You may wonder why I have not told this 3rd part before now, because even with me experiencing it, it is unbelievable to me too. I have PTSD from my time in the early part of my army service and it was pretty bad, but this yawee ( which is how the locals spell it, not the way I spelt it which was wrong, but for this instance I will spell it the way everyone spells it as in "Yowie"), it has given me very bad nightmares and PTSD, I have not been camping in that region since the 3rd instance of meeting them.

Now I will give you some little heads up about what happened, it, the yowie, including another tracked me, I don't know why. HERE'S THE STORY:

So 2 weeks later I decided to go back, but not by car, but via the river via a  blow up 2 person packraft, and the reason why by boat, was 2 fold, we had 2.5 inches of rain over the river catchment ( Gwydir) during the time of my first time that winter   camping up there, where I had the first meeting, and secondly, I thought I may be able to find these things by stealthily coming upon them and photographing them.

I started on a Monday morning quite early with my dog Milo, and I back packed the portable  packraft and my gear about a km from home to where I was going to put into the river near Bundarra Cemetery, blew up the raft, got Milo's booties on so he wouldn't puncture the raft, like he normally does, put the gear in and rowed away. It was beautiful day, and from the location of where we set off it was approx. 25km by river to that camp area.

Our intention was to get to about half way to the camp area, by nightfall,  because I knew I would have to portage some of the way, and this would hold me up. We were having a great time, and Milo, was enjoying the raft ride, as well as getting out and sniffing around and doing his usual business as well. Just before lunchtime, we get out to make some lunch, and a bit of a break, we were about 7 km in, making good time due to the higher then usual water level.

We are about 3 km from the waterfall, and another km past that was our first place to camp for the night. Now Milo had gone from pretty happy go lucky to being a bit subdued and constantly sniffing the wind coming from the north which was was the direction we were heading. After lunch we put back in and headed towards the waterfall, which is  quite a dangerous area to be on a raft so, we had to get out at least 500m from the waterfall,  to portage around  it.

All the while, whilst we were paddling and cruising due to the bit of speed that the water  was flowing at, the whole area was alive with animal noises, until we get to near the waterfall, and have to portage from then on to our camp area, their were absolutely no animal noises whatsoever, the only other noise was the waterfall and the rapids. Milo at this point most definitely did not want to get out of the raft, if anything when he did get out, wanted to head back home on foot, I had to put him on the short lead to get him to come with me, under duress. This, I knew was an issue maybe, he was picking up their scent, and "I SHOULD HAVE TURNED AROUND TO HEAD HOME" -BUT I thought I knew better, and thought they were further away, how wrong was I!.

So we get to the WF and I took some pics, we have a bit of a break, he, Milo is agitated, but reluctantly moves on with me. We stop at the spot we intended to camp at, set up the tent, It is about 3.30 pm, and decided there and then not to do a fire, it was winter, it was cold, but we sat around the tent, and took in the beautiful sunset. I left Milo off the lead, to wander and do his business after our meals, but he stayed within 3 m of the tent all evening, eventually we went to bed at approx, 7pm.

At approx. 12pm. Milo stirs and does a very low guttural growl, which wakes me up, he tries to get into my sleeping bag, but he is a bit too big( he is a slight oversize long haired Jack Russell) and I said to him very quietly get back into your own sleeping back, but all he does is crawl on top of my chest shivering, not shivering cold, but shivering scared and just look towards the tent opening, as I  had left one of the tent flaps tied back. So I decided to load my .410 shotty with a solid( was licensed at the time, have temporarily surrended it as you must do if you have PTSD), didn't need a torch as it was a waining moon and had some light.

I then sat there pretty much all night just waiting, did hear some movement behind us but not close, what was noticeable was the SMELL, it was absolutely rotten, which is a sure sign of them, although the night myself and the other camper had a problem with the yowie, the smell was there but not as bad as it was this night.

Eventually I got some sleep and woke about 7.30 am, the smell was gone, but Milo was still agitated, and declined to go out on his own, so I went out with him, with the .410 ready, not ****ed.

END of Part a.

-- Edited by Bicyclecamper on Monday 25th of May 2026 07:54:28 PM