THE YOWIES

"Watch out for potholes!" cried Kim Monroe.
He thumped on the top of the cabin of the Land-Rover with one hand to catch the driver’s attention, as they sped through the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest.
"You watch out for them!" shouted back Don Blythe: "You’re the one working the spotlight. If you don’t pick up the potholes, how am I supposed to see them in the dark!"
"Have a care!" warned Don’s brother, Mark: "He’s supposed to be lighting up rabbits for us to shoot, not the forest in front of the car. That’s what you’ve got headlights for!"
Despite their protests, however, the three men were pitched about in the back of the rickety old Land-Rover (from which the canvas top had been removed) as it rattled through the forest between Harpertown and Perry Township in the Victorian countryside, late that January night.
The summer of 1985-86 had seen plague-like increases in the populations of the rabbits, foxes, and other imported species for which Australia has no natural predators. With the banning of myxomatosis and other chemical poisons that had once been widely used against imported pests, Victorian farmers had been forced to resort to the very time consuming and less effective method of spotlight shooting. (More effective than daylight shooting, since by day the grey fur of a rabbit, or red of a fox makes it invisible among the tall shrubs and long native grasses. At night, however, the eyes of the pest shine against the beam of the spotlight giving its location away, allowing the farmer to shoot the creature without even seeing it.)
"Slow down a bit at least!" insisted the fourth man, Jason Melville as he took a shot at a pair of sparkling eyes and fired well wide of the target.
"Yes, for God’s sake! We’re out here to shoot the buggers, not frighten them to death!" protested Kim, struggling to control the floodlight mounted on top of the cabin of the Land-Rover.
"All right, all right," agreed Don reluctantly. He slowed the Rover enough to allow the two shooters to get off some shots at the gleaming fox- or rabbit-eyes highlighted in the spotlight beam.
"Got one!" shouted Mark Blythe with satisfaction as a small, furry carcase flew away into the long grass after he fired.
"Good shooting, Tex," said Kim: "that’s one less rabbit in the Harpertown region. Only ninety-nine billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go!"
"In other words keep shooting," advised Jason: "you don’t win any kewpie doll just for shooting one of the little buggers."
"Well, thanks for the encouragement anyway," said Mark, to the amusement of the other men.
With the Rover travelling much slower now, throwing the men around less, they were at last able to start getting value for the cost of their bullets (as well as a personal sense of satisfaction) by more and more frequently seeing small grey or brown carcases fly into the air after a shot had found the mark. The shooting had almost taken on a party atmosphere, when unexpectedly the great shape loomed up in front of the Land-Rover.
"For Christ’s sake watch out!" shouted Kim Monroe, seeing the large manlike figure and mistaking it for a human being: "Don’t hit him!"
"All right, all right, I see him," shouted back Don Blythe. He desperately tugged on the steering wheel to send the vehicle swerving to the left, missing the figure by only centimetres as they went rocketing past.
"Bloody Hell!" cursed Jason Melville: "Who the Hell is it!"
"Don’t ask me," replied Mark as the Rover came to an abrupt stop: "Too big for most of the people around these parts. Did you get a gander at him?"
"Only a glimpse," replied Kim: "but I reckon he'd be over two metres tall."
"The only person we know anywhere near that height would be Bear Ross," said Don leaning out of the now opened door of the cabin, referring to Danny "Bear" Ross, Sergeant of Police in Glen Hartwell, about thirty kilometres from Harpertown.
"What would Bear be doing out here, so late at night?" demanded Mark.
"Don’t ask me, maybe he...?" began Kim, stopping in alarm as the figure approached from behind the Rover and they could see it clearly for the first time:
Two-and-a-half metres in height, perhaps two hundred and fifty kilos in weight, it had the same basic shape as a human and walked erect like a man. But its naked body was covered from head to foot in long, stringy reddish-brown hair.
"My God, it’s not Bear Ross, it’s a real bear!" shouted Jason hurriedly grabbing for his rifle.
But as the creature approached nearer they could see that whatever it was, it was no bear; was nothing that they had ever seen before. It looked more like an oversized, tail-less orang-utan than anything else.
"My God, what is it?" cried Kim as he reversed the spotlight to light up the creature properly for the first time.
"Don’t ask me," replied Mark: "but it sure as Hell ain't human!"
So, saying both he and Jason raised their rifles to take shots at the creature. Although less than ten metres behind the Land-Rover, in the flickering light of the spot, shakily held by Kim Monroe, their own hands shaking from fright as they fired, both Mark and Jason shot well wide of the target.
At the sound of the gunfire, the tall manlike beast propped and stared at the hunters for a second as though just noticing them, then took off at an easy stride. Without even breaking into a run, the creature passed the Rover before Mark or Jason had time to fire another shot.
Ernie Singleton sat in an armchair in his bedroom at his Merridale sheep station, sixty kilometres from Harpertown. So far it had been a horrible night, with a birthday party that had turned into a lynching party, and now the horrendous stomach pains that meant it was his time of the month.
Standing, then clutching his belly, Ernie hurriedly undressed just in time before the transformation started. With loud crunching and crackling, his bones began snapping into a dozen pieces, before starting to reform, as Ernie changed shape, transforming from a tall, lean raven-haired man, into a large night black wolf. The Black Wolf as it had come to be known in the Glen Hartwell to Willamby area over the last few years.
Resisting the urge to hurl like a movie werewolf, Ernie raced toward the bedroom window, which he had been careful to open earlier, then leapt through into the shrubbery outside his bedroom and started toward the rear of the large, white weatherboard farmhouse.
Here goes nothing! thought the Black Wolf as it crept into the backyard, wiry of the forty or so Kelpies, Border Collies, Blue Healers and other dogs that were kennelled in large metal drums in the dog yard fifty metres or so behind the farmhouse.
Easy does it! he thought, trying his best to creep past the dog yard unseen.
Then as he approached the wire mesh fence running around the farmhouse yard, one of the dogs awakened. Looking up, it spotted the Black Wolf and immediately started barking, awakening out dogs, until a symphony of barking erupted across the yard.
No longer wasting time on stealth, the Black Wolf raced across toward the wire mesh fence, which it easily leapt, before starting off at a run toward the neighbouring forest of sweet-smelling pine, eucalyptus, and maple trees, to run off his transformation.
As usual on his Black Wolf nights, Ernie set of at random with no particular direction in mind. But as sometimes happened he seemed to be drawn like a homing pigeon to a particular area.
Where the Hell is it taking me now? wonder the wolf, having learnt over the last few years not to resist the pull of the transformation when it chose to take him somewhere of its choosing.

"Christ, look at him go!" cried Jason; "he’s not even raising a sweat, yet he’s easily leaving us for dead!"
"Don’t just sit there!" called Mark Blythe to his brother: "let’s get after him."
"You want to go after it?" asked Don, sounding terrified at the idea.
"Why not, we’re out hunting aren’t we?"
"Yeah, but did you see the size of that bastard?" asked Kim: "He was two-and-a-half metres easily."
"So what? We’re the ones with the rifles," pointed out Mark.
"Well, all right," said Don dubiously, starting the Rover to follow after the rapidly disappearing ape-man.
As the vehicle started up again, Kim hunted round for a small instant camera, which he used to photograph wildlife. Finding the camera he tried to hold the spotlight steady with his left hand, while snapping off photos with his right.
"For God’s sake, keep the light steady!" ordered Jason as the spotlight beam zigzagged across the forest ahead of them, lighting up the fleeing ape-man they were chasing for a second or two, before wavering to the left or right of the creature: "How can we hope to shoot it if you can’t keep it lit up?"
"Maybe it isn’t a good idea to shoot it," suggested Kim as the Land-Rover started to catch up with the fleeing beast.
"Why not?" demanded Jason, firing off a shot, which hit a rock behind the creature with a loud, metallic ping.
"Looks close enough to human to maybe be murder in the eyes of the cops," suggested Kim.
"Don’t be stupid!" replied Jason: "Whatever it is it’s no man."
"Some kind of crazy hermit maybe?" suggested Mark Blythe.
Although not concerned about killing the creature, he was afraid Kim was right that they might get into trouble with Jim Kane or Bear Ross for shooting it.
"Hermit, like Hell!" replied Jason Melville, firing off two shots in quick succession as they caught up enough to see the creature clearly in the spotlight: "It’s got stringy hair as thick as rope, half a metre long. No human could ever grow body hair like that -- not even a lifelong hermit!"
"It’s some kind of ape!" shouted Don from the cabin.
"Ape-man more like it, by the looks of it," corrected Mark.
"Still it’s not a man!" insisted Jason.
He lined up the creature in his rifle sight just as the spotlight suddenly went well wide of the mark, allowing the beast to vanish into the darkness momentarily.

Ernie had been running through the night as the Black Wolf for forty minutes or so, when he heard the sound of men arguing faintly in the distance, followed by rifle shots.
He tried to check his momentum, but found that he had no choice but to continue forward, until he was at the edge of a roadside, looking out as Jason and Mark continued to argue about the legality of shooting the Yowie.
What are they arguing about? wondered the Black Wolf, having not yet spotted the Yowie.
Fortunately he was able to pull up at last, before the hunters could spot him in the dark.

"What the Hell are you playing at?" demanded Jason.
Looking around he saw Kim kneeling down looking through a large, wooden supplies box.
"Looking for my spare roll of film," explained Kim.
"Come on for God’s sake!" cursed Jason as Kim continued to rummage round for a while before locating a gold Kodak box.
Kim unloaded the used roll of film, carefully put it away in the gold box, and then loaded the new roll into the camera. Only then did he stand and start to handle the floodlight again with his left hand, scouring round the forest of wattles, pines, and blue gums for the fleeing ape-man.
"You’ve lost him, you bastard!" cursed Jason, as Kim started clicking away with the camera again.
"What are you...?" began Jason, before realising that Kim had caught the creature in the spotlight beam again.

Standing just out of sight, for the first time the Black Wolf spotted the Yowie as it was lit up in the spotlight.
What the Hell? thought the Black Wolf as Jason Melville hefted his rifle, and started to fire shot after shot at the racing ape-man as Kim Monroe snapped away with his camera and Mark Blythe stood back watching, unsure now whether they should be trying to shoot the creature, which he still feared might be some kind of hermit.
"Come on! Come on, we’re losing him!" shouted Jason Melville.
He hammered upon top of the cabin of the Land-Rover as it rattled through the forest in pursuit of the red-brown orang-utan-like ape-man that they were hunting.
"Make up your mind," shouted Don Blythe from the cabin: "First it’s slow down, slow down, then it’s speed up, speed up!"
"Just do what I say, when I say!" ordered Jason.
"Well, at least he’s not dictatorial about it," said Kim Monroe, drawing a snicker from Don and a glare from Jason.
"Just hold that bloody light still so I can get a good shot at the bastard!" ordered Jason.
"Only a couple more snaps left in the camera," replied Kim, taking a quick photo as the ape-man was lit up properly in the floodlight beam for an instant before fading back into the darkness as the beam veered away to the left.
Loping beside the road, the Black Wolf did its best to stay in the shadows, however, the hunters were too absorbed by the Yowie to notice the wolf.
"Look, just hold the bloody light steady!" cried Jason: "You’ll never get any clear pictures of the bloody thing in this light anyway!"
"You never know," insisted Kim: "If I snap off enough photos there’s just a chance I’ll get one or two good ones."
"You’ll be lucky!" snarled Jason: "Hold the bloody light steady so that I can get one or two good shots and you’ll be able to take all the photos you like, while the bastard is laid out in the back of the Rover!"
Jason fired off two more shots, both of which went well wide of the target.
"Some chance," said Kim: "With the way you’ve been shooting lately, you’d be lucky to hit the side of a barn, if it ran out and sat right in front of the Rover!"
Quickly snapping off his last two pictures, Kim put the camera away in the wooden carry-all, and then held the spotlight steady with both hands.
"That’s more like it," said Jason lining the fleeing ape-man up in the sights of his rifle. Doing his best to prop himself in one corner of the Land-Rover to minimise the jarring of the vehicle, he slowly squeezed off a shot.
"I got him!" cried Jason with satisfaction as the ape-man fell to the ground perhaps eighty metres ahead of the Rover.
"Good shoot..." began Don Blythe from the cabin of the vehicle, stopping in mid word as the wounded creature let out a tremendous roaring-shriek which sounded almost like the metallic grinding of badly oiled machinery.
"Bloody Hell!" shouted Don.
He had to fight to control the Land-Rover, which had almost rolled over when in his fright he had taken his hands off the steering wheel.
The Black Wolf backed further into the forest, afraid that the runaway vehicle might careen into him.
"Jesus!" cried Kim as he was thrown heavily to the floor of the vehicle: "What in Hell are you doing?"
"Don’t blame me..." started Don.
He still fought to control the rocking Land-Rover as the ape-man let out another hellish shriek drowning out the words of all the men.
"Stop! Stop! Stop!" shouted Jason Melville.
He pounded one hand on top of the cabin of the vehicle, before being flung to the floor of the Rover.
"I’m trying to!" shouted back Don.
The Black Wolf had to fight the urge to howl alongside the wounded creatures, feeling its distress and agony, as Don finally brought the Rover to a halt less than five metres short of the wounded ape-man, which was now shrieking non-stop.
Hurriedly climbing out of the cabin, Don raced back to ask: "Is everyone all right back here?" As he watched Kim and Jason painfully pulling themselves back to their feet, he looked around for his brother and asked: "Where the Hell is Mark?"
"Don’t ask me," replied Jason looking around the back of the vehicle: "He must of fallen out while the Rover was rocking and rolling around."
"Oh, Jesus! We’ve gotta find him!" shouted Don hysterically, running to look back behind the Land-Rover.
"Calm down!" shouted Kim, trying to make himself heard above the bellowing of the wounded ape-man in the long grass ahead of them: "You’ll never find him at night like that!" Grabbing the floodlight again, he reversed it so that he could scan the forest behind them.
"Where is he?" cried Don when they hadn’t spotted Mark after a minute or two.
"Calm down!" ordered Jason: "Climb back into the cab and reverse up very slowly, so Kim can light up the bush further back. But for God’s sake slowly! We don’t want to miss him." Or run over him! he thought: careful not to voice the thought aloud.
Finally they located Mark nearly fifty metres behind where they had stopped.
Unconscious, he lay on his belly, deathly still.
"Oh, my God! My God, he’s dead!" shrieked Don racing across from the cabin of the Rover to where his brother was lying.
Hurriedly jumping down from the back of the vehicle to run after him, Kim shouted: "Don’t touch him, he might be badly hurt!"
Ignoring the advice Don rolled his brother over onto his back. Mark immediately opened his eyes and started to shriek from agony.
"My leg! My leg! My leg!" shrieked Mark, trying to clutch at his left leg, but was overcome with agony as the tiniest movement sent bolts of agony rocketing through him.
While Jason held back the hysterical Don, Kim did his best to examine Mark’s leg and quickly announced: "He’s got a badly broken left leg."
"I could have told you that!" shrieked Mark, hysterical from pain.
"Jesus, what’ll we do?" asked Jason.
"Get me to the Glen Hartwell Hospital!" demanded Mark.
"I don’t think that would be very wise," said Kim: "With your leg like that, we probably shouldn’t move you."
"Get me to the hospital!"
Trying to ignore the hysterical man, Jason said: "What do you think?"
"I’ll stay here with him, while you and Don drive into Harpertown to get Jim Kane and Doc Wilkinson, if you like," offered Kim.
"No! No! Get me into town!" shrieked Mark, terrified by the non-stop bellowing of the ape-man ahead of them: "Don’t leave me here with that monster!"
"It can’t hurt you!" insisted Jason: "It’s in a lot worse shape than you are!"
"Besides I’ll be here too, with one of the rifles," consoled Kim.
"No, no, get me onto the back of the Rover, then drive slowly to town!"
"But your leg is shattered to Hell!" cried Don.
"To Hell with my busted leg! Just get me away from that bloody monster!"
Although reluctant to move him, all four men were becoming nervous of the continuous bellowing from the wounded ape-man. So, rather than argue any longer, they decided to do as Mark wanted. Trying their best not to jolt his damaged left leg; they slowly lifted him onto the back of the Land-Rover.
Then, with the strident shrieking of the wounded ape-man still ringing out in their ears, they set out for Harpertown. (Which was the larger by far of the two towns they had been hunting between. Perry being too small to have its own police station or local practitioner.)

