Vocalisations

Paranormal and Psychic Australian

April 1978

Vol. 3, No. 4

Page Number: 2

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YOWLING YOWIES

Having read about recent and not so recent sightings of the giant hairy man in your magazine, it has made me wonder over a strange occurrence that happened on a property that my parents owned west of Sydney about 300 miles out. The Property was situated between a large freshwater lake system. At the back of the property was untold miles of Mallee scrub, full of pigs, kangaroos, rabbits and foxes. Being close to water, there were hundreds of birds, one species in particular the Curlew was very prominent. Now I'm no authority on birds but I made a few observations and this hasn't really helped my curiosity any. On clear moonlit nights I have been lying in bed and have heard an eerie mournful drawnout high whistling sound coming from behind our orchard. I asked my father the next morning if he had heard it; he said no but he knew what it was – a curlew.

This made me more interested in the curlews so I purposely set out to hear their calls. I taped their calls on a little recorder, but playing through their calls not once did any of them sound like the ones I had heard before.

I heard the same calls again when on a shooting trip in the Mallee scrub, far from the area the birds usually inhabit. Also when out shooting I had the hair-raising feeling that something large was watching me, but every time I tried to see what it was, I was met with an uncanny silence and the impression that something was just ahead of me but always out of reach of sight. I did find a couple of footprints in the dirt near the artesian bore where I was camped, but passed them off as some shooters. I have come across human-like droppings but again have taken little notice.

Now I begin to wonder about those eerie calls. The Yowie is supposed to emit a high-pitched whistling whine. I wonder if anyone else had similar happenings?

John C. Rand-Curtis
Concord, NSW

Paranormal and Psychic Australian

May 1978

Vol. 3, No. 5

Page Number: 3

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SCREAMING WOMEN

The letter from Mr Rand-Curtis reminded me of something which happened to me not so long ago when I was servicing forest equipment near Oberon. Mr Rand-Curtis wrote that he was lying awake listening to a high whistling sound one night out west and that when he mentioned it to his father the next morning he said he knew what it was, a curlew bird in the lakes by the mallee scrub.

But this did not turn out to fit the sound when he investigated the curlews. I remarked to one of the foremen about a strange screeching sound in the pine forests and he said it was the screaming woman bird he had heard further north. Now I have seen this bird mentioned several times in your magazine and I think R. Moncrief said no one has ever seen it. Well I do not think there is a screaming woman bird but I think it is the sound the Yowie makes when he is in his territory. And no one in the bush has ever questioned this, they just say it is the screaming woman bird.

Darryl Flint
West Wyalong, NSW.

My encounter with the "screaming woman" bird:

My wife and I would, on occasion, see a small mottled heron-like bird strolling through our backyard after dark and, after returning home at 3pm on January 3, 2018, I was surprised to see it standing on my back porch in daylight hours. I took out my mobile phone, slowly crept forward and was fortunate to take a couple of pictures (left) before it ran off out of sight into the paddock.

Later on in the month I was flicking through some old "Australian Paranormal" magazines from the 1970s which mentioned a "screaming woman" bird. The name struck a chord with me because it was reminiscent of a long loud piercing call that we sometimes heard throughout the night. Not knowing what made the call, we had dubbed it the "sex bird" because... well... it sounded like a vocal sexual climax. As in, "the sex birds are at it again"...

On the internet, I was delighted to finally find the bird's real identity and that it was the same bird that we had seen and I had photographed earlier on my porch. I was equally delighted to find that it even had tenuous links to the Yowie...

Ed
29.01.2018