The second season of Finding Bigfoot has just started on the pay-TV channel.
Barackman says that the two-week expedition Down Under, which has just finished, was far from a waste of time.
"A lot of our searching was being done during the day, but we did four night investigations with more success than others on some nights.
"When you see the final television show and see what we got here in Australia, it might blow your mind," he tells AAP.
The Animal Planet team travelled from Kilcoy, about 100km northwest of Brisbane, to the Blue Mountains during their fortnight pursuit of the Yowie.
Kilcoy was of particular interest as it claims to be the home of the Yowie following the sighting of the creature by two school boys more than 30 years ago.
A large wooden statue of the 'Yowie" stands in the town and a park is named after the legendary half man-half beast.
However Barackman says their search eventually focussed more on the Gold Coast Hinterlands - although he refers to the region as a jungle.
"Kilcoy claims to be the home of the Yowie, which is a nice title for a town," Barackman says.
"Most of our work was either in the coastal jungles or the inner mountain areas of the Gold Coast," he says.
During their research, the Animal Planet team met with locals and Aborigines from each area to discuss sightings and stories over time relating to a large creature that lives beyond the reach of humans.
He says there is no reason to dismiss the Yowie as a myth or fantasy as there have been too many sightings and stories of its existence, which date back before European settlement in Australia.
"There is an indisputable fact that people find very large humanlike foot prints in very remote areas," Barackman says.
"It's my hypothesis that all of those reports and footprints can be attributed to one species of undescribed primate.
"I would not be surprised if there is a treasure trove of undiscovered creatures in Australia because so much of this continent is uninhabited."
Finding Bigfoot Episode Guide Season 1
Finding Bigfoot Episode Guide Season 2
Finding Bigfoot Reviews:
Finding
Bigfoot. A Delayed Initial Review
Finding Bigfoot. Not Worth Your Time.
‘Finding Bigfoot’: Believing in Sasquatch may be more vital
than finding him
Finding Bigfoot Premiers Second Season
U.S.-style Bigfoot shenanigans has been a part of the Yowie since
Rex Gilroy coined the term and brought the subject to a national audience on Mike Walsh’s Midday Show in 1976 (see The Unmasking of
George Gray's Yowie). While popular television shows like In Search Of... hosted by Leonard Nimoy gave a further boost in the late
70’s and early 80’s, the Yowie largely faded from prominence until revived once again by the internet boom of the mid-late 90’s which
allowed local enthusiasts easy access to like-minded U.S. Bigfoot hucksters in order to hone their sensationalism.
The small but active
subculture of “Yowie Researchers” in Australia has largely fallen silent in recent years as details of their fakery have been made
available (see Analysis 'Dean Vs Yowie' Enounter – 2009 and Yowie Tales Tall or True?) but may well receive a boost from the Finding
Bigfoot series.
"We got some really compelling audio," he said.
"It is not a known species, I can tell you that. One of the details (convinces us)
there is nothing else it could have been."
These guys are easy to convince – Bigfoot is everywhere! It wouldn’t be much of a
show if he wasn’t, I suppose…
But what would someone who actually knows the sounds of the Australian bush well like Dr Steve Van Dyck,
Senior Curator of Vertebrates at the Queensland Museum, think?
Given the terror that’s induced by noise alone, it might come as no surprise that out in that other great black-and-white arena, the
Australian bush at night, I have a reputation for both my value-added imagination and a tendency to simultaneously reach for the brown
corduroys. And with very good reason. Australian days may ring with the benign warbles of magpies, but gird up your loins, because
after dark we have out there a suite of nocturnal screamers and grunters guaranteed to turn the toughest bronzed Auzzie bowels to
water.
Top of the list by about 4000 decibels is a bone-chilling roar that once had my wife and I huddled in the far corner of our
tent all night waiting to be disemboweled. We’d figured the creature outside must have been an escaped lion desperate for real flesh
after a lifetime of zoo-issue soya-loaf. Many years later, and having since identified the embarrassing source of those appalling
roars, I was consulted by some men – tough by bar-room standards – who’d also endured the same bellowing routine. They’d locked themselves
in their ute for the night, waiting nervously with cocked rifles for claws and slavering teeth to rip the doors off their hinges.
Miraculously living through their ordeal, they’d made all the logical Auzzie conclusions and attributed the atrocious aural adventure
to a roving yowie.
On playing them a recording of the offender, none other than a rampant red deer bellowing across a reverberating
valley (but not yet identifying the beast to them), they’d unanimously agreed that yes, indeed, it was a yowie call. But judging by
the disbelief on their ashen faces when told what it was, I wondered what they were going to regret more…the annoying glitch in such
a compelling pub yarn, or the amount of time they’d spent disinfecting the interior of their car for the sake of a big, bawling Bambi.
Male red deer (Cervus elaphus) roar and attempt copulation relentlessly between March and June.
Matt Moneymaker (yes, that is his real name) is reputed to earn $100,000/year for his part in Finding Bigfoot. Who says that shenanigans
does't pay?
