Jonathan Swift [1667-1745] in his book, “Gulliver’s Travels” [1726], described Australia long before the voyage of Captain James Cook RN [1770], with information which could only have come from ancient Chinese writings on the mysterious southern continent. He also described a primitive hairy race that inhabited that land as the Yahoos.

Jonathan Swift
Photo courtesy of the British Information Service, London UK.

The Yowie Mystery - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.

Copyright © 2007 by Rex Gilroy
All rights reserved
First Edition

Rex and Heather Gilroy are recognised internationally as Australia’s foremost relict hominid researchers. This book celebrates Rex Gilroy’s 50 years as the ‘father’ of Yowie research. Rex and Heather are also recognised internationally as one of the world’s foremost husband and wife research teams in the field of ‘Unexplained’ mysteries.

These daring and outspoken researchers are no friends of the Australian hard-core, narrow-minded scientific establishment, who would prefer that books of the kind produced by the Gilroys were prevented from publication.

When not carrying out field work, Rex and his wife Heather [a Registered Nurse/Midwife by profession] are at home writing books, surrounded by their huge reference library of books on all manner of scientific subjects. Besides their many and varied researches, Rex and Heather Gilroy are also involved in community service work as members of the Rotary Club of Katoomba.

Dead Horse Gap, near Thredbo. This wild region of the Snowy Mountains has been a “hairy man” locale since the first years of 19th century settlement hereabouts.

During June 1999 a stockman was riding his horse through wild scrub overlooking the road near where this photo was taken, when he spotted a number of “huge man-like footprints” in a mud patch.

Dead Horse Gap
Photo copyright © Rex Gilroy 2007

Excerpts from - "The Yowie Mystery" - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.
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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CONCLUSION -“OPERATION YOWIE” THE GILROY’S SEARCH CONTINUES

In this, our second book on the Yowie mystery, Heather and I have presented scientific evidence aimed at constructing a “fossil foundation” as it were, to show the origins of the ‘hairy man’. And in so doing we believe that we have proved the Homo erectus origins for the Yowie. Future discoveries can only provide further support for what we have presented here.

We believe that, this book, together with our previous volume, “Giants from the Dreamtime – The Yowie in Myth and Reality” [URU Publications 2001] has well and truly established our case for the Yowie, thus making him a flesh-and-blood hominid and dispelling forever the cartoon image of the hairy gorilla-like monster with the glowing red eyes, of the misinformed mindless ‘Yowie catchers’ fraternity.

Our aims are not only to present a sensible approach to relict hominid research, but also to encourage future enthusiastic but sensible young researchers to follow our example and at the same time at least earn the grudging respect for our scientific approach to the mystery from understandably sceptical university-based scientists.

In an effort to gather as much scientific evidence as possible, in 2000 we launched our ongoing “Operation Yowie” project. Since then we have carried out many field investigations over a wide area of the eastern Australian mountain ranges, in the course of which a number of new Yowie/Homo erectus footprints have been found and cast, published newspaper articles, done radio interviews and lectured on our findings. All this has resulted in a wide-scale public response providing us with plenty of new reports of sightings, footprint finds and new leads on where to carry out future field investigations.

It is now fifty years since that day in March 1957, at the age of 13 that I picked up in the library at Liverpool Boys High School, a little worn paperback on Aboriginal myths and legends and read my first story of the “Hairy Man”. It was also the year that I began collecting reports on Australian mystery animals. Little did I realise at that time that I was creating Australian Relict Hominid and Cryptozoology research, as I began my schoolboy research into the Yowie and mystery animals.

As I had been collecting insects and other zoological specimens since the age of seven, I already had the beginnings of what was to become the largest privately owned natural science collection in Australia and which would in the years ahead be exhibited in museums established by me on the Blue Mountains.

After years of lone field research before meeting and marrying Heather in 1972, we established the Australian Yowie Research Centre” [postal address: PO Box 202, Katoomba NSW 2780], and the “Australian Unknown Animals Research Centre” [same address], where all manner of sightings reports and other evidence is gathered and scientifically assessed. At the time of writing, my natural science collection is in storage, after the closure of our last museum venture at Tamworth NSW in 2000.

However, moves are afoot to have my collection permanently displayed at Katoomba where it can survive us in perpetuity for the benefit of the Australian Nation.

The search for evidence of living relict hominids has taken Heather and I far and wide. In September 2001 we were in New Zealand again in search of the Moehau ‘manbeast’. On a remote forest track in the Urewera National Park, on the east coast of North Island, I uncovered a number of faded tracks in a patch of soil, which led me a few yards away, to discover two that were clearly visible and worth casting. These left and right foot impressions measured 29.5cm in length by 13cm width across the toes, 10cm width at mid-foot and 7.5cm width across the heel, making the owner about 5ft 6 inches [about 1.68m to 1.83m] in height.

Moehau male and female hominids have been reported seen roaming this vast region, particularly in the Otaunoa Range for generations. In 1983 a group of seven of these primitive people were seen by two trampers, in the vicinity of Lake Waikaremoana. These beings consisted, said the two men, of three juvenile females, a juvenile male, two 5ft tall adult females and one adult male of about 6ft height. The hominids were all garbed in animal hides, probably cow, and they were watched from behind foliage 15 metres or so above a gully as they worked their way along the edge of a rocky creek. The sighting lasted several minutes.

Back at our Katoomba, Blue Mountains home, near the splendid scenery of the Jamieson and Megalong Valleys, separated by the rugged Narrow Neck Plateau, hardly a day passes that the phone does not ring with someone reporting a mystery animal or Yowie sighting; perhaps in the Wollongambie, or adjoining Wollemi or Newnes forests, where so many Yowie reports and footprint discoveries have been made over the years.

Rex Gilroy
Australian Yowie Research Centre,
Katoomba, NSW
Monday 25th June 2007

Australian Yowie Research Index | Entire Web site © Rex & Heather Gilroy | URU Publications ® ™ Rex & Heather Gilroy. All Rights Reserved

Excerpts from - "The Yowie Mystery" - Living Fossils from the Dreamtime.
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Mysterious Australia | Entire Web site © Rex & Heather Gilroy | URU Publications ® ™ Rex & Heather Gilroy. All Rights Reserved

Australian Yowie Research Centre Est...1976 by Rex Gilroy for the sole purpose of Scientific Study of the Australian Hairy - man
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