On the Lookout 1998

Some of the truth is no longer out there. Instead, you can find it inside a glass case in a small museum in rural New South Wales, ignored and ridiculed by a world that refuses to accept the evidence that we may not be alone.
     The truth in this case is a fossilised humanoid skull discovered a year ago by a local naturalist, Mr Rex Gilroy. The skull has a long, narrow braincase, a low forehead and a thick eyebrow ridge. Proof that primitive forms of humanity play rugby league, too?
     Mr Gilroy says the skull, discovered near Mudgee, supports his long-held theory that the yowie - an Australian relative of the American Big Foot and the Himalayan yeti - once existed and is probably still out there surviving in large, inaccessible tracts of bushland.
     Mr Gilroy is the guiding light behind the Unknown Animals Research Centre and Museum in Tamworth. "I am fascinated by what we have in this country and what has been overlooked," he says. "There's something out there in the bush. Something is happening."
     Yesterday Mr Gilroy had some new information to ponder. Mr Ron Ian-Ellis, a farmer in Jarrahdale, south of Perth, revealed that one of his sheep had been savaged at the weekend by a "very big cat - and I'm not talking feral cats . . . I have seen two cougar-like animals on this property".
     Mr Gilroy saw his first thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, at 10.55pm on 27 February 1972 and has never forgotten it.
     "It was standing there beside the road and was obviously coming down through the ridge . . . they live in the more remote, mountainous country, the really tough terrain."
     Panther-like creatures and Tasmanian tigers have been reported across Victoria, from the Grampians to the Dandenongs. More than 50 sightings of the thylacine have been reported near the Gippsland town of Loch Sport in the past 10 years.
     "There's been many, many sightings of these big cats around the country. I wouldn't say they're cougars. They are more closely related to our marsupial cat species and probably survived the last Ice Age."
     While he continues to sift through the evidence for big cats and Tasmanian tigers, Mr Gilroy's most passionate interest remains the yowie. He discovered the skull, he says, in the same region where local Aborigines have passed down a tale from the Dreamtime when "hairy men" terrorised them.
     "There's a whole string of reports about man-beasts and women-beasts - let's not be sexist here - and evidence for their existence right around the world. There's been lost tribes found in New Guinea and elsewhere. When you look at the terrain we've got, any creature could live there for generations and go undetected."
     Sadly, says Mr Gilroy, the discovery of his skull, which he believes belongs to the Homo erectus line, has been met by overwhelming indifference from the scientific world. No scientist has been willing to examine the skull.
     Still, that will not stop him. His next project is a book revealing how Australia was contacted by civilisations hundreds and thousands of years ago. "Why study Stonehenge when we can study Australia's lost civilisations?"