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Yowie
Alternatively known as Yoser,
Tjangara, Yay-ho, Koyoreowen (southern Australia),
Jimbra, Jingera, Turramulli,
and Lo-an (western Australia).
Yet another cousin of the Bigfoot,
this time from down under.
Reports of a Sasquatch
like creature are also numerous throughout Australia, ever since
European settlers first entered the continent. Before the coming of the
settlers, Yowie sightings were made by the Aborigines
and remembered in their folklore.
An earlier name for the creature was
'Yahoo', which according to some accounts was an aborigine term meaning
"devil", "devil-devil" or "evil spirit." More likely, the indirect
basis for the name was Jonathan Swift, whose Gulliver's Travels book (1726) includes a subhuman race
named the Yahoos. Learning of the aborigines' fearful accounts of this malevolent beast,
nineteenth-century European settlers in all probability applied the name Yahoo to the Australian creature themselves.
The term "Yowie" stared to be used in the 1970's, apparently
because of the aborigine word 'Youree', or 'Yowrie', apparently
the legitimate native term for the hairy man-monster. One can easily
assume the Australian accent could distort "Youree" into
"Yowie."
Sightings of the Yowie have taken place mostly in
the south and central Coastal regions of New South Wales and Queensland's Gold
Coast. In fact, according to local naturalist Rex Gilroy, the Blue Mountain area
west of Sydney is home to more than 3,200 historical sightings of such
creatures. In December 1979, a local couple (Leo and Patricia George) ventured
into the region for a quiet picnic. Suddenly, they came across the carcass of a
mutilated kangaroo; moreover, said the couple, the apparent perpetrator was only
forty feet away. They described a creature at least ten feet tall, and covered
with hair, that stopped to stare back at them before finally disappearing into
the brush.
See Agogwe,
Abominable
Snowman, Almas, Sasquatch,
Chemosit,
Chuchunaa,
Curupira, Higabon,
Kaki Besar, Maricoxi,
Bigfoot,
Mapinguary, Yeti,
Meh-teh, Nguoi Rung, 'X', Windigo,
Orang Pendek and Wildman of China.
Sources: (1)
Anderson, Ivan T.,
Abominable Snowmen: Legend
Come to Life,
Adventures Unlimited Press;
(2)
Wilson, Colin and Damon,
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of the Unsolved,
Carroll & Graf;
(3) Heuvelmans, Bernard,
On the Track of Unknown Animals,
Columbia
University Press;
(4) Wilson, Damon,
The Unexplained,
Scarlet Books; (5) Clark, Jerome,
Unexplained!,
Visible Ink Press.
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