...after 'watching a tree get ripped from the ground by a mysterious creature' while racing his greyhound

• Yowie Dan, 46, says he came across a yowie while racing his greyhound in 2005
• The terrifying experience led him to become a researcher for over decade
• He says he has a collection of hand and foot prints as well as noise recordings
• A film producer has investigated the claims with an academic for a documentary 
• Track- Search for Australia's Bigfoot will premiere on Friday November 29th

A warehouse manager has dedicated his life to researching yowies after he allegedly had a frightening encounter with the mysterious creature. 

'Yowie Dan', 46, was with his greyhound named Sally at Appin racetrack in Sydney's Campbelltown early one morning in July 2005 when she began frantically barking. 

At first he thought she had seen a rabbit - until he heard a blood-chilling roar.

Yowie Dan (pictured) became a yowie researcher after he encountered a mysterious large creature in Sydney's outskirts

 

'She'd never barked like that before. All of her hairs were standing up like she had been electrocuted,' Yowie Dan told Daily Mail Australia.

'Within three seconds of her barking, this thing let out this big roaring scream.

'It was something that had to have a massive chest to get enough oxygen to make that sound come out.'

Although the creature was five metres away, it was hidden behind a blanket of fog basking among the row of trees. 

Suddenly he claims he saw a gumtree yanked from the ground and sticking up into the skyline. It then swayed vigorously side-to-side.

'The roots of this tree were cracking as it was ripped it out of the ground,' he said.

A mysterious tall figure can be seen lurking in the background of the footage before stepping out of the frame

 

'You get a gumtree as thick as a basketball, they have a lot of roots, this tree was solid. This thing was shaking it two feet to the left then the right.'

He claimed it shook for ten seconds before the dislodged trunk was left leaning against others as the beast took off. 

'The steps sounded like the biggest sledge hammer you could buy slamming against the hardest ground,' he said. 

'As it left I could hear the trees being crushed to the ground. Everything was getting bashed out of the way like a steam roller. 

'What creature is strong enough to throw a tree around like a rag doll?

'I thought to myself "Gee this Aboriginal Dreamtime thing is real".'

The father-of-two ran spooked to the other pet owners, standing 100 metres away, who told him that he looked like he'd seen a ghost.

A picture of a hand print found in Glenbrook in October 2017

 

The hand print was measured to be around 20 centimetres long

 

But no one else saw what happened. 

Yowies, a standing ape-like creature rising six to 12 feet tall, are an outback creature with roots in Aboriginal oral history.

They are known by different names across Australia but science has not been able to prove their existence.

In search of answers, Yowie Dan began researching online where he discovered a network dedicated to the Aboriginal folklore entity- the Australia Yowie Research (AYR) group.  

A cast of the 2017 Glenbrook hand print

Each weekend from that point on was spent tracking yowies.

Cameras and recording equipment would be taken to reported hot-spots and left for seven days. 

They would be picked up for the recordings to be analysed then placed out again to restart the cycle.

This procedure continued for eight years until Yowie Dan saw another one in June 2013 in Glenbrook.

 It was a different breed, called a Junjadee, which only grow to 3.5 to 4.5 feet tall. 

'I went out there at night and could hear Aboriginal kids making noises.

'I was thinking who left kids here? It sounded like they were trying to say two words at once. Then I noticed something was following me through the bush.

'It followed me through to this paper bark area. It beat me there. I thought it was a bulge in the tree- like a termite mound- then it blinked and I realised it was its eye. 

'It had these big black eyes, and chocolate brown hair. It looked like the hair on its head was combed back and the hair went around its chin.

'Its face was flat with no wrinkles- it looked like it had plastic surgery- high cheek bones, black eyes and blueish-grey skin. 

He said he never told anyone else about it, but the description by others of their sightings in the group's forum were identical. 

Each weekend for years Yowie Dan would venture to hot spots to set up or pick up cameras and recording equipment

Yowie Dan found four to five prints footprints (one pictured at 42cm) while hiking on Lindemans pass in the Blue Mountains with his twin sons in 2012

'When I saw the Junjadee, that's when I knew 100% these things were real. When you come face to face with them, and you can't explain it using science'. 

Two weeks later he caught a Yowie on camera.  

While he was looking back over a video he had made about how to hard it is to break trees, like yowies do, he found one lurking in the background. 

A tall figure can be seen slipping out of frame in the distance, on top of a 12-foot rock wall. 

He also has sound recordings of howling at Marramarra and a trove of photographs of footprint and hand print. 

The rock cliff at Glennbrook where the strange creature passed the camera was measured to be around 12 foot tall

 

Documentary producer Attila Kaldy found Yowie Dan's footage online while investigating sightings through out Australia.  

In January 2019 he began filming Track- Search for Australia's Bigfoot and brought in Western Sydney University lecturer of Psychology Doctor Tony Jinks to assess Yowie Dan's findings. 

The team were able to determine the animal's estimated height using geographical markers and camera angles.

Kaldy said: 'I went threw it with a fine tooth comb.

 'Jinks was not overly impressed by the video but once he went to the site and examined the area and found it would be around 11 feet tall.

'That's when he said "I think you've actually got something here."' 

 The Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, have more recorded sightings than anywhere else.

Reports date back to early settlement with the first 'official' Yowie report was made in Sydney in 1790. 

Yowie Dan posing next to a yowie replica which depicts the creature with a smooth blueish-grey face and long wild strands of hair 

Other sightings have occurred in the Sunshine and Gold coasts in Queensland, the mid north coast of New South Wales and in Western Australia around the Mandurah area. 

They have been documented to range in colour, from black, chocolate brown, grey and orange brown. 

 Yowie Dan, as he now calls himself since selecting it as his AYR username, says people whose properties border the Blue Mountains have had goon bags- wine casks- stolen from their backyard. 

 Moments later, in the dark of the night, they can hear the sound of them being popped in the bush land. 

 He has slowed down his research since 2017, when he released his monthly publication Australian Yowie magazine, but sometimes he still goes out, taking with him his wife or 18-year-old twin sons. 

Track- Search for Australia's Bigfoot will premiere on Friday November 29th at Casula Powerhouse Art Centre.  

SIGNS TO LOOK FOR WHEN SEARCHING FOR YOWIES

• Irregular tree breakage

Yowie Dan says unusual breaks are a sign of Yowie activity. Look for breaks that don't appear to be eaten by ants or termites. 

They are usually higher up in the air.  

•  Tree clearings

Go through areas where there are no broken trees until you to find a clearing. Keep an eye out for broken saplings that don't seem like they could be snapped by known animals.

• Foot prints 

Look for prints in creek areas. The footprints can be wide or narrow and sometimes they are missing toes.

• Hair

Sometimes you might find big long hair. It might end up being a wild goat or something. If you don't contaminate it, you can get the DNA checked. 

• Areas with resources

 Stick to places near water and food sources- not dry areas.

• Wood knocks

Yowie Dan says they will bang on trees to alert other yowies. Sometimes they will smash rocks together. They are rare but he heard tree banging during night expeditions.

Video can be accessed at source link below