After the hunters had departed, the Black Wolf tentatively approached the Yowie, which was not quite dead. It continued to scream and try to pull itself into the bushes, but clearly it would not last much longer.
Those bastards! thought the Black Wolf, angry that they had mortally wounded the creature needlessly.
As the Yowie shrieked and pulled itself along, the wolf stayed with it, so that it would not die alone. Then as soon as he was certain it was dead, the wolf headed off at a run back toward the Singleton Sheep Station.

Back at town they stopped first at Goodwin Drive to drop Mark Blythe off with old Doc Wilkinson, before heading for the small police station in Charman Street.
Finding the station locked up for the night, they hurried around to Riordan Street to wake up the local Police Sergeant, Jim Kane.
"What the hell do you want at this hour?" demanded Jim, looking out at the three men standing on his front porch.
"We’ve just shot an ape-man!" explained Don Blythe.
"If this is meant to be an April Fool’s Day joke, you’re about ten weeks too early," said Jim wiping the sleep out of his eyes.
"It’s no joke," insisted Jason Melville.
He went on to give Jim a quick rundown of their encounter with the reddish-brown haired ape-man.
"It walked upright like a normal man?" asked Jim, suddenly very serious.
"That’s right," agreed Jason.
"Well, did it ever occur to you that it could have been some kind of crazy hippie gone bush or something?"
"That’s what Mark suggested," pointed out Kim Monroe.
"In which case you guys could be in a lot of hot water!"
"I’m telling you sergeant, that thing wasn’t human," insisted Jason: "Hell you only had to hear its unearthly bellowing when it was shot to know that it wasn’t any man. Besides it looked just like a giant orang-utan! No hippie could ever let themselves go that much!"
They argued for a little longer, before Jim Kane went back inside to hurriedly dress. Then the four men drove round to Goodwin Drive to see how Mark Blythe was doing in the care of Doc Wilkinson.
"It’s a very bad break," explained the grey-haired, balding old doctor, leading them into the surgery at the back of his house: "I’ve set it as good as I can, but I think it’s best if we send him to Glen Hartwell tomorrow morning, so Gina Foley can have a look at him."
"All right," agreed Jim, looking down at Mark who was now sleeping with the help of a pain-killing injection, which had been administered by the doctor shortly before the four men had arrived.
"Well, that much of it is true at least," conceded Jim as they left the doctor’s home: "But how can you expect me to believe the rest of it?"
"There’s the pictures!" cried Jason, suddenly remembering the two rolls of film that Kim had snapped off while they were pursuing the ape-man.
"That’s right," agreed Kim Monroe as they reached the two Land-Rovers parked in front of Doc Wilkinson’s house.
Going to the second vehicle, Kim rummaged around in the back of the Rover for a moment before holding up the gold Kodak box containing one roll of film, and the small camera with the other roll still inside: "One of the rolls was already partly used, but I must have snapped off at least thirty or thirty-five shots of the ape-man. Surely at least a couple of them must be clear enough to see what it is."
"Oh, all right," said Jim Kane with a sigh, taking the two rolls of film from Kim: "I’ll take these round to Bob Montgomery for priority developing, then I’ll see you all in my office first thing this morning."


"Go away I’m closed for the night!" called Bob Montgomery from the bedroom window above his general store in Goodwin Drive, Harpertown.
Stepping out onto the road so he could be seen away from the porch, Jim Kane called back: "It’s me, Bob! Sorry, but I’ve got some priority developing for you."
"At this hour?" asked Bob in astonishment.
"Sorry, I just got it," apologised Jim.
"All right I’ll be right down," called back Bob.
Although Bob Montgomery was mainly the owner and operator of the local general store, because Harpertown was so far away from the nearest Kodak plant, he had also taken over the job of developing film for the locals. For a small, regular fee he also did priority developing for Jim Kane, or Bear Ross out in Glen Hartwell.

Seeing the red light go off outside the small developing room at the back of Bob Montgomery’s general store in Goodwin Drive, Jim tapped tentatively on the door.
"Come on in!" called Bob: "They’re drying now."
"How’d it go?" asked Jim stepping into the small dark room.
"Interesting," replied Bob, running a hand through a small patch of hair atop his otherwise bald head: "The first few photos were of normal wildlife: kangaroos, wallabies, emus, and so on. Most of the others were too blurry to be able to make out much of anything. But then there were these," he said walking across to three photos hanging from a string drying.
"My God!" cried Jim: "I thought they were all drunk!"
The three photographs cleared showed a two-and-a-half metre tall creature with long, stringy red-brown hair covering it from head to foot fleeing the onrushing vehicle, looking as Jason Melville had said, like a giant orang-utan.
"Kim might not be the greatest photographer in the world," joked Bob, fingering his glasses up along his nose: "But he sure knows how to pick interesting subjects."
"Yes," agreed Jim: "I guess I owe Kim and the others an apology."
When Jim started to reach for the photographs, Bob hurriedly stopped him: "Ah, er, they’re not quite dry yet. If you like I’ll bring them round to Charman Street in a couple of hours."
"Fair enough, I guess I won’t be getting back to sleep tonight anyway."
An hour later Jim Kane and his constable, Paul Bell (a tall, wiry, raven-haired man), were both sitting round at the Charman Street police station drinking coffee and yawning widely.
"Are you serious about this ape-man stuff?" asked Paul brushing a strand of long, black hair out of his eyes.
"Just wait till you see the photos," said Jim.
They were still talking about the mysterious ape-man, when Bob Montgomery finally turned up with the three photographs and their negatives.
"So, you really weren’t joking!" said Paul, snatching one of the photos out of Bob’s hands. He stared transfixed at the picture of the fleeing ape-man for a minute or more, before finally asking: "So what’s your next move?"
"I’ve already arranged for Kim and Jay to come round at first light, so I’ll get them to lead us out to where they were spot shooting. With a lot of luck we might be able to find the tracks of the creature and trail it back to its lair."
"You say Jay reckons he shot it?" asked Paul.
"Too right, he reckons it was bellowing like a stuck pig. So, if we can pick up the point where they shot it, we should be able to follow the trail of blood. The main thing is to try to keep the story under wraps until we have a chance to look around in peace."
"Right," agreed Paul: "The last thing we need is to have five hundred gawking spectators trampling any spoors under foot before we have a chance to follow them."
That was to be a forlorn hope however:

"Did you get a look at this?" asked Kim Monroe holding up a newspaper as he entered the police station shortly after 7:00 AM.
"What is it?" asked Jim Kane getting up from his desk.
"The Harpertown Chronicle," explained Kim handing the paper to the policeman.
APE-MAN RUNS AMOK IN HARPERTOWN AREA! declared the page one headline, below which was a large black-and-white photograph identical to one of the three glossy, eight-by-tens that Jim had on his desk.
"An ape-man went berserk in Harpertown, attacking local spot-shooters!" read Paul Bell aloud: "After which it overturned a Land-Rover before fleeing while the five men looked on in horror!"
"Overturned a Land-Rover? Five men?" asked Jason Melville picking out the two most obvious out of dozens of small errors that riddled the full page story.
"I think that’s called artistic licence," said Kim: "But how did the bastards get one of my photos?"
"From bloody Bob Montgomery, of course!" said Jim, cursing himself for his stupidity: "No wonder he offered to hand deliver the photos when they were dry, rather than let me take them away with me!"
"My God!" said Paul: "He’s probably run off a dozen copies and sold them to all the local yellow rags!"
"So what do we do now?" asked Kim Monroe.
"I’m tempted to go round immediately to settle things with Bob," replied Jim: "but it might be more prudent to head straight for where you were shooting last night, to try to find any spoors or blood trail before any gawking mobs start trampling about."
"Right," agreed Paul: "We can settle with Bob Montgomery later!"
It took Kim and Jason about three quarters of an hour to locate the exact spot where they had first sighted the ape-man.
"Definitely around here," said Jason. Pointing to a small patch of dried blood on the ground: "That’s where Mark fell from the back of the Rover and shattered his leg."
They hunted around for another twenty minutes before locating a dried puddle of blood and a thin trail of blood leading away into the forest.
"It’s heading back toward Perry," said Kim with authority, himself a resident of Perry, unlike the Blythes and Jason Melville who all came from Harpertown.
"You could be right," agreed Jim Kane as they started tracking the smatterings of blood -- Jim on foot, the others following behind in a Police Land-Rover driven by Paul.
"Do you think it has a hideout out here somewhere?" called Paul.
"Don’t ask me," called back Jim: "It’s hard to see how it could live out in the open, even in the forest, without someone having seen it before this."
"Besides," chipped in Jason: "At the speed at which it was running last night, it could have travelled plenty of Kays in one night."
"That’s right," agreed Kim: "It was easily outrunning the Rover."
"Outrunning...?" asked Paul Bell, aware of Kim’s reputation as a practical joker: "Come off it!"
"Only in second gear," pointed out Jason: "We couldn’t risk going in third or fourth gear at night in the forest. But we were going flat out in second and only just managed to keep the bugger in sight. If I hadn’t shot it, eventually it would have outrun us."
"That’s right," agreed Kim.
They were still arguing about the possibility of the ape-man being capable of outrunning a Land-Rover, when Jim gave a cry of: "Paul! Over here!"
"What is it?" asked Paul, leaning his head out the side window.
"I’ve found it!" shouted Jim: "Leave the Rover."
Doing as instructed, all three men left the vehicle and walked across to the police sergeant who was standing by a large clump of Mulga bushes.
"What is...?" started Paul, stopping in astonishment as he gazed down at the reddish-brown corpse. The creature looked very much like an oversized orangutan as Jason had previous said, except for its disarmingly human facial features. Not quite human, but closer to human, than to any known ape.
"Now do you believe us?" demanded Jason, resentful of the way that they had been treated when they had first reported the ape-man.
"Yes, we believe you," assured Jim, looking down at the large, hairy corpse, thinking: I guess you should have been no real surprise to me after those photos ... But what in Hell are you, my friend?
"So what do we do now?" asked Paul Bell when he had recovered enough from his astonishment to speak.
"Take it into Glen Hartwell to let Elvis have a look at it," suggested Jim, referring to the local coroner, Elvis Green.
"Assuming we can lift it into the back of the Rover," said Kim. But although a little squeamish about touching the corpse, the four of them managed to heft it into the back of the vehicle, after dropping the tailgate.
Reaching for the microphone on the dashboard as the Rover started up, Jim offered: "We can drop you two at Harper and Perry first, if you like?"
"No way!" protested Jason.
So, all four men set out on the twenty-five minute drive to Glen Hartwell with Kim and Jason sitting a little nervously in the back of the Land-Rover with the corpse of the ape-man. As they drove Jim Kane called through to notify Bear Ross in Glen Hartwell. (Although Bear and Jim were both sergeants, by Victorian law when two or more country towns are policed by officers of the same rank, the officer in charge of the largest town has authority over the others. Therefore, since Glen Hartwell easily dwarfed Harpertown, Bear Ross was senior to Jim, as he was to Mel Forbes in Merridale and Con Rodriguez in LePage.)

