4WD Touring Australia – June 2018

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TRAVEL

JIMMY O’KEEFE

Since pre-settlement days, these rarely-seen

abominable monkey-men have been roaming the

scrub, most notably in the Victorian High Country.

So, in the spirit of a modern guy who likes to

make fun of the pioneering dolts of yesteryear,

allow me to introduce ‘The Shaggy Beast of

Yackandandah’.

This tale being from back at a time when there

was no need to sensationalise and titillate, because

every time people left the house there was a

chance they could be snatched by a dingo, have

a taipan leap for their groin, or catch tuberculosis

from a schooner glass at the pub.

The concept of the Yowie was a real fear, a real

fear writ large across every state of Australia. They

were thought to be a Neanderthal species that

wandered the hills, aggressive, dumb as a box of

hammers, and in hiding after being driven to the

mountains by the Aborigines years earlier.

Whatever it was, it had white Aussies bamboozled

for a good 150 years after settlement. It was the

shape left behind by another blanket thrown on

another corner of the unknown. And the shape

was big, and the shape was hairy, and if you were

in the High Country in the 1930s, it also had four

white tusks ready to tear you a new one.

Check this, from the Melbourne Herald: “Some

say it is 7’ high and is hairy-headed, and looks like

a clumsy deer, and that it has razor-like claws and

four white tusks.

“Those who have seen the beast were too terried

to know exactly what they saw. They say variously

that it is an old-man kangaroo, grizzly bear, and a

mad gorilla.

“It is the pivot of a dozen different theories,

but the countryside is unanimous that the strange

animal lurks in the shadows and leaps on passing

horsemen.”

Whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t minding

its own business: “A farmer had a heavy, lumbering

gure leap at the head of his horse. The animal

bolted with the farmer holding on for his life.”

A week later the beast was having a red-hot go

at Myrtleford drover Bill Nuttall, who was knocked

off his horse and chased along the train line. Nuttall

escaped under a wire fence but reckoned he got a

good look at the thing.

“The Myrtleford folk think it’s an old man kangaroo

that was caught in a recent bushre, and is wandering

about the country half-blind. Nuttall does not accept

that theory. He thinks it is a gorilla.”

A team even came out from Melbourne Zoo to

analyse the beast’s footprints and said they were

“consistent with those of a bear”.

Even though it hasn’t been seen for 80 years,

regular Alpine tourers still prefer rooftop tents

over swags. They’ll tell you it’s just because of the

frost, but on dark nights, somewhere in the corner of

their brain, a beast still lives – The Shaggy Beast

of Yackandandah.

(LEFT) The headlines are from the 1930s, but the spectre lives on. © News Limited/ National Library of Australia

THE SPECTRE

EXPLANATIONS AND EXPECTATIONS.

God has been described as “the shape made when you throw a blanket over

the unknown.”

But if that’s the case, what the hell is a Yowie?