Speaker 1: Myself and my mate Brian, who I was living with
Speaker 1: at the time, had each taken two weeks paid holiday
Speaker 1: from work to go to a spot Brian swore we
Speaker 1: would love. I remember at the time that I'd never
Speaker 1: even heard of it before. I should have, as it
Speaker 1: was relatively well known. It's a place called Mount Warning.
Speaker 1: Mount Warning is twelve hundred meters high, give or take,
Speaker 1: and it's just a big, splendid jungle covered hill with
Speaker 1: a rock summit that sticks up from the coastal hinterland
Speaker 1: in far northern New South Wales. The thing, apart from
Speaker 1: its beauty in historical relevance with the indigenous people of
Speaker 1: that area is that it is the first place to
Speaker 1: receive the rays of sun in Australia. Being the highest
Speaker 1: easternmost point in the country attracts a lot of sun lovers, hippies,
Speaker 1: alternative types in the light, plus a lot of people
Speaker 1: like me who love nature and want to see the
Speaker 1: place for its own and maybe the sun thing too.
Speaker 1: So the three of us took a train from Sydney
Speaker 1: to I can't pronounce this word, murwill Bump, merwill Bump,
Speaker 1: murwill Umba, merwill Umba, where we hired a car and
Speaker 1: a big tent big enough for the three of us
Speaker 1: in our gear, we drove to a place right at
Speaker 1: the foot of the mountain, a kind of caravan park
Speaker 1: with camping sites too. Back then it was called Willumbon
Speaker 1: Wildlife Reserve, which in retrospect turned out to be funny.
Speaker 1: My mate Brian is a herpetologist and a damn good one.
Speaker 1: He still is, and ostensibly the reason for all of
Speaker 1: us going all the way that far north right on
Speaker 1: the Queensland border was so that he could do some
Speaker 1: snake hunting and collecting, which he was permitted to do so.
Speaker 1: Seeing as FJ was no fan of potentially fatal pieces
Speaker 1: of rope, Brian trained me up as his assistant. Basically,
Speaker 1: I helped him catch him bag. I would also render
Speaker 1: first day should we cop a bite from a nasty species.
Speaker 1: Each day we would head out into the vastness of
Speaker 1: the surrounding area, looking for snakes along the roadsides and
Speaker 1: near the creeks, each time probing a bit further up
Speaker 1: the mountain road and its verges. At night, we would
Speaker 1: walk to a large wayside spot two kilometers from the
Speaker 1: campsite with our guitars and gear, and we would cook
Speaker 1: our dinner on an open fire beside the nice clear
Speaker 1: creek that ran along behind the clearing. We would sometimes
Speaker 1: catch yabbies in the creek and cook them in the
Speaker 1: billy right there. We'd stay up there well into the
Speaker 1: night and then walk back down the dark, unlit road
Speaker 1: to the campsite so we could sleep. Rush routine worked
Speaker 1: really well. It wasn't school holidays or anything, but in
Speaker 1: the caravan park there were still quite a few holiday
Speaker 1: makers and gray nomads and such, and so by heading
Speaker 1: up the road each night when it started getting dark,
Speaker 1: we would be away from the other people and be
Speaker 1: at ease to make some noise, have a few ales
Speaker 1: whoop it up a bit, and carry on like you
Speaker 1: do when you are in your twenties. One night, one
Speaker 1: very dark night, Brian explained that on moonless nights, a
Speaker 1: lot more snakes than things are apt to move around,
Speaker 1: as it is safer for them from nocturnal predators. They're
Speaker 1: being less light than normal, which made sense to me. Plus,
Speaker 1: it had been a very hot day, it being late
Speaker 1: November and coming into summer, and he knew that some
Speaker 1: snakes would be soaking up the last of the heat
Speaker 1: from the sealed roads up in the bush and it
Speaker 1: was a very good chance we could back some pythons,
Speaker 1: and as it turned out, he was exactly right. Our
Speaker 1: other mate, Jay wasn't keen on going up and past
Speaker 1: our firepit area on this particular evening. He had a
Speaker 1: book to read and just wanted to kick back in
Speaker 1: the tent and plank quietly on his acoustic and have
Speaker 1: some time for him, which was cool with us, so
Speaker 1: Brian and I took the snake bags. We took a
Speaker 1: good stick, a dolphin torch, and off we went. We
Speaker 1: stopped at the fireplace and bowled the billy for a
Speaker 1: cup of tea as the sun set. Once it was dark,
Speaker 1: we headed up the road that leads to the peak
Speaker 1: of the mountain. It's a long walk to the top,
Speaker 1: eight kilometers from where we were. He hadn't made any
Speaker 1: plans to go all the way to the top, just
Speaker 1: walk along and bag some snakes, enjoy the night's warmth
Speaker 1: and the music. I guess it would have been nine
Speaker 1: or ten that night. Neither of us had watches, and
Speaker 1: mobile phones hadn't been invented yet. We had one eight
Speaker 1: foot carpet snake, which is a beautiful python, a few
Speaker 1: brown tree snakes in the bags, and we're just quietly chatting,
Speaker 1: no torch on for quite some time, so as to
Speaker 1: let our eyes get accustomed to the darkness. It was
Speaker 1: a different kind of bush up there from what I
Speaker 1: was used to up north. It is tropical and more
Speaker 1: like jungle than bush. The thick green tangle whirld came
Speaker 1: right up to the roadsides on both sides of the road,
Speaker 1: except it wasn't green. It was just an all encompassing
Speaker 1: living blackness of vines and palms and figs and ferns
Speaker 1: and trees that sting and stab and things that want
Speaker 1: to bite you everywhere you step. It's not a silent
Speaker 1: darkness either. The forest is full of life and movement,
Speaker 1: with things that croak and squeak and chatter and squabble
Speaker 1: and scurry and fly and hump past your face and
Speaker 1: flap into you and scrabble in the branches above you.