"What’s up?" asked Bear, who was waiting outside the steps of the morgue in Baltimore Drive as the Land-Rover drove up. Conscious that anyone could be listening on the police band, Jim had not explained why they had needed to see him urgently.
Although he had seen the morning’s newspaper headlines, Bear had not taken seriously their reports of a "Yowie" -- as the Glen Hartwell papers were already calling the ape-man. But looking into the back of the Rover at the large red-brown corpse, he had no choice but to believe.
"Holy Mother of God!" said Bear, instinctively crossing himself: "Looks like the local rags were right for a change."
"Yes," agreed Jim Kane.
Seeing a few passers-by had already stopped to stare in wonder at the hairy corpse, Bear said: "Anyway let’s get it ... him into the morgue before a real crowd gathers!"
Half an hour later the ape-man was laid out flat on a metal dissection table in the autopsy room near the rear of the morgue.
Jerry "Elvis" Green (a lifelong Elvis Presley fan) and Gina Foley (head surgeon and co-ordinator at the Glen Hartwell and Daley City Hospital) prepared to perform an autopsy on the creature. While Bear Ross, Jim Kane, Terry Blewett (Bear’s constable, a tall raven-haired man), Mel Forbes and Andrew Braidwood (a tall lanky blond man, Mel’s constable) all crowded round in the observation room watching.
"Jesus, what is it?" said Gina, thinking aloud. (Due to successive state and federal governments squeezing the life out of the public service, although Elvis was able to employ Gloria Ulverstone as a steno-typist, he didn’t have sufficient funds to employ a qualified medical assistant. Therefore, as the most senior doctor in the region, although not officially employed at the morgue, Gina Foley helped Elvis out on occasion.)
"Don’t ask me," replied Elvis: "At first glance it looks like some kind of mutated, oversized orang-utan, as Jim and Bear said ... but look at that face! It’s almost human!"
"Yes," agreed Gina: "And look at the large forehead. Orang-utans and other large primates have small foreheads and correspondingly small brains. This creature has a large, human forehead and a brain at least as large as ours...."
While the others watched on, Terry Blewett operated a small camcorder to record the operation.
As he began the autopsy of the strange, unclassified corpse, Elvis Green thought back to three years earlier when he had just moved to Glen Hartwell. It had been at the time of the Ash Wednesday bush fires, which had killed seventy-two people in Victoria and South Australia. Toward the end of the crisis a large, orange-red carcase had been brought to him for autopsy. Looking more like a gargoyle than a man, the creature’s leathery hide had been almost too tough for Elvis’s surgical knives to cut. Rather than risk damaging the unknown creature he had had it packed in ice and rail-freighted to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in East Melbourne for dissection, expecting to be kept informed of any discoveries made by the CSIRO. Instead he had heard nothing more until six months after when he had rung them, only to be lied to by the officer in charge, who initially pretended never to have received any "gargoyle" carcase. When Elvis had persisted the man had finally admitted that they had received and dissected the corpse with great difficulty, but had no idea what it was: "None at all?" Elvis had asked: "Well," said the scientist nervously: "one of our people...a bit of a religious nut to be quite honest, has christened it a Flame Devil’ [See my story: "The Infernal Beast']." "A what?" "Apparently the Seal of Solomon, or some such nonsense, lists five million devils as part of Christian theology. At the top are the all-powerful ones like Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer who have almost limitless powers; at the bottom are lesser devils’ who do no more than make people prick a finger while sewing, or turn milk sour. Hodgekins, our officer, suggests this creature is a little higher than that, but still fairly low in the devil hierarchy: A flame devil who normally does no more than start minor bush fires. But this year, due to it being one of the hottest Australian summers on record, the devil got lucky, from its point of view, and managed to scorch two states and kill nearly fifty people...Of course no one else here believes any of that," the scientist said, the last a little too hastily, making Elvis wonder if he was serious about the "Flame Devil". But he never found out one way or the other. Despite his assurance that he would ring Elvis with any new developments, the man had never rung back and the CSIRO switchboard had refused to put him through when Elvis had tried to ring through to the man again.
But this time things will be different! thought Elvis as he started the autopsy: This time I’ll do the autopsy myself and publish whatever findings I might make, before the government has a chance to put a lid on it!
Watching the autopsy in progress Bear was thinking the exact opposite to Elvis: I’ve got to put a lid on this thing fast! Unlike the coroner, Bear was already conscious of the chaos that could erupt any moment in Glen Hartwell if word got round about the carcase. Although there had been only a handful of people outside the morgue when the Yowie carcase had been brought in, they had all had a good look at the creature before Bear could get a sheet over the ape-man to conceal it.
Let’s hope they soon forget it! he thought.
Remembering the photographs of the ape-man that had appeared in the morning newspapers, however, Bear was afraid that they would soon put two and two together and realise what the strange corpse really was.
Stepping away from the glass for a moment, Bear went across to the tall, grey-haired figure of Mel Forbes and whispered his fears to him.
"What do you want to do?" asked Mel.
"It might be best if we get Andrew and Paul posted outside," suggested Bear.
So, the two constables were sent to stand guard outside the front entrance of the morgue.
"I might give Greta and Mabel a ring too," said Bear, referring to two part-time policewomen who were only taken on salary whenever the Glen needed extra policing.

At the Singleton sheep station Ernie was taking a short break from work. Seated at the kitchen table sipping black coffee, Ernie opened the Glen Hartwell Herald Daily Mail on the table and stared in astonishment at the front page headline:
YOWIE SNAPPED BY LOCAL SPOT-SHOOTERS! declared the headline going on to give a largely fictitious report of the encounter between the four shooters and the ape-man the previous night.
The creature in the photographs was two and a half metres tall, covered from head to foot in long brownish-red hair, with only its face free of hair.
That night after a long, hard day working the sheep station, Ernie settled down for bed hoping for a good night’s rest ... only to realise that tonight he was due to transform into the black wolf again. Like the night before he was almost doubled up with stomach cramps and realised that he would not get much sleep again to0night..
That’s all I need! thought Ernie slumping naked on top of the bed -- knowing better than to put on his night clothes and be trapped in his oversized pyjamas AFTER HIS TRANSFORMATION.
He had hardly looked across to make certain that the bedroom window was open, when his head began to swim slightly and he realised that his transformation was starting. His bones began to crack and break again as they readjusted from human bones to wolf bones, only increasing his agony!
Almost crawling off the bed, Ernie started toward the open window and as the black wolf leapt out through the window to race across farmhouse yard. He easily leapt the metre-high, chain-link fence to start toward the nearby forest.
As usual on his black wolf nights, Ernie set out with no real destination in mind. Tonight he had only gone half a kilometre or so toward LePage, when his super-sensitive werewolf hearing started to pick up the sound of heavy footsteps nearby.
His first instinct was to turn and flee from any possible human contact. He knew only too well from past encounters that farmers usually carried rifles when bush-walking and were quite prepared to use them when encountering wild animals such as wolves! However, he was naturally puzzled that anyone would be out walking in the forest so late at night.
After an instant’s hesitation the black wolf started forward again, heading toward the sound of the footsteps. He followed them by sound alone for fifteen minutes, before finally catching up enough to make out a faint brownish blur of a figure moving along through the forest ahead of him.
The Black Wolf began to lope full pelt through the forest, doing his best not to pant as he ran, for fear of being overheard.
But when he caught up enough to see the creature clearly, he saw that it was not a man at all. Another of those Yowie things! he thought; gazing in wonder at the giant, red-brown furred ape-man, which strode along in a perfectly erect human manner. As he followed the Yowie, however, it maintained a perfect human stride (although oversized due to its very long legs) with obviously no contrivance at all.
Not knowing whether or not the Yowie was aware of his presence behind it, the Black Wolf slowed his pace a little to allow the distance between them to widen again, but continued following after the creature.
The wolf followed the ape-man for more than two hours through the forest around LePage, Lenoak, Wilhelmina, and Glen Hartwell, before finally losing the creature around the base of Mount Thompson, a couple of kilometres short of Daley township.
Its home base must be somewhere up the side of the mount! thought Ernie. Although tempted to lope up the mountain to hunt round for the creature’s camp, Ernie realised that he had to turn tail for home if he were to still have time to reach the Singleton sheep station before dawn.

The next morning waking at cock’s crow, Ernie was tempted to set out for Mount Thompson in his Range Rover to scour round for the ape-man by day. But seeing that morning’s newspaper headlines, in which the papers were uniformly classifying the ape-man as a Yowie (which they defined as an Aboriginal legend of a tall, hairy, apelike man), Ernie realised that things were rapidly approaching hysteria point. This time instead of an ape-man, the front page photograph was of a flustered Bear Ross trying to explain away reports that he had been sighted taking a Yowie carcase into the morgue in Baltimore Drive.
Realising it would be pointless for one man to attempt to scour the mountainside alone, Ernie decided instead to drive into Glen Hartwell to report the Yowie sighting to Bear. I just hope he doesn’t think I’ve slipped a cog! worried Ernie.

When Ernie reached Glen Hartwell he was astounded to find the country town thriving with life. For one crazy moment he thought the Glen had overnight turned into a tourist Mecca. But as he drove up Wentworth Street toward the Mitchell Street police station, he started to notice seemingly dozens of large vans with the letters "ABC 2": "HSV 7": "GTV 9" and "ATV 10" (which he recognised as the call signs of Victoria’s four main television networks) on their sides, and realised that Glen Hartwell was swarming with reporters from Melbourne.
As he pulled up at Mitchell Street (forced to double-park beside an ATV 10 van), he noticed an attractive blonde standing near the front of the police station. At first he assumed her to be Greta Goddard (a police school graduate who had married and dropped out of the police force shortly after graduating, but had agreed to help out on a pro rata basis in emergencies). But as he got nearer he was surprised to recognise Lisa Nowland, a gorgeous silver-blonde reporter from HSV, who sometimes read the daily news on channel 7.
As he approached the police station he couldn’t help staring at Lisa who was short but very shapely, with almost-impossibly-full Cupid’s-bow lips, pale blue-grey eyes and who was so beautiful it almost took his breath away just to look at her.
Although feeling guilty (fearing that he was somehow being unfaithful to his fiancé, Rowena) as he walked across the small lawn Ernie couldn’t help feeling aroused by the gorgeous reporter.
Initially Lisa paid no attention to the man ogling her, used to men being unable to take their eyes off her. But as Ernie continued forward, she realised that he was heading for the police station: "Come on George!" she called out to her cameraman striding purposefully across the lawn toward Ernie.
"Excuse me!" called Lisa forcing Ernie to a halt as she almost hit him in the face while thrusting the microphone up under his nose: "Could I have a few words please?"
"Er, well..." began Ernie, caught unawares by this sudden approach.
Normally he had little time for the press and under most circumstances would have brushed straight past. But confronted with this beautiful vision he was unable to rush away.
"I notice you were heading toward the police station?" said Lisa.
"Yes, I have to talk to Sergeant Ross."
"About the Yowies?"
"The what?" asked Ernie drawing a frustrated sigh from Lisa, who looked toward the heavens. She wondered whether she was wasting her precious time with some dumb yokel.
"The ape-men who have been sighted around Glen Hartwell," she explained.
"I don’t know anything about that," said Ernie a little too quickly, knowing that he would never get shod of the press if they knew that he had seen a Yowie up close.
"So, you do know something?" insisted Lisa.
"No, no, I ... er, I’m sorry," said Ernie sidestepping to get past her.
"No, wait!" called Lisa as he strode past her.
"I’m sorry," called back Ernie: "But I’ve gotta see the sergeant."
"Bastard!" called out Lisa startling Ernie as he walked away. Her blue-grey eyes were steely with anger, not used to being snubbed by men she was trying to interview.
Then realising that the camera-truck was broadcasting live to Melbourne and Sydney, she hurriedly brought her cupid’s-bow lips together in a sensual smile, hoping that her outburst had not gone out live to four million homes in Victoria and New South Wales.

As he reached the door of the police station Ernie saw Terry Blewett and Mabel Poyntner (another pro rata policewoman) standing guard.
Shaking his head ruefully Terry joked: "Shame on you Ernie, how could you walk away from something that scrumptious?"
"I’m engaged, remember," said Ernie with a laugh.
"No man is engaged enough for that!"
"Not all men are total oinks like you, Terry," teased Mabel Poyntner.
"No," teased back Terry: "But most are."
Stepping into the small front office of the police station, Ernie saw Bear Ross seated at his desk, in front of which stood a middle aged couple (the man tall, lean, with short, slicked down dark hair and wire-rim glasses; the woman short, running to fat, with shoulder-length straw-blonde hair) talking to the policeman.
Waving around a great wad of newspaper clippings and photographs in front of Bear’s face, the man said: "I know it might be difficult for you to understand these things, sergeant, but the evidence for the existence of the Yowie (or Sasquatch, Yeti, MI-GO, Big Foot, or whatever name you want to give it) is overwhelming!"
"Photographs can be faked!" insisted Bear, assuming the overwhelming evidence was Kim Monroe’s photographs which had already been reprinted in almost every newspaper around Australia and New Zealand.
"I’m not talking about just the photographs!" insisted the man: "I’m talking about hard-core palaeoanthropological evidence. Skulls and human skeletons found in caves upon mountains around Australia have been carbon-dated and proven to be more than two hundred thousand years old. Even the earliest estimates put the arrival of the Aborigines on this continent at less than eighty thousand years...."
"Yes," agreed the woman: "Besides the Yowies have been part of the Aboriginal Dream-Time legends for twenty-five thousand years plus. They’re not likely to have based so many legends around the Yowies, if they were simply the Aborigines themselves...."
"So!" insisted the man: "If those two hundred thousand year old remains aren’t those of Yowies, then who the Hell do they belong to?"
Trying to lighten the tension a little with a joke, Bear said: "Don’t ask me, I failed palaeoanthropology at Police Academy."
Unamused, the man glared at Bear for a moment before speaking: "Look all we want is for you to stop these crazy hunters from going out and murdering Yowies by the dozen!"
"Murdering?" asked Bear, nodding to Ernie who he had just noticed: "That’s a bit strong, isn’t it?"
"Not at all, sergeant," insisted the woman: "The Yowies might not be Homo Sapiens-Sapiens like you and I, but they are still our relatives. So, shooting them in cold blood has to be legally classifiable as murder!"
"Look I don’t know the legal status of these creatures, but I’ll do whatever I can to stop the search parties from shooting any Yowies."
"Fair enough," conceded the woman, surprised that the policeman had agreed so readily: "But we would also like to be able to go along on any search parties, so that we can personally see that no one gets trigger happy."
"You don’t need my permission for that," pointed out Bear.
"No, but it would be a great help if you could give Ron and I some sort of official status ... So, that the hunters will have no choice but to listen to us."
"I’m not sure what kind of official status I can give you. Glen Hartwell can only afford to pay two full-time policemen and two or three part-time policewomen...."
"Oh, I’m not talking about a paid position," assured the woman: "But if you were to appoint us as unpaid part-time observers, we would have the authority we need, and in turn could help you by providing you with copies of whatever photographs or video evidence we might obtain of the existence of the Yowies."
"Well..." said Bear hesitantly. Although not one hundred percent certain about this husband and wife team of self-appointed scientists, he realised that they could do little harm on the search parties. So, rather than risk the argument dragging on forever, he said: "All right, but you have to be prepared to take orders from either myself, Terry Blewett, or Mel Forbes -- whichever of us is in charge of any search party you’re in."
"Fair enough," agreed the woman turning to leave, only to nearly collide with Ernie who had come up behind her.
Quickly Bear introduced them: "Ernie Singleton, this is Hettie and Ron McGillivray."
"We’re the co-ordinators of AYORO," said Hettie: "The Australian Yowie Observation and Research Organisation, based in Kyabram."
After the McGillivrays had departed, Ernie hurriedly related to Bear his recent close encounter with a Yowie (claiming to have been out driving in the forest when he had followed the creature -- since Bear did not know that Ernie was the black wolf), which he had trailed to the base of Mount Thompson.
"You think these Yowie creatures might be based on the side of the mount?"
"Either that, or on one of the other mountains around Glen Hartwell and Daley."
"Yes, yes, you might have something there," agreed Bear. He recalled what Ron McGillivray had just said about possible Yowie bones having been found in caves on mountains around Australia. Thinking aloud, he said: "If the Yowie bones have been found on mountainsides in the past, it’s possible that that’s how they’re managed to avoid regular contact with humans down the centuries ... by living in mountainous regions!"

