The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot (Paperback)

~ Tony Healy (Author), Paul Cropper (Author), Loren Coleman (Foreword)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...a masterful book... They set out...to offer up a mass of primary research, and they succeed wildly." -- Jay Rath, Fortean Times, March 2007

Product Description

Australia's most baffling zoological mystery! During the early colonial era, Australia's Aborigines often warned British settlers to beware of huge, ape-like creatures that lurked in the rugged mountains and deep forests of the island continent. Their people, they said, had been encountering the hairy horrors since time immemorial. They knew them by many names, including doolagarl, thoolagarl, jurrawarra and tjangara. Soon the colonists, too, began to experience hair-raising encounters with the hulking, foul-smelling creatures, which they referred to as "Australian apes", "yahoos" or "youries". Today, they are generally referred to as yowies. The list of modern-day eyewitnesses includes zoologists, rangers, surveyors and members of the elite Special Air Service Regiment. This book chronicles the yowie saga from the pre-colonial era to the present day. It contains over 300 carefully documented eyewitness reports and a vast amount of other data, much of which suggests that the damnably elusive creatures really do exist. The authors also critically examine the many theories that have been put forward to explain - or explain away - Australia's most baffling zoological mystery.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Anomalist Books (November 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933665165
• ISBN-13: 978-1933665160
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 6.7 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #730,432 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Yowie - what are they??, January 30, 2007

By	D. W. Kneen (Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a very well written book about Australia's own version of the Bigfoot. Just like in North America this large unknown creature is often described as similar in appearance to the Sasquatch but more aggressive, and has been a part of Australian folklore and Aboriginal knowledge for centuries.

The creature whatever it is, remains elusive with no good quality photos or videos being available, such as the case with Sasquatch.
Added to the mystery is the shape of this creatures foot which seems to vary from 3, 4 or 5 toed. Having said this though, the subject is well covered and with many interesting and eye opening cases listed. It is hard to believe everybody who has seen this creature could be wrong or mistaken.

The authors have done the subject a great service by not getting involved in any outlandish theories, putting together a excellent reference source for the subject, whilst leaving any conclusions open.

For those people who aren't Australian with a poor idea of Australia's size, it is important to note that Australia is of similar size to the continental lower 48 United States with just over 20 million people. Australia is also located very close to Indonesia where ancient hominids 1 million years old have been found.

Australia is a huge country with many large, wild and totally unexplored areas of wilderness. So the possibility lies open for many new discovers, who knows a real life Yowie may just one day, be one of these discoveries.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Milestone Work, December 20, 2006

By	Craig Heinselman (Peterborough, NH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In the realm of mysterious bipedal creature books, there is a tendency for writers to explain the creatures, to hypothesize about what they are, and perhaps shape the data they utilize to support that hypothesis. But, for the researcher and common reader who want to know about the historical and actual reports of events, without hard interpretation, Healy and Cropper have provided one of the best books available on the subject.

Until now, the Yowie has been strictly a section with a book, or a reference point. While this has worked well, and offered new aspects in a well done method, it has never thoroughly evaluated the phenomenon or presented the complexity of the mystery. The overshadowing of the Yowie by its North American cousin is now rectified within The Yowie. Healy and Cropper provide the reader with anecdotal, testimonial, historical, native, modern, and evidentiary connections to the Yowie, they utilize the reports gathered first hand and through the collective work of Australian researchers and worldwide researchers. They reintroduce the world to the Yowie, and to what mysteries may still reside in Australia. They also introduce the researchers to the world in a personal light, including Tim the Yowie Man, Dean Harrison, Rex Gilroy and Graham Joyner.

Healy and Cropper no strangers to the subject, and have collectively spent over 50 years researching the subject. It was not until The Yowie however that the entire research basis has been available, consisting of over 300 documented events, from the one person sightings to mass sightings, from up-close and personal glimpses, to distance sights. This is through chronicling and presentation of the original sources, including journals and newspaper accounts, to the remembered histories of Aborigines, to the modern era of the Internet and how it has changed how research works.

Beyond the content, which the reader must digest for themselves to appreciate, is the layout and presentation. The Yowie is presented in a larger format paperback with dual column pagination. This makes the read akin to a journal entry, but also alters the pace and focuses the reader to pay attention to the work, it draw you in. The flow of the work is also important; it is steady and has few distraction points. You start with the Aborigines; move towards the Colonial Era, Early Modern era and into the Modern Era. Then there are chapters on the Junjudee, or "Littlefoot", an evidentiary summarization and examination of "What are They". But, not to be outdone, a mapping system showing the generalized regions of reports, a cataloging of the accounts, full index and reference section are provided.

The Yowie is a milestone work, and ranks in importance as such books as Sasquatch, the Apes Among Us (John Green, 1978), In the Footsteps of the Russian Snowman (Dmitri Bayanov, 1996), and Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come to Life (Ivan Sanderson, 1961). All these works break new ground in historical, regional or overall analysis of the subject manner of mystery bipedal creatures.

It is no small feat to create a classic and thorough reference book that is easily readable to the everyday person and to the hardcore researcher, but this is what Healy and Cropper have done, and they close the core of the book remaining open-minded and vigil to what still remains to be discovered.

Craig Heinselman
Editor CRYPTO
Peterborough, NH

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A necessary study of a forbidden subject, June 12, 2007

By	Albert S. Rosales "Torcuat" (South Fla) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was not disappointed after reading "The Yowie: In Search of Australia's Bigfoot, by Tony Healy and Paul Cropper. This book was more than informative and it contained more than meat and potatoes, not old rehashed stories and anecdotes. In it we find real witness, real people, reported unreal events and encounters. The compilation at the end of the book is akin to John Green's magnificent work and compilation of Bigfoot encounters worldwide or The Bord's Bigfoot encounter's database. Is a necessary book for the library of all Forteans, Cryptozoologist and also Ufologists. Even though I would like to have seen a more in depth study of the paranormal-UFO connection in relation to some Yowie encounters. But this book is still a must for the libraries of those that comprimise the 'lunatic fringe' (just joking) those of us involved with the myriad of forbidden subjects....