Speaker 1: In the black. We were walking slowly along this dark
Speaker 1: tree covered tunnel of a road to our left, and
Speaker 1: I heard a branch crack. Now many Australian trees are
Speaker 1: self pruning, especially in summer, Ucalyptus especially. They dropped their
Speaker 1: branches all the time. This is one reason so many
Speaker 1: Australian birds and marsupials have adapted to live in hollows
Speaker 1: made where the tree branches have come off. The animals
Speaker 1: and trees have evolved together, so hearing a branch crack
Speaker 1: is nothing unusual. Usually we didn't even mention it. We
Speaker 1: heard it and barely acknowledged it as we kept chatting
Speaker 1: in the dark, barely able to see each other though
Speaker 1: we were right side by side. A few moments later
Speaker 1: came another crack. This was different altogether. This was quite close,
Speaker 1: maybe a stone's throw away, and it came from down
Speaker 1: the gully that we knew was beside us. It wasn't deep,
Speaker 1: maybe thirty meters. It just a fold in the land
Speaker 1: that the runoffs used to join with the creek. Now
Speaker 1: this was a break, the sound of something literally breaking,
Speaker 1: maybe the trunk of a fairly large soul. It just
Speaker 1: went bang, more like a gunshot than a branch breaking.
Speaker 1: You could tell that this tree didn't break like a
Speaker 1: dead fall. It just got broken green, and it was loud,
Speaker 1: and it was closed. And we stopped, but before either
Speaker 1: of us called to say, oh crap. From the same
Speaker 1: spot as the snap came a sound like a cough.
Speaker 1: I've often described it as a bit like someone clearing
Speaker 1: their throat, like a big man going um, or a
Speaker 1: cross between that and a cough. I can make a
Speaker 1: sound pretty close to it. We turned to each other
Speaker 1: and Brian spoke first, but all he got was, did
Speaker 1: you hear that? Suddenly the air was torn apart, like
Speaker 1: as if by thunder. The loudest and most horrific, ear splitting,
Speaker 1: blood curdling scream yell roar hit us like a bomb blast.
Speaker 1: The sound literally vibrated our bodies and in our ribs
Speaker 1: and skulls, and it seemed to take heat and strength
Speaker 1: out of us, if only for a moment. It lasted
Speaker 1: for what seemed like an impossible time. Maybe it was
Speaker 1: about as long as one can hold its breath, maybe shorter.
Speaker 1: I can't, with impunity say how long that scream went for,
Speaker 1: but it was long and drawn out in the most
Speaker 1: ferocious and frightening sound I've ever heard. As it tailed off,
Speaker 1: there was another huff or a cough at its end,
Speaker 1: and the two of us stood, weakened the knees and bones,
Speaker 1: waiting for the hammer to fall. It sounded like the
Speaker 1: warning of certain death to come at any second. We
Speaker 1: had suddenly plummeted into a few horrible moments to the
Speaker 1: very bottom of the food chain. It was a bit
Speaker 1: like when you're swimming out in the surf behind the
Speaker 1: brake and you see a fin and you don't know
Speaker 1: if it's a dolphin or not, and you suddenly realized
Speaker 1: that you might be on something's menu, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: you can do about it, so you accept the fact
Speaker 1: that there are only three out comes. One you will
Speaker 1: make it safely to shore. Two you're going to get injured,
Speaker 1: possibly badly, and three you're going to die today. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever made that sound was close, and it was the
Speaker 1: king of the effing jungle. Years after this incident, I
Speaker 1: would have the pleasure of having a male lion roar
Speaker 1: from twenty meters behind me in the dark. A lion's roar,
Speaker 1: as almost bowel moving as it was, was nowhere near
Speaker 1: as loud and powerful and barrel chested as this thing. Seriously,
Speaker 1: the yali that made that roar must have been freakin huge.