By the end of that day Bear was exhausted, well and truly ready for a good night’s sleep. Instead he was in charge of a hunting party about to set out to scour the side of Mount Thompson. Apart from Bear, the party would include Mel Forbes, Jim Kane, Andrew Braidwood, Paul Bell, Des Hutchinson, Sam Hart, Don Blythe (who had insisted on taking part in the hunt, despite suggestions that he should stay at the hospital to see how his brother Mark was coming along); Terry Blewett, Jason Melville, Kim Monroe, and Hettie and Ron McGillivray. Also, although Bear had wanted to keep the party manageably small, he had reluctantly agreed to let eight reporters come along (two each from channels 2, 7, 9, and 10). As he had explained to Mel Forbes: "Better to let a handful come along in exchange for the rest agreeing to stay in the Glen, than to have dozens of them swarming through the bushes on their own. It won’t help our search to have them stomping around frightening away any nearby Yowies."
"And the last thing you need is to have any big name Melbourne reporters mistaken for Yowies and gunned down!" suggested Mel.
Seeing Hettie McGillivray watching them, obviously listening in on their conversation, Bear deliberately raised his voice and said: "I’m hoping to make sure that no one does any shooting at all. This is a search party, not a hunting party!"
As Bear got in behind the steering wheel of the lead vehicle, he was surprised to see the gorgeous Lisa Nowland climb into the passenger seat beside him.
"It’s all right for me to ride with you isn’t it, sergeant?" asked the silver-blonde beauty giving Bear her most sensual smile.
"Er well..." began Bear, like Ernie earlier excited by the beautiful reporter but also feeling a little guilty -- wondering whether he was somehow being unfaithful to Gloria Ulverstone his girlfriend: "Normally my constable sits there."
"That’s all right," said Terry Blewett grinning at Bear’s discomfort: "I’ll sit in the back."
After Terry, Mel, and Andrew all climbed into the back of the Land-Rover, Bear started the car, half wondering whether he should shout: "Forward ho!" to start the procession off.
As they drove down Wentworth Street, Bear did his best to ignore the beautiful reporter seated beside him, unaware that Lisa had decided that if she was to get any inside scoop on any Yowie stories, she would have to centre her attentions (both professional and unprofessional) on Bear for the rest of her stay in Glen Hartwell.
Yes, sergeant, she thought as they set out: You’re mine for the next few days anyway! I bet you’re one man who won’t be able to run away from me!
When at last they reached the forest around the base of Mount Thompson, Bear had already decided that if he wasn’t going to get 'raped' by Lisa Nowland, he would have to avoid her somehow during the search. As he stepped out of the cabin of the Land-Rover, seeing the McGillivrays climbing out of the vehicle behind, he raced across to them and said: "If we want you to have same kind of official status during the search, it might be best if we three stayed fairly close together."
"Yes, all right," agreed Hettie McGillivray with a smile, surprised and pleased by Bear’s attitude, after years of being treated like a kook by most officialdom. Unaware that Bear had an ulterior motive for wanting to stay near them.
Absolutely livid with rage at being snubbed twice in one day, Lisa glared at Bear, thinking: You won’t get away from me that easily!
"Perhaps we could stay together during the hunt?" suggested Andrew Braidwood, single and unattached, so not having the scruples of Bear or Ernie.
Lisa started to tell him to go to Hell. Then realising that as one of the few police in the group he might have some clout with Bear (or even have some useful information of his own about the Yowies) Lisa smiled her most sensual full-lipped smile and cooed: "Yes, all right, constable."
They arrived at mount Thompson around 8:10 PM. The mount was climbable, but steep enough to make some of the less fit hunters (and most of the reporters) puff from the exertion of climbing it. Leaning hard against Andrew, Lisa cooed: "I’ll probably need a lot of assistance from you to survive this climb, Drew."
Andrew flushed from pleasure at having the beautiful reporter nestling up against him.

Ninety minutes after the hunters set out to scour the mount with powerful floodlights, Ernie set out into the forest as the Black Wolf.
His natural inclination was to head in the direction of Mount Thompson, eager to take part in the Yowie hunt. But Ernie knew that it would be suicide with so many gun-happy hunters eager to blast away at anything that moved, despite Bear’s best intentions to keep them in line. So, instead he settled for loping through the forest around Merridale and East Merridale.

At Mount Thompson the hunt had hardly started when there came the sound of running footsteps in the forest nearby.
"Over there!" shouted Sam Hart, pointing to where the bushes were rustling thirty metres in front of them: "For God’s sake get a light over there!"
As Terry Blewett swung a floodlight in the direction Sam was pointing, a tall figure came lumbering out of the bushes toward them. Both Sam Hart and Jason Melville swung their rifles up, but only Sam fired ... Sending up a puff of dried gum leaves only centimetres in front of the frightened channel 10 reporter, who went thundering back into the bushes, shrieking from terror as he ran.
"For God’s sake somebody go get him!" called Bear Ross; angry at the reporter for causing the near disaster by wandering off alone, despite assurances from all the journalists that they would strictly follow his instructions.
After the terrified reporter had been located and brought back, Bear rounded up all eight reporters and gave them a stern warning about disobeying his instructions: "The next time it happens, I’ll ship the whole lot of you back to town!"
"That’s hardly fair, sergeant..." began Lisa Nowland, silenced by a withering glance from Bear. This just isn’t my day for charming men! she thought, cuddling closer to Andrew Braidwood in the hope that he might have some influence with Bear Ross if the worst came to the worst.
"And as for you," cried Bear rounding on Sam Hart: "Let me make this perfectly clear from the start! This is a search party to try to photograph and possibly capture alive one of these creatures. Not a hunting party! The Yowies might not be Homo Sapiens-Sapiens, our species, but they are some kind of Homo Sapiens. And therefore technically human beings! So, if anyone shoots one without just cause, I personally will arrest him for attempted murder! If a Yowie is killed, without proper justification, the charge will be first-degree murder!"
Seeing Sam Hart was about to argue the point, Bear hastened to add: "Maybe the courts up in Melbourne won’t agree it’s murder. So, eventually you might get away with it. But I can promise you’ll spend a good year or two in a lock-up in Melbourne while the big-city lawyers argue it out with the judge whether or not there is grounds for a murder trial!"

Without intending to head in any particular direction, the Black Wolf soon found itself in the forest on the outskirts of Clem and Helen Horne’s Cherrytree Farm. One of the very few orchards in what is mainly sheep and cattle country, Cherrytree actually produced not only red cherries, but also virtually every type of edible berry that can be grown in Victoria.
As a young boy Ernie would often walked the two-and-a-half kilometres across country from the Singleton sheep station to Cherrytree Farm. He would stand at the outer perimeter fence and gaze across in awe at the trees laden with juicy red cherries and the bushes of blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, and just about every other kind of berry a young boy’s heart could desire. Often Helen Horne (a Titian-haired beauty) or her husband Clement (a great powerhouse of a man, two metres tall, one hundred and twenty kilograms of solid muscle) would notice the dark-haired young boy standing away in the distance and would beckon him over with a cry of "Hey boy!" from Clem, or "Come on over!" from Helen to sample their tasty crops.
When the black wolf reached Cherrytree Farm, it was almost pitch black out -- although with his werewolf vision he could still see adequately. So, he was surprised to see the outlines of two people out in the fields picking berries.
Knowing that Brian had joined the Yowie hunt and since both figures were much too bulky to be Helen Horne, Ernie assumed that it was Clem and his retarded son Warren out picking berries in the dark for some reason.

After two hours of fruitless searching, the hunters at Mount Thompson had descended to level ground at the base of the mountain again to recover their breath -- with some of the less athletic unable to continue the search around the steep mount any longer -- and to consider alternative strategies.
"Ernie said he lost track of the Yowie around here," Bear explained to Mel Forbes: "So it’s conjecture that they actually have a base up the mountain."
"There are plenty of other mountains for them to be sited on around these parts," pointed out Mel.
"Yes, it’s possible we’ll have to search them all over a number of days...."
"And in the mean time?" asked Mel.
"In the mean time..." began Bear only to be cut off by the sound of crashing footsteps in the forest a hundred metres or so from the two men.
"Yowie!" shouted Jason Melville pointing in the direction that the sound of footsteps was coming from.
"Why don’t you shout a little louder, so it can be certain we’ve seen it?" asked Kim Monroe, drawing a scowl from Jason.
Reaching for a pair of infrared binoculars that hung around his neck, Bear raised the binoculars to his eyes and started to scour the forest ahead of them. After a few seconds he made out the orang-utan-like figure of a Yowie walking through the forest.
Warning everyone to be as quiet as possible, Bear split the party into two groups (one to be headed by himself, the other by Mel Forbes) to try to flank around the Yowie to encircle it.

The black wolf had approached to within twenty metres of the two berry pickers, which to his astonishment he saw were two Yowies. Between them they carried a large woven straw basket into which they were piling strawberries.
Although crudely fashioned compared to the store-bought variety, seeing the basket brought home to the black wolf the fact that these strange creatures were a type of human being. Previously he had assumed them to be little more than apes. Unless they stole the basket, or found it? thought the wolf. But his instincts told him that the Yowies had woven it themselves.
After his initial alarm at the sight of the two creatures, Ernie propped himself behind a thick blackberry bush to watch the two Yowies. From the full breasts of one of them, he could tell that despite its great height (both being well over two metres tall) it was a female.
As he watched, Ernie saw the larger creature hold a strawberry up to drop it into the mouth of the smaller female. Then as she ate the juicy berry, the male slowly ran one hand playfully down the long hair on the nape of her neck. As he stroked her hair, the female nestled up against the male and giggled almost humanly, to Ernie’s fascination. While they picked berries to fill the basket, they continued to cuddle up and giggle, feeding strawberries to each other. Ernie was enthralled, realising that they were acting exactly as a young human couple might behave while courting.

Bear’s strategy to split the search party into two groups worked almost perfectly. To the astonishment of Sam Hart (who suggested that the best approach would be to have all the hunters line up like a firing squad and unload a thousand rounds of lead in the direction of the Yowie, on the assumption that eventually someone had to hit it), the two parties managed to encircle the Yowie and began closing in on it.
As they approached the creature, Bear saw the alarm in its eyes and again was struck by its human gait and very human face. Seeing it was already frightened, Bear called to the men encircling it: "Take it easy, don’t do anything to scare it!"
"Scare it?" asked Kim Monroe, looking up at the 250 centimetre creature that towered well over even Bear Ross: "What about not doing anything to scare us?"
Ignoring Kim’s sarcasm, Bear signalled for Jim Kane and Mel Forbes to step forward with the large nylon netting which they had brought to snare the creature.
Seeing the ape-man up close, Mel asked: "Is this net strong enough to hold it?"
"We’ll soon find out," replied Bear picking up one corner to help throw it.
As the net descended over its head, the Yowie began to thrash about wildly.
"Look out, he’s getting away!" shouted Jason Melville, taking a pot shot with his rifle, almost hitting Jim Kane.
"For God’s sake, I said no shooting!" shouted Bear, turning toward Jason.
As he turned his back on the Yowie for an instant, there came a loud rending of nylon as the ape-man began to tear its way free of the netting. Hearing the tearing Bear started to turn back ... too late as he felt powerful arms grab him round the waist. Then to his amazement Bear was effortlessly thrown up across the shoulders of the ape-man who started forward into the forest at a run.
Sam Hart moved forward to take a shot at the Yowie as it took off with Bear over its shoulders, scattering the frightened hunters in every direction.
"For God’s sake shoot it! Shoot it!" shrieked Lisa Nowland as the Yowie thundered through the forest with Bear Ross around its neck in a fireman’s carry.
"I can’t damn it, I can’t!" yelled back Sam: "I might hit Bear."
"For God’s sake don’t just stand there!" shouted Mel Forbes, seeing the hunters standing round dumbstruck as the Yowie took off: "Get after it! We’ve got to rescue him from that thing!"
Roused from their lethargy by Mel’s order, the men finally took off after the fleeing ape-man. But it soon became apparent that they had no chance of keeping up with the creature, which rapidly vanished from their sight.
"I wish we had him on the Australian Olympic team!" said Kim Monroe as the men fell well back: "We’d win every gold medal for running!"
Although some of the men were prepared to keep after the ape-man, realising it was useless Mel reluctantly called them back.
Seeing the hunters returning without the big policeman, Lisa Nowland shrieked: "My God, that creature’s still got him!" But before she could break down into hysterics her professionalism returned and she called: "George!" signalling for her cameraman to get the camera from the cars and set up for an impromptu recording.
While Andrew Braidwood held one of the floodlights to light up the area, Lisa stood before the camera to state: "This is Lisa Nowland reporting directly from the site of Mount Thompson a few kilometres past Glen Hartwell, where in a dramatic new development in the ongoing saga of the Yowies reported locally, our search party has just been the victim of a brutal, unprovoked attack by a Yowie. After a short scuffle, the ape-man assaulted the local police chief, Sergeant Daniel Ross and carried him away into the forest. Local police fear for the life of the sergeant, at the hands of these vicious, prehistoric killers...!"
"Excuse me!" interrupted Hettie McGillivray storming across to where Lisa was recording: "That is the biggest load of claptrap I have ever heard! There is not a shred of evidence that the Yowies are vicious killers! As for it being an unprovoked attack, that is simply garbage! The Yowie only grabbed Sergeant Ross after the search party had harassed and chased him!"
Signalling for her cameraman to stop recording, Lisa sighed heavily from frustration then said: "That may well be true honey, but let’s face it, my version is going to sound a lot more exciting on the late night news!"
As Hettie stormed away, George called out: "Don’t worry Lisa baby, I’ll edit that old slag out before sending the film in."
Lisa flashed him her most erotic smile then went back to recording her story.

