In the winter of 1987, Stan Pappin was working on a property situated between the old Maryborough Road and the Bruce Highway. “I’d just cut a tree down; I felled it into the bracken fern and walked up to the stump and then me dog, a bullmastiff, barked and ran back to the truck. And we looked up and this thing was coming down through the bracken fern. I must have nearly felled the pole right on him.

“He was on all fours, but his back was well and truly visible above the bracken fern, which was about a metre tall. It was reasonably black, with nice long hair, about three inches long. His head was down, but when he got within about a stone’s throw, 20 or 30 metres, he stood up and walked on two legs to within about five metres of us. He was about 10 or 11 feet tall. I’m six foot, and he towered over me: I looked up at him. The only reason I wasn’t running was I had the chainsaw in my hand, still idling.

“He was a big animal, robust; big and strong. He had muscles in his arms a lot bigger than mine … he would have weighed a thousand pound or something – like a three quarter grown bullock. When it first stood up I thought it was a human, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t the right shape. But it walked on two legs like it was just natural – never swayed from side to side, just walked like a human.

“He stood there for at least three or four minutes before he turned around and walked off, and when he got far enough away he got back down on four legs and away he went … he cantered off, and he can run reasonably good on four.

“I’d heard people talk about the yowie before and didn’t laugh it off. I thought they may be mistaken with something else, but this was probably what they call the yowie – it does exist.”

Witness interview with AYR, Nov 2000. Photo Tony Healy (and we love the hat).