Speaker 1: In those first few moments after the scream, nothing happened.
Speaker 1: There was complete silence, not a cricket chirp, not a
Speaker 1: possum stir, not a frog croak. Everything was silent as
Speaker 1: a grave. It was as if that roar had sucked
Speaker 1: the vitality out of every living thing in that area.
Speaker 1: That area either, but the whole bloody mountain seemed to
Speaker 1: hold its breath. I was snapped out of my shock
Speaker 1: by Brian, whose face was almost nose to nose with
Speaker 1: mine as he said, Okay, Harry Butler, what the f
Speaker 1: was that? Now? Please allow me to just give a
Speaker 1: very quick heads up on that last comment for your
Speaker 1: American listeners. Harry Butler is a well loved Offsea naturalist
Speaker 1: who had a popular TV show on the ABC called
Speaker 1: Harry Butler in the Wild. We had all grown up
Speaker 1: with this show. In fact, Harry was one of the
Speaker 1: people to inspire the late Steve Irwin to take the
Speaker 1: path that he took in life. So there's Brian, eyes
Speaker 1: like dinner plates, waiting for me to give him a
Speaker 1: sensible answer, and I could not. He knew that I
Speaker 1: was very good in the bush. He knew I had
Speaker 1: heard everything that was to hear in the bush. He
Speaker 1: knew I was running through my noise catalog in my mind,
Speaker 1: trying really hard to equate that sound was something in
Speaker 1: my Brett's book of bush Noises. Now, after a moment,
Speaker 1: I gave him my honest answer, I'll be ft if
Speaker 1: I know, Mike. And then it hit me. I was
Speaker 1: back in w J at night with the same bloke,
Speaker 1: and I was looking at the yowie I'd seen all
Speaker 1: those years ago, and I knew what it was in
Speaker 1: an instant that was out there and had made that sound.
Speaker 1: And I said, wait, I think I might know what
Speaker 1: this is. Mate. Brian, looking more serious than I'd ever
Speaker 1: seen him look before, said oh yeah. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: do you want to know what I reckon it was?
Speaker 1: He looked right into my face. I could practically hear
Speaker 1: his gears turning. He took a moment and he said no.
Speaker 1: Suddenly I wasn't scared. Maybe it was the pleading look
Speaker 1: in Brian's eyes that made me think he was relying
Speaker 1: on me for a solid and helpful idea. The third response,
Speaker 1: I call it there is flight, fight, and a total
Speaker 1: complacence of Bambi volence. So I finally said, well, Mike,
Speaker 1: if it's big enough to sound like that and it
Speaker 1: wants us, we are eft. And Brian replied we're closer
Speaker 1: to the peak than the camp. Let's have some balls
Speaker 1: and just keep going. And then, and only then did
Speaker 1: we remember we had a torch. It had been gripped
Speaker 1: in my hand the whole time. And although our minds
Speaker 1: were still full of tilt, that roar had frozen us
Speaker 1: to the spot, and it took a moment to fall.
Speaker 1: So I shined the light straightforward to the spot where
Speaker 1: the sound had come from, and despite the rays barely
Speaker 1: penetrating that vast green wall, a second after flicking it on,
Speaker 1: there came a thud, like someone dropping a bag of
Speaker 1: cement from the back of a truck. We felt it
Speaker 1: through the road. We knew it was a foot thump,
Speaker 1: a stamp, like what an annoyed horse would do, only
Speaker 1: so much more powerful. Okay, you don't like the light either,
Speaker 1: I thought, so I shined it down the corner of
Speaker 1: the road behind us. Nothing same in front, just more
Speaker 1: road in jungle, and I turned off the light. I
Speaker 1: had kind of judged that as I walked about the
Speaker 1: seven kilometers an hour, that we had been walking pretty
Speaker 1: slowly for an hour or so, and we had covered
Speaker 1: about five kilometers. We were a long way from home,
Speaker 1: and that bugger. Yahwe probably knew it. So we continued
Speaker 1: up the road, slowly at first, and then with an
Speaker 1: f U king Kong attitude, completely unarmed. Of course, the
Speaker 1: noises of the bush came back, but conversation had begun
Speaker 1: to die away, and after about another twenty minutes or so,
Speaker 1: Brian just stopped and said to me, very quietly and seriously, Bretto,
Speaker 1: I can feel it watching us, Mate, Can you feel that?