At Cherrytree Farm, Helen and Clem Horne lay awake in their double-bed, waiting for the return home of their eldest son from the hunting party.
"Don’t worry baby, he’ll be all right," consoled Clem.
He knew that Helen was alarmed at the idea of Brian going out at night with so many trigger-happy hunters on the side of Mount Thompson, shooting away at anything that moved.
"How do you know he’ll be all right?" she demanded, refusing to be convinced.
Stuck for words Clem tried to think of an answer when they both heard the sound of footsteps around the front of the farmhouse.
"There he is now anyway," said Clem relieved, secretly having been just as worried as his wife.
"Thank God!" said Helen sitting up in bed to waiting for Brian to come inside.
To their surprise, however, although they continued to hear movement outside, no one came into the farmhouse.
After awhile Helen asked: "Why doesn’t he come inside?"
"Maybe he’s lost his key," suggested Clem, getting up to open the front door -- although he knew Helen had left the door unlocked: "There’s no need for you to get up."
Ignoring her husband, Helen hurriedly got out of bed, put on her dressing gown and slippers and followed Clem out into the corridor.
Stepping outside Clem took one step off the porch, then stopped dead as he saw the two tall figures out in the strawberry patch.
"He’s got someone with him by the looks of things," said Clem in surprise, wondering: What’s he doing out picking strawberries at this time of night when we’re both sick to death with worry, waiting for him to come home?
"Oh, God, something’s happened to Brian!" cried Helen seeing the two figures: "It’s Bear and Mel come to tell us the bad news!"
Before Clem could stop her, she started across the farmyard toward the strawberry patch a couple of hundred metres away at a run. But she soon stopped in her tracks as she got close enough to be able to make out the two figures properly.
"Oh, my God, what are they?" she asked, staring in horror at the red-brown creatures as Clem ran up behind her.
"It’s two of those bloody Yowie monsters!" cried Clem turning back toward the farmhouse. Grabbing Helen around the waist, he half dragged, half carried her back to the front porch, where she stood staring in wonder at the two hairy manlike creatures, while her husband ducked back into the house.
A few seconds later Clem returned carrying a shotgun and started across the yard again.
Seeing her husband’s intention, Helen started after him calling: "Clem don’t! Don’t shoot them! They aren’t doing any harm!"
"They’re stealing our strawberries," offered up Clem, knowing even as he spoke that it was a lame excuse for shooting them.
"We can afford to lose a few strawberries," said Helen tugging at Clem’s gun arm. But he had already stopped in his tracks, knowing that she was right.
"All right," he agreed: "But at least I can try to catch one of them alive."
So, saying he headed off at a run toward the barn-cum-garage a hundred metres from the farmhouse. A short while later he returned driving their rattly old Jeep, with a pile of old hemp rope on the passenger seat beside him.
"What do you think you’re doing?" demanded Helen as the Jeep rattled past her.
"If I can’t shoot them, at least I can catch one of them alive to show Bear and Mel tomorrow!" shouted back Clem.
"Don’t get yourself hurt!" cried Helen, concerned that her husband, although a powerfully built man, might not be able to tackle one of the giant creatures.
A few hundred metres from the farmhouse the black wolf spotted Helen and Clem Horne at the same moment that the Yowies saw them. The wolf slunk down onto his belly, to make himself (hopefully) invisible in the dark to watch the goings on.
Like Helen, Ernie wondered whether Clem would be strong enough to overpower one of the ape-men. But that question was never answered:
To the bewilderment of both Ernie and Clem, instead of fleeing at the sound of the onrushing Jeep, the Yowie couple stood their ground, holding hands and stared intently at the approaching vehicle.
After a moment, although the engine was still turning over, the Jeep stopped dead, and then slowly began rolling backwards.
Thinking that the Jeep had slipped gears somehow, Clem grabbed the gear-stick and tried changing gears....
Only to discover that the Jeep was still in forward drive.
"What’s wrong?" shouted Helen, seeing the Jeep rolling backwards.
"Bloody gears are playing up!" shouted Clem pumping the clutch pedal while struggling with the gear-stick.
"For God’s sake get out of the Jeep!" shrieked Helen suddenly.
"What?" asked Clem looking back toward her. At first he couldn’t see what had caused her to shout, then after a moment he realised to his astonishment that the Jeep was slowly rising into the air.
"What in hell?" said Clem, at first slow to react.
The Jeep was nearly a metre above the ground before Clem finally stirred himself into action and leapt to safety.
While Clem ran back toward the farmhouse, where Helen was waiting, the Jeep continued to climb into the air, gradually picking up speed the higher it went.
Watching the Yowie couple staring intently at the now rapidly ascending vehicle, Ernie thought: Somehow they're responsible; using some kind of psychokinesis to make the Jeep rise into the air!
The vehicle had risen well out of sight in the night sky, when the Yowies suddenly looked away. Grabbing up the large, woven basket of strawberries, still holding hands they began to skip away into the forest, still reminding the black wolf of a young courting couple.
The moment the creatures took their gaze away from the ascending Jeep, it began to plummet back to Earth.
"Look out!" shouted Clem Horne, shielding his wife with his body as the Jeep smashed to the ground with a thunderous crash, disintegrating on impact, sending car parts flying in all directions. One tyre flew within a metre of Helen and Clem to smash through the lounge room window of the farmhouse.
Gazing in horror at the shattered ruin in the yard out front of their house, Clem cried: "My God they’ve totalled the Jeep! They’ve totalled the bloody Jeep!"
"Just be thankful you got out in time," said Helen.

After being abducted by the Yowie, although fully conscious while being carried through the night forest, Bear Ross quickly realised that there was nothing he could do but lie across the creature’s shoulders. Although a powerhouse of a man himself -- used to being able to break up barroom brawls by cowering down the brawlers without ever having to throw a punch himself -- Bear realised that compared to the ape-man he was a fifty kilo weakling. No point-in struggling when I haven’t got a snowball’s of getting away! he thought.
They travelled many kilometres through the forest (although it was difficult to estimate exactly how far, since the ape-man’s giant strides meant they were travelling at great speed). Finally the Yowie started up the side of a mountain. But which mountain? thought Bear, realising that they had travelled a long way from Mount Thompson, although he had no idea in which direction they had travelled, toward Daley to the south, or Glen Hartwell to the north.
They travelled about halfway up the mountainside before reaching a large boulder that stood upon the mount. The Yowie stared hard at the boulder for a moment, then to Bear’s astonishment the boulder began to swing slowly aside to reveal the entrance to a deep tunnel. The Yowie carried Bear into the tunnel then the boulder swung closed behind them, leaving them in complete darkness.
The Yowie carried Bear for what seemed like an hour or more through the Stygian darkness of the underground tunnel, before finally Bear noticed that it was gradually lightening although he figured: We must be kilometres underground!
Eventually it had become almost as light as day within the tunnel. Bear was still pondering where the light was coming from, when they turned a bend and entered a great underground cavern many kilometres across. But even more astonishing than the vast size of the underground cavern, was the fact that it contained a large village. Seemingly hundreds of one-, two-, and three-storey huts made of large stones.
Around the village strolled hundreds of large, hairy Yowie adults doing a variety of chores -- cooking, weaving straw baskets, cleaning, et cetera -- while naked preteens and young children ran around playing. (Too young to have developed the all-over body hair of their parents, the young Yowies were hardly distinguishable from human children at play.)
Watching the children running hither and thither unashamed of their nudity, Bear was reminded of the young children (and adults) at the Aboriginal settlement outside Pettiwood, which he had visited often with Ernie, Brian Horne, and Joseph Garbarla.

Having abandoned the Yowie hunt for the night, the police and reporters had returned to the Mitchell Street Police Station, in Glen Hartwell. With the "kidnapping" of Bear, Mel Forbes had reluctantly taken temporary charge.
While Jim Kane and Terry Blewett stood guard at the door to keep everyone else out, Mel had Hettie and Ron McGillivray brought in, hoping that they could tell him something useful about the Yowies.
"What do you want to know?" asked Hettie McGillivray seated beside her husband, in front of the large desk. Like Mel still in shock over the kidnapping of Bear Ross.
"Anything at all you can tell me about the Yowies," replied Mel spreading his hands wide: "For instance what are they? Where do they come from?"
"Well, no one knows for certain, of course," admitted Hettie: "But for a decade and a half now it has been theorised that they might be descended from Neanderthal Man, as we are, but on a separate line from us. For decades one of the greatest puzzles of palaeontology had been the fact that Neanderthal Man seemed to vanish off the face of the Earth almost from the moment that Cro-Magnon Man appeared about fifty thousand years ago....
"Normally there were long periods of overlap in the human evolutionary chain between one stage and the next. For instance Homo Habilis and Homo Erectus lived together for at least eighty thousand years before Habilis died out completely. But for some reason that palaeontologists could never quite fathom, Neanderthal simply vanished right across the Earth within a few centuries of the appearance of Cro-Magnon Man.
"But then fifteen years ago, around 1970, a theory developed that Cro-Magnon had declared war on Neanderthal and had brutally driven him to extinction."
"But why?" demanded Mel.
"Because to Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal was a monster. Whereas Neanderthal looked hardly more human than a gorilla or orang-utan, Cro-Magnon Man was close enough to modern man that if you put a live Cro-Magnon in modern clothing and sent him into the streets of Melbourne or New York, most people would never give him a second glance. So, horrified by the hairy man-ape Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon declared war on him. Not that there was ever any real contest. Cro-Magnon was almost as smart as modern man, with the intelligence to build weapons and the savagery to use them. On the other hand, Neanderthal was barely any smarter than a gorilla, with an intelligence quota by modern standards of thirty or forty at most. So, poor old Neanderthal never stood a chance. His only hope of survival was to run and hide in caves on sides of mountains, and in underground caverns....
"According to traditional science, that’s where the story ends. With Neanderthal Man being tracked down and hunted to extinction by Cro-Magnon Man. But, if small bands of Neanderthals managed to hide well enough to escape and survive around the world, they might have continued to evolve independently of the true human line, to produce the Yowie in Australia, the yeti in Tibet, the Sasquatch in Canada, and big foot in the USA and other fabled wild men around the globe."

While Helen and Clem Horne raced inside the farmhouse at Cherrytree Farm to await the return of Brian, the black wolf set off in pursuit of the pair of skipping Yowies.
Although they were only strolling along, the wolf had to move almost at top speed to keep up with them.

Shortly after 12:30 AM Brian Horne’s aquamarine Holden Premier pulled up by the wood pile around the back of the farmhouse.
"What a night!" said Brian as he stepped in through the back door, stopping in surprise at the sight of his mother and father cowering together near the front door.
"Hi, mum, hi dad, you didn’t have to wait up for me," he said starting up the corridor toward them: "My God, wait till you hear what happened...!"
"Give me your car keys," demanded Clem storming down the hallway toward his son.
"What?" asked Brian, dumbfounded.
"Just do it!" ordered Clem, holding out a hand for the keys.
"What about the Jeep?" asked Brian reaching into a trouser pocket for his keys.
"The Jeep’s been totalled," said Clem snatching the car keys from his son: "Sorry, no time to explain now."
"Totalled? What?" asked Brian as Clem raced down the hallway toward the back door, closely followed by Helen.
"No time now, son," shouted Helen: "Jeep’s out the front!"
Brian stood in the back doorway for a moment watching his parents race across toward his Premier. Then shrugging he went up to the lounge room at the front of the house and almost fell over a wheel from the Jeep which had landed just inside the lounge room door after crashing through the window.
Stepping over the wheel he looked out through the shattered window and stared in shock at the destroyed Jeep -- which was scattered over a couple of hundred square metres of their strawberry patch.
"Christ!" said Brian: "Totalled is right!"

The black wolf followed the Yowie couple through the dark forest, keeping as far back as he dared. He didn’t want to lose sight of the Yowies (who though still skipping along hand-in-hand were moving at a rapid pace) yet did not want them to know that he was following them for fear they might turn their powers onto him. They don’t seem to be savage, thought the wolf: After all they could just as easily have killed Clem, instead of just wrecking his Jeep! But nonetheless he decided not to take any chances.
The wolf followed the Yowies past Merridale, LePage, and Lenoak, assuming that they were heading toward Mount Thompson around Daley. Instead, to his surprise, they headed for Mount Wanderei, between Wilhelmina (a local ghost town) and Glen Hartwell.
But this is nowhere near Mount Thompson where I lost the other Yowie? he pondered: Unless they have hideouts on the sides of more than one local mountain?
He followed them half way up the mount, where they skipped across to a great grey-brown boulder. Still holding hands (while the male carried the great basket of strawberries in his other hand) the Yowies concentrated hard upon the boulder, which swung open like a door, revealing a cave entrance behind it.
The Yowie couple skipped in through the entrance, and then the boulder began to slowly swing shut behind them.
Time to throw caution to the wind, thought the black wolf. He leapt forward and raced across toward the cave entrance to attempt to follow the Yowies. But the boulder slammed shut in his face, forcing him to come to an abrupt halt almost crashing headfirst into the solid rock.

Hettie McGillivray had barely finished explaining their theory of the origins of the Yowies to Mel Forbes, when they heard a squealing of tyres outside the police station, followed by the slamming of car doors.
"Now what’s up?" said Mel in frustration, getting up from his desk to investigate.
They heard the sound of Jim Kane arguing with someone outside, then the door opened and into the police station stormed Helen and Clem Horne, still wearing their pyjamas and dressing gowns.
"What the Hell has happened now?" asked Mel, puzzled by the sight of the Hornes in their night attire.
Clem was still too shaken up by their recent encounter with the Yowies, so it was up to Helen Horne to explain to Mel what had happened at Cherrytree Farm.
"It would have been the death of me if I hadn’t leapt out of the Jeep in the nick of time," cried Clem: "I’m telling you Mel, they made it rise right out of sight, then let it smash to a billion pieces!"
Seeing Mel was having difficulty believing them, Clem said: "I’m telling you Mel, there are bits of smashed Jeep scattered all across our front yard and strawberry patch. Come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me."
"It’s not that I don’t believe you," said Mel getting a couple of chairs for the Hornes: "It’s just that ... well, how can I believe you? How could they have made your Jeep rise into the air just by looking at it?"
"It could be some kind of telekinesis," suggested Ron McGillivray who had listened to the Hornes’ story with great interest.
"Some kind of what?" demanded Clem, half wondering if he was trying to take the Mickey out of them.
"Telekinesis," repeated Ron: "The power to move things with your mind."
"What some people still call mind over matter’!" explained Hettie: "It’s a known fact that human thought is made up of various waves -- alpha, beta, delta, gamma waves primarily. For some decades it has been postulated that these waves might somehow be projected out of the brain to move objects without physically touching them. Which in scientific circles is known as telekinesis or psychokinesis."
Referring back to what they had previously told him, Mel said: "But surely if these Yowies have this telekinesis, their Neanderthal ancestors could have easily won the war against Cro-Magnon Man by virtue of their psychic powers?"
"Unfortunately not," corrected Hettie: "You see Cro-Magnon Man would probably have possessed psychic powers equal to Neanderthal’s...."
"Oh, come on...?" began Mel, cut off by Ron McGillivray who said:
"It’s not as ridiculous as you might think. When people consider ESP and telekinesis, assuming they aren’t totally sceptical, they usually consider one of two possibilities: either that psychic powers are a new sense that most people haven’t developed yet but which one day everyone will have, or else that it is a power that we all have latently, but which most people never learn to develop at all. But some scientists believe that psychic powers may really be an ancient ability that all Homo Sapiens may have once possessed, but which has gradually atrophied away until only a handful of people now possess them."
Mel considered for a moment before asking: "How long ago would these powers have started to fade out?"
"It’s hard to say. Some people believe from the start of Homo Sapiens-Sapiens, modern man, about fifty thousand years ago. Others suggest much more recently. For instance some biblical scholars believe that when Gabriel blew his horn to make the walls of Jericho come tumbling down, he may really have been using some kind of psychic powers such as telekinesis to destroy the city."

The black wolf propped on its haunches watching the boulder for a while, hoping that it would somehow swing open again to allow him to follow the Yowie couple into the cave in the side of Mount Wanderei. But after half an hour or so he realised that it was hopeless. So, reluctantly he turned and raced down the mountain to start back toward the Singleton sheep station.

