Panthers, yowie men and a headless roo, the real X-files of New South Wales
By Patrick Lion
The Daily Telegraph
June 04, 2012 12:01PM
•Government
archives opened under Freedom of Information
•Yowie sighting reported in western suburbs of Sydney
•Rangers still receiving reports
of wild panther
IT is normally home to the mythical Penrith Panther but secret state government files have revealed a yowie
man was recently sighted in the New South Wales Blue Mountains.
The case emerged among almost 60 suspected panther, leopard and big cat sightings from the past decade sitting in the bowels of the government archives and obtained under freedom of information laws.
After
an overseas TV crew last week claimed it had recorded audio of a yowie man in a remote region on the NSW-Queensland border, documents
show the Australian version of Bigfoot was also allegedly sighted last year far closer to metropolitan areas at Springwood, west of
Sydney.
In an email to National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers, the witness said he had filmed the creature in March last
year and taken photos of footprints. He even drew the yowie man's head, pecs, arms and feet on the picture to make it clearer.
"I
have had a seven-year history with this creature," the witness wrote. Canberra crypto-naturalist Tim The Yowie Man, who claims to
have seen a yowie in the Brindabella Ranges in 1994, said he was interested in the latest sighting.
"The Blue Mountains has been
a common spot for big cats, obviously, but it is not unusual for yowies either," he said. "I have no doubt people believe they are
seeing something unusual but many can be cases of mistaken identity."
The NSW Environment Department declined to comment last
week. Three years after a government study found there was no evidence of the Blue Mountains Panther - aka the Hawkesbury Big Cat
and the Penrith Panther - rangers are still receiving sightings of the creatures.
In an unsolved attack last summer, a Bilpin
family's pet alpaca was mauled to death by a suspected big cat that later gutted a kangaroo.
"'Big cat' kill report," Hawkesbury area ranger David Monahan wrote in an email to his boss a few days after the attack.
"Victim was a large alpaca, head crushed, 7cm
puncture wounds in skull, adult animal, hairs left on wire fence to be brought in today."
In June 2010, a witness claimed to
have seen a cat the size of a german shepherd with yellow eyes beside a "roo on side of the road with head missing", a report said.
On July 13 last year, a man wrote to another ranger after spotting "the panther" on a trip home from Singleton a few days earlier.
There are 400-odd claimed big cat cases in recent decades.