Speaker 1: Of course I can, mate, But he hasn't made us
Speaker 1: move on yet. That's a good thing, nay, said my mate. Dude,
Speaker 1: this feels wrong. And when the road hits the base
Speaker 1: of the path it stops at this park. Now, said
Speaker 1: my mate, dude, this feels wrong. And when the road
Speaker 1: hits the base of the path it stops at this
Speaker 1: little car park thing. And then there's this little rocky,
Speaker 1: windy footpath to the summit, like through the forest. Mate.
Speaker 1: This was new info, and straightway changed my mind. Suddenly.
Speaker 1: That single lane road felt like a much safer line
Speaker 1: to take than to blunder in total darkness right into
Speaker 1: this thing's backyard with a torch or no torch. The
Speaker 1: blacktop felt like a wiser of two options. Okay, mate,
Speaker 1: let's go home. We did one hundred and eighty degree
Speaker 1: and walked back down that blackest pitch road past where
Speaker 1: the roar happened, down and down and down, watched all
Speaker 1: the way. I have no doubt. We got back to
Speaker 1: our tent at about midnight. FJ was still awake. He
Speaker 1: had been filming some footage on the old microcassette video
Speaker 1: camera we had taken with us to catalog the holiday.
Speaker 1: In the clip, he was laying back with a cigarette
Speaker 1: and telling the camera that he could hear some very
Speaker 1: strange noises coming from up the mountain and that he
Speaker 1: was glad he was staying right here. He hoped we
Speaker 1: were okay. I still have the footage. It's a shame
Speaker 1: he didn't get any of what he was hearing on tape.
Speaker 1: But the gist of it is that he was five
Speaker 1: kilometers away and he heard the roar, so you can
Speaker 1: imagine what standing a stone's throw away did to us.
Speaker 1: We sat in the tent and we talked about it,
Speaker 1: had a couple of stiff drinks, and turned in. Now
Speaker 1: here's the bit that drove it all home for me
Speaker 1: and my mate. Next morning, it was sunny, perfect and
Speaker 1: people out and about, and all the reality around you
Speaker 1: makes your logic denial thing kick in and you wonder
Speaker 1: did that stuff really happen? You get it the day
Speaker 1: after very every real experience with something otherworldly. You guys
Speaker 1: know what I mean. But we went to the little
Speaker 1: shop in the caravan park that morning for some stuff
Speaker 1: and it was like a little general store beside the
Speaker 1: park's end ground swimming pool, postcards, post office, milk bar, etc.
Speaker 1: I joked about something to Brian about the last night's
Speaker 1: goings on, and the really nice bloke that ran the
Speaker 1: shop just up and said, you blokes up near the
Speaker 1: big fella on the mountain last night, eh or something
Speaker 1: like that. It was years ago. Anyway, this bloke goes
Speaker 1: on to tell us that it is playing local knowledge
Speaker 1: and it has been for a long time. There is
Speaker 1: a yalie up on Mount Warning and there always will be,
Speaker 1: and most people know that. He went on to say
Speaker 1: that the indigenous people of the region would go miles
Speaker 1: out of their way to avoid that mountain back in
Speaker 1: their day. He told us about how the lady had
Speaker 1: the little place on the left after the kindergarten in
Speaker 1: Wallumbe had her little terrier just swooped up from its
Speaker 1: running tether by that big bugger in one hand as
Speaker 1: it went straight through her laundry line. The dog didn't
Speaker 1: even yell, It just crushed it in one hand as
Speaker 1: the yowie went straight on through her yard into the bush,
Speaker 1: dragging fresh laundry after it. I had been past her
Speaker 1: house a dozen times or more. So even though we
Speaker 1: didn't need to be, we felt pretty validated by the
Speaker 1: bloke in the shot because even though he may have
Speaker 1: been stretching the truth even a tad. I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I know what we heard on Mount Warning that night,
Speaker 1: and it was big. It was a bloody yowie. It
Speaker 1: could have been nothing else. We don't have bears, We
Speaker 1: don't have cougar's wolves or the sorts of land predators
Speaker 1: that can growl or roar like that. We don't have
Speaker 1: huge deer like moose er el in our forests. That
Speaker 1: Mike Bellow pretty well. It was no koalis fighting or
Speaker 1: possums going at it for fruit, or bats screeching. There
Speaker 1: are yowie's, you might call them sasquatch. It is mysterious,
Speaker 1: but it's really no mystery. It's very plain and simple.