After arriving at the underground village, Bear was released by his Yowie captor, who showed no further interest in him.
Watching the tall apelike creature stalk away toward a three-storey stone house, Bear was undecided what to do. Am I supposed to follow him or what? he thought. But since the creature hadn’t indicated for him to follow, Bear decided to explore the village instead.
Beside one house he saw half a dozen Yowie "women" weaving bamboo baskets. At another he saw women grinding grain, presumably to bake some kind of bread. Are they really that close to human? he wondered. But looking around the underground city, he knew that there could be no real doubt about it. As he walked round the village seeing "men" doing carpentry and other manual work, while women did cooking, grinding, and weaving, again he was reminded of the Aboriginal settlements around the BeauLarkin to Willamby area.
These people… he thought, hesitating for only a moment, before deciding: Yes, these people have at least as advanced a culture as the Aborigines!
At one point he stopped to watch a group of half a dozen children playing. One child sat on the ground while three other children held hands and stared intently at it. After a moment the seated child began to rise a few centimetres above the ground. Then the three "throwers" used their telekinetic powers to send the hovering child skimming along above the ground. A dozen or so metres away the child was stopped by three "catchers" who then sent the child skimming back the way it had come to be stopped by the original "senders". After two or three trips back and forth, the skimming child changed places with one of the others and the game continued over and over again until each child had had a turn at skimming.
Although there was no visible light source the city was well lit. Though he had no way of knowing the time (having lost his watch while being carried across country by the Yowie) Bear knew that it must be still after dark. So, since the cave was brightly lit, the Yowies must have some very powerful source of artificial lighting. Seeing no obvious light fittings, he thought: My God, in some ways their technology is actually superior to ours!
As he wandered around the Yowie village looking at, and even into the houses (most of which kept their doors wide open at all times), Bear was amazed at how little attention the Yowie people paid to him. Looking across at the tunnel entrance through which he had been brought not so long ago, he wondered if they would try to stop him if he made a move in that direction. I could never outrun one of them if they came after me! he thought, recalling how easily the Yowie had outrun its pursuers while carrying him. Besides, why should they bother stopping me? Even if I could find my way back through the labyrinth of that dark tunnel, I could never move that boulder away from the cave entrance by myself in a million years!
After wandering around the village for an hour or more, Bear saw his kidnapper walking toward him (or at least he assumed it was the same creature). The Yowie indicated with a very human wave of one hand that he wanted Bear to follow him.
They walked a couple of hundred metres deeper into the village, before stopping before a two-storey stone hut. The Yowie unlocked the door and swung it wide open. My God they’re even got iron keys and locks! thought Bear.
He entered the small front room as indicated and heard the door lock behind him. The room was unfurnished, except for dozens of animal pelts (some from kangaroos and other creatures Bear easily recognised, others from no animal he had ever seen) scattered around the floor. I guess this is my bedroom for the night! he thought trying to make himself comfortable on a pile of kangaroo skins.

The next morning Ernie got up late, sleeping until nearly 7:30 (a good hour and a half past his usual rising time). Doing his best to ignore the famine-like hunger that always hit him the morning after a night as the black wolf, Ernie staggered out to the grain store near the back door, to grab a half empty sack of grey-brown hexagonal dog-pellets to take down to the dog yard a hundred metres down from the farmhouse.
Seeing his approach, the thirty-eight hungry Kelpies, Barb-Kelpies, Border Collies, and Queensland Heelers began to bark furiously, upset at having had to wait ninety minutes beyond their usual breakfast time.
"All right, all right," called Ernie: "Breakfast is on the way."
After feeding the dogs he started back to the grain store to get feed for the other animals, but found that he couldn’t ignore his own ravenous hunger any longer. Dropping the bag of dog pellets in the yard he raced into the farmhouse to start making his own breakfast.
It was a little before 10:00 AM when Ernie heard the sound of tyres on gravel. At the time Ernie was out in the sheep yard checking lambs for ringing later that day. Hearing the car he started back toward the farmhouse and saw Brian Horne parking his Holden Premier by the farmhouse yard fence at the back of the house. Leaving the ringing equipment (used to de-tail lambs) in the paddock, Ernie started across toward the dog yard, which he detoured through to get to the back yard.
Brian had already run in through the back doorway of the farmhouse when he heard Ernie calling to him from outside. Looking back through the doorway, he saw Ernie emerging through the gateway to the dog yard and ran outside again to meet him.
"What’s up?" asked Ernie. He wondered if somehow the search party the night before had located the Yowies’ cave on the slope of Mount Wanderei.
Instead Brian blurted out: "They’ve got Bear!"
Staring in wonder at Brian, Ernie said: "What? Who’s got Bear?"
"Those bloody Yowie things! They attacked our search party and kidnapped Bear!"
When Ernie was too stunned to comment, Brian hurriedly went on to give an account of the attack the night before: "And that’s not all. They also attacked our orchard and totalled my dad’s rattly old Jeep."
Ernie looked at Brian, not sure what to say. Although he had been at the Horne property the previous night and had seen the Yowies wreck Clem Horne’s Jeep, he could not let on without Brian wanting to know why he had been out in the forest so late at night, when he had refused to take part in the Yowie hunt. Having already told Bear of his first sighting of the Yowie which he had followed to Mount Thompson, Ernie decided that it might look suspicious that he had had two late-night encounters with the creatures far from his own sheep station.
Not wanting to sound rude, yet anxious for Brian to leave so that he could head back to Mount Wanderei, Ernie hummed and hawed trying to make out as though he had too much work to do around the sheep station to stand round talking.
"Well, I guess I’d better be leaving," said Brian at last, sounding offended that Ernie hadn’t shown greater concern over the fate of their mutual friend.
Ernie watched Brian storm away toward his car, sorry if his friend thought him callous. He watched until Brian drove along the dirt track leading out of the station, then headed toward the barn at the back of the farmhouse yard (beside the dog yard) and collected a heavy crowbar, which he tied to the roof rack of his Range Rover.
Ernie waited long enough for Brian to get well back toward East Merridale before starting out in the Rover. At the end of his sheep station, he drove out onto Donaldson’s Road (a Macadam road, the main highway in the area until being superseded a decade earlier when a new highway had been built closer to LePage).
As he drove down Donaldson’s Road, unobserved by Ernie, Brian Horne’s Holden Premier pulled out from where it had been parked a dozen metres up an old off-road and started to follow the Range Rover.
Now where the Hell is he going?’ wondered Brian. I thought he acted strange before and this confirms it!
While they drove, Brian stayed as far behind as he dared, afraid that Ernie would spot him, knowing that his Premier was easily recognisable since most of the other locals drove Jeeps, Land-Rovers, or Range Rovers. But Ernie was too deeply engrossed in his own thoughts to pay any attention to his rear-view mirror.
Brian followed Ernie for more than half an hour, before the Range Rover pulled off the road and started through the forest. He must be heading for Mount Thompson! thought Brian. Obviously he thinks he can pick up the Yowie tracks from where Bear was kidnapped by those creatures!
Instead of driving past Glen Hartwell toward Daley, as Brian had expected, however, Ernie started to drive deeper into the forest soon after passing the ghost town Wilhelmina.
Where the Hell...? wondered Brian as Ernie started to drive his Range Rover straight up the side of Mount Wanderei, just short of Glen Hartwell.
Well, from here on in it looks like I’ll have to follow on foot! thought Brian, aware that his HR Premier would never manage the mountain slope. As he parked the Holden at the base of the mount and started up the slope on foot he thought: Why did I ever buy that stupid thing in the first place? It’s only good sense to own a Jeep or Rover in the bush.
As he started up the mount on foot, he thought: I just hope Ernie doesn’t drive all the way to the top!
Brian was puffing from exertion when to his relief he saw Ernie’s Range Rover parked slightly uphill from a great boulder about halfway up the mount. He stepped back behind the cover of a fir tree and was dumbfounded to see Ernie take a crowbar from the roof rack of the Rover. As he watched Ernie went across to the boulder and started to strain against it with the crowbar, trying to lever the boulder away.
Ernie struggled against the great boulder for nearly twenty minutes -- while Brian felt increasingly guilty staying behind the tree watching while his friend almost gave himself a hernia. He was about to break cover to offer his assistance, when finally the boulder fell over backwards...and started rolling down the mountain, crunching Mulga bushes and small ferns to pulp as it thundered down the mount.
Recalling the state of his father’s Jeep, Brian remembered that his Holden was parked at the base of the mountain and thought: Oh, no! Not the Premier as well! But the boulder rolled more than twenty metres away from the car when it finally reached the bottom of the mountain.
Thank God! thought Brian from relief. Looking back he saw Ernie entering a large cave in the side of the mountain, which the boulder had concealed.
Now how the Hell did he know that was there? wondered Brian racing across to the cave entrance as soon as Ernie had disappeared from sight.
Standing at the entranceway Brian peered into the darkness for a moment, wishing he had brought a flashlight with him, then tentatively started after Ernie. He followed Ernie through the dark tunnel for what seemed like hours, forced to find his way along by touch, never knowing whether Ernie was still ahead of him or had branched off in another direction. Or worse stopped! thought Brian, half expecting to crash into the back of Ernie at any time.
Finally, however, the previously impenetrable darkness began to lighten. But we must be deep inside the mount? Brian puzzled: How can there possibly be any source of light down here?

Soon after waking that day Bear was taken to another stone hut where he was able to bathe in a crudely chiselled tub in lukewarm water carried in large earthenware pots -- which he found were too heavy for him to lift even when empty. Then he was taken to a dining room where he sat upon a small wooden stool beside a family of eight Yowies, seated at a long wooden table eating a breakfast of fruit and berries -- including to his surprise a small bowl of strawberries. Now where do they grow those? he wondered, knowing that most of the other berries could be grown upon the side of the mount since blackberries, raspberries, and blueberries all grow wild in the Victorian countryside and no one would pay much attention to crops on the side of a mount. But not strawberries! he thought, knowing that they did not grow wild in Victoria and the red colouring would make them visible to any passing humans.
Bear looked up from the table suddenly, startled by a strange gibbering chatter, only to see a small girl Yowie pointing at him, obviously amused by his puzzlement. A tall male Yowie chattered back at her in a stern voice and the girl went back to eating her own breakfast although still giggling from time to time.
Straight after breakfast, Bear was taken through the village of mainly one- or two-storey stone houses, until stopping at a three-storey building. At the front of the house a solid stone staircase led straight to the second floor, so that there was no need to enter the first storey.
Leading Bear up the stairs, the Yowie guard took him into the building where he saw a half dozen male Yowies (two of them nearly three metres tall) seated in front of a long, wooden table.
After being led to a seat in front of the Yowie Elders (as he assumed they were), the largest of the ape-men started to chatter in a voice similar to the gibbering of a chimpanzee. At first Bear thought the creature was talking to the Yowie who had brought him into the house. But after a moment he realised that they were trying to communicate with him.
"I’m sorry," he apologised: "I don’t understand."
Looking puzzled, the six Yowies turned to chatter away to each other. Seeing their confusion, Bear understood how they felt. As a policeman in a multi-cultural country he had from time to time found himself trying to interview non-English speaking people. But he had always solved the problem by ringing around until he located someone who could act as interpreter. But where are you going to find a translator down here? he thought.
After a minute or so the Yowies looked back at Bear who expected them to attempt to speak to him again. Instead they merely stared intently at him. After a second he experienced a series of bright images flashing through his head and realised that they were trying to communicate with him telepathically. Although able to make out some of the images -- a step-pyramid, what he took to be an English castle, stone statues like the ones on Easter Island, and a shattered Jeep -- he was unable to discern any form of logical sequence or clear story line.
Clearly more puzzled than ever by his inability to comprehend what they were trying to tell him, the Yowies continued staring at Bear for a while. Images of Clem and Helen Horne came into his head and in a flash of inspiration he realised that it was the Hornes’ Jeep that had somehow been smashed to pieces. But the other images communicated nothing to him and after a few minutes the Yowies gave up, clearly perplexed by his inability to comprehend their thought pictures.

Rounding a bend in the now brightly lit tunnel, Brian Horne almost collided into the back of Ernie, who had stopped to stare ahead at something.
Looking to one side to see past Ernie, Brian was shocked to see an immense underground cavern containing hundreds of stone houses. An underground village! thought Brian in astonishment. But he was even more astonished when he noticed hundreds of Yowies moving around the buildings and realised that it was not a human village. A Yowie city! he thought in wonder. How the Hell can these ape-creatures be smart enough to have built all of this ... underground yet?
Gazing in awe at the village, Brian had just noticed Bear Ross, an instant before Ernie shouted: "Bear!" and started forward into the city.
Brian reached out to try to grab Ernie to pull him back into the tunnel, but was too late. As the Yowies noticed Ernie for the first time, Brian backed deeper into the tunnel before they could see him also.
Help, Brian thought: I’ve got to get back to the Glen to get help to rescue Bear and Ernie!
After one last look back at his two friends, Brian turned and started back down the tunnel, only hoping that he could find his way back to the surface.
When at last he reached the surface of Mount Wanderei again, Brian was shocked to see that it was already twilight. Although it had seemed to take hours travelling each way through the tunnel, he had assumed that it was an illusion caused by the claustrophobic blackness inside the tunnel:
My God, it really must have taken two or three hours to travel each way! he thought. For the first time noticing the aches and cramps that wracked his body.
Hold on Bear, hold on Ernie! thought Brian as he stumbled down the mountainside toward his Holden Premier. Help is on the way!

Back at the Mitchell Street Police Station, at Glen Hartwell, Brian was met with stony-faced scepticism from Mel Forbes when he told his tale of an underground city inhabited solely by Yowies.
"Two or three hours’ descent into the ground?" asked Mel. Looking toward the McGillivrays who looked every bit as fatigued as himself, he asked: "Is that possible?"
"Well, not straight down into the ground," replied Hettie balancing a mug of hot coffee in her hands as she sat in front of Mel’s desk: "Geologically that’s impossible. Despite what Jules Verne may have believed, if you travel even a relatively short distance underground, you soon begin to notice the increase in temperature due to getting nearer to the Earth’s molten core. After travelling two or three hours toward the centre of the planet, you might not be exactly burnt to a crisp, but it would certainly be hellishly hot."
Mel looked toward Brian, who shook his head: "No, there was nothing like that," he said: "There was a noticeable increase in temperature, but nothing very drastic."
"Then you just can’t have travelled two or three hours each way!" insisted Mel.
"But I’m telling you I did!" persisted Brian. He wondered: Why the Hell are we standing round arguing over trivialities when Bear and Ernie are possibly being tortured or even murdered at this very minute by these Yowie things?
"Not straight down," stated Ron McGillivray: "but it’s possible that the tunnel might not go down very far, but may simply link up other caves on top of other mountains."
"But an underground village?" queried Mel.
"It’s not completely out of the question, sergeant," said Hettie, despite having difficulty believing it herself: "It might be possible if the Neanderthal theory is correct. If the Yowies, yetis, MI-Go, Sasquatch, big foot, et cetera are all descendant from Neanderthal who hid in caves to avoid being slaughtered, it makes sense that the ones most likely to have survived are the ones who hid either in caves atop the highest mountain peaks -- such as the yeti and MI-GO. Or in the caves leading the deepest underground."
"So, they might have been able to build an underground city connected to various mountains by a vast tunnel network?" asked Mel.
"Not if the Yowies are only Neanderthals surviving through to modern times. Even with the power of telekinesis, Neanderthal Man was nowhere near smart enough for that. But if the Neanderthals continued to evolve independently of the true human line over the last fifty thousand years, possibly the Yowies are close to our own mental level."
To Brian’s consternation they continued to debate the point for almost another half hour before Mel started to gather together a rescue party (this time, to their dismay, refusing to take any journalists along). And it was almost 9:00 PM before the party finally set out for Mount Wanderei.
Oh, my God, thought Brian: It’ll be almost midnight before we get to the underground city -- even assuming I can find it again. They could both be long dead or horribly mutilated by then!

