AYR Archives: Big Island, near Bateman’s Bay, NSW. 2000.

One afternoon ferry captain Andy Crole and his wife Meryl were relaxing at a lonely campsite on tree-covered Big Island, in the Clyde River, when they heard something large crashing through the scrub.

“There were big heavy branches snapping and cracking”, Andy recalls, “whatever was doing it was pretty big and strong”.

Later, around sunset, they experienced the unpleasant sensation that something was watching them from the shadows. Their little dog felt it too: uncharacteristically silent, it huddled around Andy’s feet. Shortly after they retired things got even scarier: as they lay, terrified, something overturned pots and pans right outside their tent – “making a hell of a racket” – then ran back into the scrub.

“This was bigger and heavier than anything I’ve heard in my life”, says Andy, “it ran right past the tent two-legged, and the whole ground shook beside our heads – that’s how close the footsteps were. We did have a camera with a flash, but there was no way known I was going to get out of bed at 10:20pm to go running through the bush trying to get a photo of whatever was in front of me. I’d rather be a poor ferryman than a dead one, thanks very much!

“My wife reckons it was a dulagarl. I never used to be a big believer in them …when we’d go four-wheel-driving she’d tell stories about them. I’d have a bit of a giggle, but she’d say to me, ‘One day, Croley, you’re going to cop it!’ And I guarantee, that night on Big Island – that thing was a dulagarl.”