in a different location, is absolute insanity, and it just shows you how ignorant people are. If you can't comprehend that some people come from a different place and have different cultural beliefs, then you're certainly not going to be able to believe that there's unknown animals out there in the wilderness.
Is it the mystery of it all that draws you to these unknown creatures?
Yes, there's nothing more interesting than a mystery, and that's why, of course, we watch all the movies and TV programs and shows because that's a general mystery, you know, like everyone's immediately interested if something bizarre happens. Everyone wants to know what happened and why it happened because it's all storytelling. It's all communication. And so the Yowie, of course, is one of the most cryptic animals and they are one of the most interesting mysteries that fascinate me. But I'm sort of equally interested in all mysteries.
What other mysteries are you into?
I’m interested in cosmology. I’ve always been interested in all the reports of UFO’s. I’ve seen about 20 myself. Of course whether there’s any reality to any of it, we don’t know, but everything should be classified so you can begin to understand what's going on.
Do you think Yowie’s live a good life out there in the bush?
Oh, yes like any animal I think they have a wonderful life. I think their population seems to be expanding.
What inspires you to do this work?
I'm only inspired by the fact that people keep on contacting me with their reports. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it so much because it's almost impossible to try to see these animals. But yeah, occasionally we get evidence that these things are around. In fact, they've even got footprints that I photographed. Crystal clear footprints. You can see the dermal ridges and the papillae, in extreme detail. 910 centimetres in length with no claws, opposable thumbs, with the index finger, the longest finger in the hand.
There's a whole array of fabulous animals that seem to be out there and which we have no knowledge of. And it’s important because people think it's of no consequence but if we were to discover that there was a yowie out there or even more astounding if there was some surviving species of human out there in the bush it would show us how important it is to protect the environment. Because we're totally reliant on our ecosystems and we’re destroying our ecosystems as rapidly as we can. Most people are oblivious to the fact that climate is everything. If you don’t have a stable climate you can't possibly have food and civilization.