Bear Ross was dumbfounded to see Ernie Singleton walk into the underground city. At first he thought he must have been seeing things. But as the Yowies grabbed the newcomer and started to drag him through the village toward the stone hut of the "Village Elders" (as Bear thought of the six Yowies) he saw that it undoubtedly was Ernie.
"Ernie!" called Bear racing across toward his friend.
At first one of the Yowies attempted to keep Bear away. But after a moment it shrugged in a very human way and let Bear and Ernie hug each other in greeting.
"My God, I thought you were probably dead after Brian told me that these creatures attacked the search party last night and carried you off!" said Ernie.
"Well, they didn’t exactly attack us," said Bear. He went on to explain what had really happened.
While they talked, the two men continued to walk along, led by three Yowies. After a short time they reached the stone building that the Elders occupied.
"Up here," said Bear knowing the way, pointing Ernie to the stairs leading straight to the second storey.
Inside the building, Ernie was taken before the council of Elders who sat before the long wooden bench still. They chattered toward him, trying to talk to him, as they had tried with Bear earlier.
Seeing Ernie’s puzzled look at the monkey-like chattering, Bear whispered: "Now they’ll flash images into your head, but they won’t make any kind of sense."
"Flash images...?" asked Ernie, wondering what his friend was talking about. But he soon found out as the six Yowies stared intently toward him and a series of vivid pictures started to flash into his head, telling him the history of the Yowies.
"You’re wrong, mate," corrected Ernie: "The images do make sense."
"What?" asked Bear in wonder. He was unaware that it was Ernie’s werewolf senses, which allowed him to understand the images that flashed into his mind: "What do they say?"
"It’s the history of the Yowies," explained Ernie. He started translating for Bear what the six Yowies were telling him telepathically:
"It all started," Ernie translated: "When our Neanderthal ancestors gave birth to the first Cro-Magnons. The Neanderthals were perplexed by these strange, non-hairy offspring. But there was little they could do, even if their revulsion had led them to think of killing them, since their normal children were free of body hair also until puberty. So, by the time they knew whether any offspring were Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons, they were already young adults, capable of defending themselves against either physical or psychic attack.
"Although Cro-Magnon’s psychic powers seemed marginally less than Neanderthal’s, Cro-Magnon soon displayed a greatly superior intelligence. As well as a great horror of his Neanderthal progenitors. By the time that Neanderthal had decided to accept Cro-Magnon with all his eccentricities, Cro-Magnon’s horror of Neanderthal had reached the point where he was incapable of making the same decision.
"At first when a small number of Neanderthals were found dead with the back of their heads smashed in, it was assumed to be the result of accidents -- often they were found face up at the bottom of a cliff or mountain as though they had fallen.
"Later when more and more Neanderthal deaths occurred, it was taken to be the work of one of the Great Apes that roamed the countryside at that time. Often the apes -- all meat-eaters like modern apes -- had been known to attack and eat Neanderthal children in the past, so it was feared that they might have become confident enough (or vicious enough) to have started attacking adults as well.
"Of course, if our Neanderthal ancestors had been as intelligent as their Cro-Magnon offspring, they would have seen that there were two gaping holes in that theory. Firstly the fact that unlike children eaten by the Great Apes, none of the adults were devoured, only killed. Secondly, all of the adults killed were Neanderthals. Even allowing for Cro-Magnon’s vastly superior intelligence, if the apes were capable of killing Neanderthal adults by the dozen, they should have been able to kill the occasional Cro-Magnon as well. But, of course, our ancestors were not intelligent enough to work that out.
"Then one day, when the numbers of Cro-Magnons around the world almost equalled the numbers of Neanderthals, the Cro-Magnons finally announced openly their intention to wage war against their parent species.
"At first Neanderthal refused to take the threat seriously. Although they had killed animals to eat, they had never used violence against one of their own and could not believe their Cro-Magnon offspring could do so either. But our ancestors soon had no choice but to believe as Cro-Magnon took up weapons of stone or animal bones and waged bloody war against them.
"At first Neanderthal attempted to fight back, using boughs of trees or large bones as weapons. But Cro-Magnon rapidly displayed a talent for both weaponry and brutality that Neanderthal could never hope to match.
"For many years the war raged across the surface of the planet before it became obvious that Neanderthal was fated to lose. As Cro-Magnon’s numbers increased in relationship to our ancestors, he became even more cunning and treacherous, devising new and ever more lethal mantraps that helped to keep Neanderthal’s numbers dwindling.
"After more than four hundred years the war was on the brink of completion. Ninety-five percent of humans around the world were Cro-Magnons. So, faced with the threat of extinction, Neanderthal took to hiding in caves upon mountainsides.
"Cro-Magnon soon sought out and destroyed most cave-dwelling Neanderthals. But some of the caves were entrances to underground tunnel-networks and this was what ultimately saved our ancestors from total extinction. Cro-Magnon’s hatred of Neanderthal and need to destroy them was a symptom of what is now called xenophobia: fear of the unknown. Other symptoms were fear of the dark and claustrophobia when confronted with travelling great distances underground.
"At first Cro-Magnon’s greater intelligence allowed him to devise crude torches to light the dark caverns to allow him to hunt our ancestors deep underground. But after a relatively short distance even the bravest or most ruthless Cro-Magnons had to turn and scurry back to the surface as quickly as they could.
"After a number of abortive attempts to force himself to travel through the underground tunnels, Cro-Magnon reluctantly gave up the hunt and settled for being the only human species on the surface of the earth. So, our ancestors settled down to an existence as the only human species under the surface of the earth.
"At first things were very difficult, there was the constant danger of flash floods that could sweep through the tunnel networks without warning, killing hundreds even thousands of Neanderthals at one time. Then, of course, there were occasional confrontations with other subterranean species. Most of these were small and mainly harmless. But a few were large and dangerous. Some were monstrous creatures unknown to modern man above ground, other than as ancient native superstitions...."
Ernie broke off his translation of the thought images being transmitted to him by the Yowie Elders, as he thought of his own encounter a few years earlier with the monstrous flying serpent Mamaragan: The Great Rainbow Snake of Aboriginal legend [See my story: ' Mamaragan: The Great Rainbow Snake'], which had lived in burrows beneath the Australian continent for countless centuries. After a moment’s hesitation, uncertain whether he could transmit thought pictures back to the Yowies, Ernie flashed images of Mamaragan to the ape-men who were as excited as he was at this two-way communication.
They chattered away amongst themselves for a minute in monkey-talk (as Ernie thought of their speech, although he knew they were virtually as human as he was) before calming down enough to answer his question in the affirmative.
"Yes," answered the Yowies in thought images: "We encountered Mamaragan, as you call it, here in Australia -- Quetzalcoatl in South America, the shoggoths of North America, and the white worms of Ireland and Europe. Although unable to kill these monsters, our psychic powers allowed us a degree of protection against them, so after a handful of more-or-less minor skirmishes between our two species, the flying serpents began to leave us alone. Obviously they decided that it was easier to turn their attentions toward game that put up less of a fight."
Ernie explained his question to Bear, along with the Yowies’ answer, then went on with translating their thought images for Bear:
"So, with the flying serpents out of the way," Ernie translated: "We settled down to use our psychic powers to help move great boulders and other stones to use to build this and other underground cities.
"From time to time our species started to evolve further, either producing more Cro-Magnons, or other forms of higher humans. Although free of Cro-Magnon’s xenophobia, Neanderthal had learnt during the five-hundred-year war to be very wary of new forms of humanity, afraid that once more we would be set upon and slaughtered by our own offspring. So, we reluctantly adopted the policy of killing all offspring too greatly different from ourselves. But if an evolutionary change was not too severe, the new humans were allowed to survive (since despite our treatment at the hands of Cro-Magnon we still were loath to slaughter our own children).
"By this method we both slowed and greatly altered our evolutionary changes so that fifty thousand years later although as intelligent as Homo Sapiens-Sapiens we still look like what you would consider ape-men.
"For many centuries we lived underground, never daring to venture up to the surface of the planet, for fear of being set upon and butchered again by Cro-Magnon or his descendants. We explored the underground tunnel networks and travelled from continent to continent without ever going above ground.
"But finally, despite centuries of evolutionary changes that made it ever easier to survive underground our desire to return to the surface of the planet became too great to ignore. So, tentatively a few of our members set foot above ground again....
"And were brutally slaughtered by Cro-Magnon Man again.
"After this expeditions went up to the surface ever half millennium or so. For thousands of years they were attacked and mostly slaughtered (although a few always escaped back into the underground caverns to tell us what had happened). But finally Cro-Magnon Man stopped slaughtering our parties whenever they set foot above ground. So, we decided to take the risk of exploring at greater length.
"But still wary of the danger of being slaughtered again we knew we had to build some kind of observation ports that would allow us to observe Cro-Magnon’s descendants without having to stray kilometres from the safety of the nearest cave entrance. These observation sites included such things as the pyramids in Egypt and South America -- it was the communication between Yowies around the world which allowed the same basic structure to be built so far apart on two separate continents...."
Picking up thought images from Ernie, the Yowies said: "Your kind has the legend that the pyramid of Cheops was built by a hundred thousand slaves in eighty years for a pharaoh who was already long dead when it was finally completed. In reality it took a dozen Yowies six weeks using psychokinesis to build the Great Pyramid."
After communicating his query and the Yowies’ answer to Bear Ross, Ernie went on with translating the Yowies’ history for the policeman:
"The pyramids," Ernie translated: "And other structures such as the sphinx and so called burial chambers (or barrows) around Europe and the British Isles were used partly as observation points where we could study Cro-Magnon’s descendants without ourselves being seen, and partly as hideouts above ground which we could flee to more readily than we could to our underground cities.
"The latter becoming increasingly necessary as the centuries passed and the Neanderthal species started to gradually become more daring, spending ever more and more of our time above ground. Not only when we were observing our Cro-Magnon enemies to see if they had started to evolve out of their murderous ways, but also when we hunted animals in small groups and picked fruit and berries to eat. Gradually down the millennia we had developed skills in carpentry and weaving, allowing us to build crude weapons to kill game and baskets to carry fruit back to our underground world.
"From time to time we were spotted by Cro-Magnon descendants who coined new names for us: Yeti, Big Foot, MI-GO, Sasquatch, and, of course, Yowie -- a named coined by the Australian Aborigines more than thirty thousand years ago. Although most of the Cro-Magnons now ran in terror at the sight of the hairy man-apes, as they also called us, a few showed scientific curiosity toward us and tried to follow us back to our world.
"If we had had reason to believe Cro-Magnon had lost his savagery down the millennia we might have welcomed the scientists. But the truth was otherwise. We had been watching Cro-Magnon on-and-off for thousands of years and everywhere we looked we saw our enemy waging war after war against his own kind. Civil wars and World Wars, Hundred-Year Wars and religious wars, race wars and wars of every persuasion, waged for every possible reason, or often for no discernible reason at all. So, despite our desire to return to the surface of the planet permanently, we knew that it would be suicide to do so. Homo Sapiens-Sapiens was no less a threat to our existence than Cro-Magnon Man had been fifty thousand years earlier. So, we have continued to go our separate way, living in underground stone cities while Homo Sapiens-Sapiens rules the over world alone...."
The Elders stopped for a moment and Ernie and Bear both thought that they had finished. But then they started again and Ernie continued to translate for Bear:
"We still watch the progress of your species above ground from time to time," Ernie translated: "We still hope that one day our two types of humans can live together above ground. But we fear that day may still be many millennia away in the future.
"Although we do our best to avoid being spotted by your kind, occasionally we have close encounters, from which our kind inevitably still comes off second-best more often than not."
Bear and Ernie exchanged a guilty look, both thinking of the Yowie, which had been, gunned down by Jason Melville a couple of days earlier.
What hope have they got now of slipping back into obscurity with a Yowie corpse laid out in a freezer drawer at the morgue in Glen Hartwell? wondered Bear. Realising that Ernie probably did not know about the Yowie Elvis Green had dissected (although the local rags had all hinted of it); Bear voiced his fears to Ernie who passed the query onto the Yowies by telepathy.
"Don’t worry," they replied: "That is being taken care of even as we speak."