Sixty-eight-year-old Rex has been researching the Yowie or hairy people of ancient Aboriginal folklore for the past 55 years.
He and wife Heather have operated the Australian Yowie Research Centre since July 1976 and amassed over 200 casts of footprints and other evidence of these relict hominids.
They posses thousands of reports dating from early European settlement times to the present.
“If anyone believes they have seen a Yowie or have other evidence of the beings from Lithgow region we would like to hear from them,” Rex said.
“There have been sightings claims in the Lithgow district since early 19th century times. It is like the adjoining Blue Mountains, a very old area for Yowie activity.”
All available evidence points to there being three distinct races of relict hominids involved in the mystery he point out.
One is average human in height, the other at least three metres tall. Both are meat-eaters, make stone tools, wear marsupial hide cloaks like the early aborigines did and are believed to be living off-shoots of Homo erectus our immediate ancestor.
The third race is a more primitive man-ape like creature living upon herbivorous/insectivorous food. Its general features resemble Australopithecus.
The Gilroys possess a ‘robust’ Australopithecine skull found in a two million year old deposits at Katoomba showing these creatures must have left Africa at some stage to enter Asia, thence Australia over a former Ice-Age land-shelf that once joined Australia to mainland Asia.
“This third primitive race is regarded by the Aborigines as the earliest of the ‘hairy people’ to inhabit Australia and we have sightings descriptions from the Central West-Lithgow-Blue Mountains regions to suggest they might still exist,” Rex said.
He points out that a comparison of physical traits and footprints of Yowies of the Homo erectus type compare with similar mystery ‘relict hominids’ in southeast and mainland Asia, Russia and North America.
“This suggests ‘Bigfoot’ and our (homo erectus) Yowie are related.”
The Gilroys latest search is now under way for the Lithgow Bigfoot.
If you believe you have seen a Yowie, or are interested in more information, contact Rex on 4782 3441 or email randhgilroy44@bigpond.com.
Yowie researchers are on their way to the Northern Rivers, citing new evidence
that these mysterious creatures are living around Lismore and Casino.
Known as the "Bigfoot of the Bush" or the giant "hairy man", yowie believers
say the beings are a primitive, ape-like race dating back at least two million years.
The father of yowie research, Rex "The Yowie Man" Gilroy, will be leading the investigation in Lismore.
Mr Gilroy and his wife, Heather, are directors of the Australian Yowie Research Centre, which they set up in 1976 in an effort to gather evidence of yowies for scientific assessment.
Now they are bringing their work to the Northern Rivers after reports of recent sightings.
Coming with them are a number of cryptozoologists (people who search for animals whose existence has not yet been proven), and they are looking for local input.
"We will be following up a number of new leads," Mr Gilroy said.
"Perhaps there are readers who have information helpful to our investigation, and we will welcome their assistance.
"Yowie footprints from the Lismore area were among a number used in a recent Animal Planet TV documentary on North America's Bigfoot and the yowie, with which we are involved.
"We plan to search hereabouts, where it was claimed a male and female pair of hairy hominids were seen recently by hikers, moving through a forest apparently searching for herbivorous food.
"The fresh tracks found in the Lismore area match others from the Kempsey and Blue Mountains wilds, all of which display an opposable big toe."
The Gilroys have more than 200 plaster casts of yowie tracks and thousands of accounts of yowie sightings.
WEIRD AND WONDERFUL CREATURES
The Australian panther: A huge, black, cat-like animal which prowls the bush.
Horny-skinned goanna bunyip: Said to have existed in NSW; enormous in size and smelled "terrible".
Thylacine: Believed to be extinct, but there have been reports of recent sightings on the Northern Rivers.
Marsupial lion: Was the largest meat-eating mammal to have ever existed in Australia.
“Mr Gilroy and his wife, Heather, are directors of the Australian Yowie Research Centre, which they set up in 1976 in an effort to gather evidence of yowies for scientific assessment.”
That sounds impressive and the Australian Yowie Research Centre conjures up images of a modern building staffed by white-coated scientists working to assess evidence. That, however, is not the case – the centre is just a room in Gilroy’s house. Similarly, terms like “Yowie researchers” and “cryptozoologists” conducting “investigations” sounds promising but the reality is very different…
“By now it should be clear that even the most famous and widely believed Bigfoot stories
are rarely checked out for detail, including relevant events and circumstances preceding and following the alleged incidents”
- Kenneth Wylie (1980) Bigfoot: A Personal Inquiry into a Phenomenon
Little has changed. Gilroy brought the Yowie to a national TV audience in
1976 via his appearance with witness George Gray on Mike Walsh’s Midday Show. Gray made an excellent witness because he was genuinely
accosted by an unknown hairy intruder – not a Yowie but a workmate dressed in fur coat, wig, and flippers. See: The Unmasking of George
Gray’s Yowie. Gilroy, who initially “investigated” Gray’s claims, only did so to promote and profit from the mystery rather than to
actually solve it and has thus far still not amended the record. Neither have the other authors who promote and profit from the Yowie.
When it comes to the Yowie - all is not as it seems...