Elvis Green was working late in the morgue in Baltimore Drive, Glen Hartwell, when he heard the sound of heavy footsteps outside in the corridor. Thinking that it must be Mel Forbes, hopefully coming to tell him of some development in the kidnapping of Bear Ross, Elvis raced out into the hallway ... only to be grabbed from behind in a vice-like grip and lifted a dozen centimetres off the ground.
Although unable to look round far enough to see his captor, Elvis could see three Yowies standing a small distance ahead of him in the corridor.
Realising that it would be useless to struggle against the powerful ape-man, Elvis allowed himself to be carried into a small storeroom where he watched in dismay as the three Yowies systematically destroyed the room: pulling drawers out of metal filing cabinets and tossing the contents onto the floor, pulling doors off overhead cabinets to rattle through the contents scattering bottles everywhere, seemingly deliberately stamping everything underfoot as they went.
The five of them (Elvis, his captor, and the three searchers) went from room to room through the morgue. Elvis watched helplessly each time the three Yowies destroyed a room, then rummaged through the contents scattered around the floor.
It was only as they reached the records department at the back of the morgue, which Elvis started to get a sneaking suspicion what the Yowies were hunting for. This time after scattering the contents of the metal filing cabinets onto the floor, they rummaged through hundreds of large, glossy photographs from one cabinet until coming to the roll of film of the autopsy performed on the dead Yowie and more than two hundred still photographs of the autopsy.
Despite their apparent clumsiness up until then, upon finding the Yowie photographs, they carefully sorted through all the debris scattered around the floor stacking it into small piles to make certain that they had not missed a single Yowie photograph. So, much for my photographic evidence! thought Elvis as he was carried out into the corridor again. But at least I still have my most important item!
But to his dismay, the Yowies did not depart immediately but continued to hunt through the small rooms at the back of the morgue. Finally they came to the large freezer room where dead bodies were preserved in long pullout freezer drawers.
After searching everywhere else in the room, one of the Yowies finally went across to the small square doors in the back wall. As he tugged against the drawer, Elvis thought: Yes, they’re locked! You won’t get it that easily!
A second Yowie joined the first and to Elvis’s astonishment the two Yowies managed to pull the locked door open, shattering the lock in the process. The long drawer pulled open more than two hundred and fifty centimetres, but was empty. The first half dozen drawers they tried were all empty, but finally they pulled out a drawer containing the naked body of a grey-haired old lady who had died of a cardiac arrest the previous day.
At the sight of the dead woman the Yowies jumped back in alarm and started chattering amongst themselves. Watching the giant red-brown man-apes, which had previously seemed almost superhuman as they carried him from room to room, Elvis was surprised by their obvious terror at the sight of the naked human corpse.
After chattering away furiously for more than a full minute the Yowies finally collected up enough nerve to pull out another drawer, which was empty, as were the next few. As a second, then third naked human body was discovered, the Yowies chattered away again, obviously distressed, and Elvis realised a little afraid of this (to them) strange way of storing the dead.
Finally the Yowies pulled out the last occupied drawer. Again they started chattering nervously amongst themselves. One of the Yowies drew in its breath in a heavy, very human sigh, then two of them started to lift out the carcase, which Elvis knew was the remains of the dissected Yowie. Oh, no! he thought in alarm seeing his last proof of the Yowies’ existence disappearing: Not that too!
Although he knew that it was useless, Elvis struggled against his captor, desperately trying to prevent them from taking away the Yowie corpse. Oh, no, it’s happening all over again! he thought, recalling how his loss of the flame devil corpse to the CSIRO had robbed him of a chance of fame three years earlier. But the Yowie easily held him still and they locked him into one of the front rooms of the morgue (surprising Elvis again by their knowledge of locks and keys), before departing, carrying the Yowie corpse between them.

At last we’re here, thank God! thought Brian Horne as the search party finally pulled up at the base of Mount Wanderei: Hang on Ernie and Bear. Help is almost there!
But they had arrived at a different side of the mountain to the one the cave entrance was on. So, since Brian was no expert regarding the mount, he found to his mounting dismay that he could not readily locate the entrance or Ernie’s Range Rover.
"It’s a big mountain after all," pointed out Mel Forbes. Although he shared Brian’s frustration at their inability to immediately start down the tunnel network to rescue Bear and Ernie from their Yowie captors.
Holding up one of the powerful arc lamps that they had brought with them to light the underground tunnels, Sam Hart said: "For Christ’s sake Ernie’s Range Rover should stick out like a sore thumb!" Unlike Brian and Mel though, Sam was less concerned about the fate of the two men, than he was about bagging a few Yowies with his Winchester repeating rifle.

The Yowie Elders explained to Ernie via thought images that they had sent four of their kind to the morgue in Baltimore Drive to bring back the Yowie corpse and the other evidence of their existence.
"But if you are so concerned with maintaining your secrecy," asked Ernie: "Why did you kidnap Bear and me in the first place?"
"You we did not kidnap," pointed out the Elders: "You came here of your own free will to rescue your friend from us ... his kidnapping was a stupid mistake. In the heat of the moment, when fired upon by your search party, one of our kind panicked and grabbed your friend to stop the hunters firing at him. If he had been thinking more rationally, instead of carrying your friend all the way to our underground city, the moment they were out of sight of the hunters, he would have put him down and continued on alone toward the city."
Having 'heard' the tale of the Yowies’ history, both Ernie and Bear felt sympathy for the creatures. They also felt shame over the way that their own kind had hunted the Yowies down mercilessly throughout the last fifty millennia. Remembering Sam Hart’s determination to gun down the Yowies on sight during the search atop Mount Thompson, Bear thought: Thank God I listened to the McGillivrays and stopped that gun-happy mob from mowing down the Yowies by the dozen ... I wouldn’t want the deaths of any of these creatures ... any of these people on my conscience!
After apologising for holding them against their will the Yowies received the two men’s pledge that they would never reveal the secret of the underground city to anyone else, then told them that they were free to go.
"Just like that?" asked Ernie, amazed by the trust that the Yowies showed in them. Although like Bear he had every intention of keeping his pledge: "You’re prepared to trust us to keep our word?"
"What other choice do we have?" asked the Elders. Although Ernie realised that he was probably transmitting enough of his own thoughts to the Yowies for them to know that they had little to fear from the two men.
As they walked down the stone steps outside the building to the first level, Bear asked: "I know we promised not to tell anyone else about the city, but what do you think of the idea of me bringing Hettie and Ron McGillivray to the underground city? They both seemed genuine in their desire to help and protect the Yowies."
"Maybe they are," agreed Ernie less enthusiastically, as they started to walk through the Yowie city: "Maybe not. But basically, they are scientists at heart and scientists like to publish papers about their discoveries. At first they might agree to keep silent about the underground city -- might even really intend to -- but eventually their desire for scientific recognition would get the better of them and they would publish a paper, or even a best-seller book, including pictures and numerous none-too-subtle hints about the whereabouts of the underground city. Even if they didn’t give an exact location, it would be enough to allow the city to fairly quickly be rediscovered by other people. Many of whom would be more interested in shooting Yowies and displaying their carcases -- or worse trapping them alive to display in some kind of freak circus -- than in simply photographing and studying them."
As they were talking they had continued to walk through the stone village and stopped in front of a two-storey building under construction. The two men watched in fascination as Yowie builders used psychokinesis to lift huge stones to deposit them one by one on top of the wall. Having seen brick fences built above ground with mortar laid between each layer of bricks to hold them in place, Ernie was impressed to see that the Yowies had found or carefully crafted stones that fitted together so perfectly that no bonding layer was necessary. I know a couple of bricklayers who’d give their right arm to have this kind of skill! thought Ernie.
Near one end of the wall under construction, Ernie saw a group of half a dozen naked Yowie children playing the skimming game. As he watched a girl was sent skimming along toward the stone wall at the bottom of which three other children were waiting to catch her. But the three children were all too young and inexperienced to stop the skimming child, who crashed into them at high speed, sending all four children crashing backwards into the stone wall.
Normally the children would have only been slightly hurt by the mishap and the wall not at all. But due to some defect in the wall, three large stones started to fall off the top of the wall, ready to crush the four children who were slow to climb back to their feet.
"Come on!" shouted Bear, and he and Ernie both leapt forward to rescue the children. Although they knew even as they started that they were too far away to be able to reach them in time. But to their surprise, they did reach the four children. Grabbing one child under each arm the two men kept running until they were twenty metres away from the wall.
But how?’ wondered Ernie. How could we possibly have reached them in time?
Looking back he saw that the Yowie builders had used their psychokinetic powers to juggle the three boulders in the air long enough for Bear and Ernie to effect the rescue. But it required a tricky balancing effort to juggle all three stones at once and after a moment the builders lost control and the three boulders came crashing down to earth where the children had been only seconds earlier.
After their rescue of the children, Ernie and Bear were surrounded by hordes of chattering Yowies. Although unable to understand their language, the two men realised to their embarrassment that the orangutan-like creatures regarded them both as heroes.
The Yowies were still congratulating the two men when Ernie first noted a hint of hysteria in their chattering.
"Something’s badly wrong," said Ernie. He tried to send a thought image to the Elders to ask what was the matter, but his sending ability was too weak.
Ernie and Bear raced through the village of now hysterical Yowies until they reached the three-storey stone building occupied by the six Elders. Using thought images again (which Ernie translated for Bear), they explained: "We have just received a thought communication from one of our kind above ground. There is a hunting party on the side of Mount Wanderei, rapidly closing in on the entranceway, which inexplicably is uncovered."
On hearing the latter Ernie thought: My God, it will be all my fault if the hunters come right into the underground city and slaughter these peaceful people! I sent the boulder rolling down the side of the mountain!
After a moment’s guilty hesitation, Ernie explained to the Elders how he had used a crowbar to remove the protective boulder from the entrance to the cave when setting out to rescue Bear from them.
"You are not to be blamed," said the Elders, only making Ernie feel guiltier: "You thought you were rescuing your friend from savage killers."
Before they could communicate anymore there was the sound of many running feet on the stone stairs outside. Six Yowie adults ran into the room and, ignoring Bear and Ernie, started to chatter away furiously toward the Elders seated at the long wooden bench before which the two men stood.
The Elders chattered back at the other Yowies, obviously reeling off orders to them. After the Yowies ran out to do as instructed, the Elders told Ernie: "It would be best if you left also. We have a lot to do still."
"But what can you do?" asked Ernie.
"It is time for us to leave this place."
"Leave?" asked Bear, startled when Ernie communicated the answer to him: "Where do they intend to go?"
"Deeper underground," explained Ernie after putting the question to the Elders.
Going out onto the steps outside the building, the two men saw that the leisurely village had become a hive of activity. Yowie men and women raced around excitedly gathering up their children and most transportable possessions, preparing to abandon the underground city where they had lived for thousands of years.
For a moment the two men stood watching in dismay as the Yowies thundered through the city racing toward tunnels further back in the city (at the opposite end to where Bear and Ernie had entered) that would lead them deeper underground.
"It’s a bloody shame," said Bear: "But with any luck they’ll be long gone before the hunting party gets here."
"That won’t save them," said Ernie, still feeling guilty at the knowledge that if the Yowies had to abandon their underground city it would be his fault: "Unlike our Cro-Magnon ancestors, modern hunters aren’t likely to be stopped by the Yowies fleeing deep underground. Once this city is found anthropologists from around the world will flock down here to catch and study the Yowies. If the hunters don’t beat them to it. Unlike our ancestors, modern man can light these tunnels as bright as day with powerful floodlights to follow the Yowies deep into the ground, for kilometres. Before finally catching up and killing them."
"Then what can we do?" asked Bear, feeling frustrated and helpless.
Ernie sighed heavily: "God, I don’t know. But somehow we have to stop the hunting party from finding the entrance on the side of the mount. But how? It would take too long to return to the mountainside from here. Two or three hours down that tunnel, by which time they could have already found the tunnel entrance and started down it."
"In which case we’ll meet them part way down the tunnel and convince them to go back," suggested Bear.
"Convince them how?" asked Ernie: "As it is in the dark they might shoot before noticing we’re not Yowies. Even if they don’t they might insist on coming back to search the tunnel later. Or we might just miss them in the dark. For all we know the tunnel might branch off in more than one direction in the dark. In which case they might get to the underground city without even meeting us...."
He sighed in frustration: "If only there was some faster way for us to get back to the side of the mountain to stop them from finding the cave entrance."
"Of course there is!" said Bear excitedly as a solution occurred to him: "When I was abducted and brought here over the shoulders of a Yowie, even with me for a load, he managed to walk through the tunnel in only an hour or so."
"So what?" asked Ernie.
"So, if we can get two Yowies to carry us back to the surface instead of taking two or three hours, the trip can be cut down to one hour."
"It’s still a Hell of a long time for Mel and company not to find the cave entrance," said Ernie: "But it’s better than two or three hours."
When the two men raced back to explain the idea to the Yowie Elders, they found the six Yowies completing their own preparations for evacuation, hurriedly packing a few possessions into sewn straw baskets.
Although eager to leave, the Elders were fascinated by Bear’s idea and stopped to consider it for a moment. They chattered away for a minute or two, then finally in thought images, they said: "We have a better idea, please follow us."
Wondering what the better idea could be, the two men followed the Yowie Elders out onto the stone steps leading down to the cave floor. Standing at the top of the steps the Yowies started to concentrate hard, shutting their eyes tight and Ernie realised that they were sending out thought images. But all he received were repeated images of the three-storey building where they were standing.
Although most of the ape-men continued to race through the city, heading toward exits leading deeper underground, a few stopped and after a moment’s hesitation headed toward the base of the stone steps, and Ernie realised that the image of the stone building was a call for Yowies to head for them.
After twenty-four or twenty-five Yowie adults had congregated outside the building, the Yowie Elders stopped sending thought images and chattered away to their audience for a moment. Then, expecting Bear and Ernie to follow, the Elders started down the stone steps with the two men and roughly two dozen Yowies following as they walked rapidly through the city, heading toward the tunnel leading up to the side of Mount Wanderei.
As the congregation reached the dark tunnel entrance, Ernie asked: "Don’t tell me they’re all going with us to the surface of the mount?"
"No," said Bear: "I’ve got a terrible feeling they’ve got something else in mind."
"What do you mean?" asked Ernie. But before Bear could answer the Elders flashed to Ernie images requesting the two men to sit on the ground, facing into the tunnel.
The two men did as requested, and then the thirty Yowies stood in a semicircle around them. Ernie wondered, What in the love of God! But then seeing how intently the ape-men were staring at them he thought: Surely they can’t be intending to try...? But even as he realised that he and Bear had both started to slowly rise off the ground, Ernie remembered the skimming game that they had seen the Yowie children playing earlier and knew what the Yowies were planning to do.
"Is it too late to mention my fear of hovercrafts?" joked Bear as he and Ernie suddenly started to move forward into the dark tunnel, floating twenty-five or thirty centimetres above the ground.
"I think it is!" shouted back Ernie as the two men picked up speed and began to race through the tunnel at what felt like a hundred kilometres an hour.
As they whistled along through the dark tunnel the wind whooshed in their ears making further speech impossible. All they could do was hope and pray that the Yowies knew what they were doing as they blasted through the tunnel like a bullet train; hoping against hope that they wouldn’t collide with the walls of the tunnel whenever it snaked around to one side or the other.
"Hail Mary, Mother of God...!" began Bear, not certain whether he was praying aloud or not as he whizzed through the Stygian darkness like a blind man on a roller coaster, half wishing that he could at least see where he was going at such breakneck speed; half grateful that he could not!
Equally as terrified as Bear, as they rocketed through the darkness Ernie thought: There’s no reason to be frightened; they must know what they’re doing! They must have done this kind of thing before! He considered trying to think the question back to the Yowie Elders but was afraid of distracting them and causing them to lose control of the two men. But he was even more afraid of what their answer might turn out to be.
Although it seemed as though they were travelling at phenomenal speed, in the darkness they were unable to make out any landmarks to accurately gauge their velocity. But they knew that the city was many kilometres from the surface of Mount Wanderei and feared that the roller coaster ride might last half an hour or longer. But after only fifteen minutes or so Ernie realised that the previously impenetrable darkness engulfing them was gradually beginning to lighten. Almost before they knew it the two men could make out the sides of the tunnel, which they were whizzing along only a dozen centimetres away from.
"The entranceway!" shouted Bear as they suddenly saw the cave entrance lit up against the backdrop of the moon and stars.
Ernie started to reply but didn’t have the opportunity as both men raced out through the entranceway and came to an abrupt halt. Both men landed roughly on their backsides and rolled a few metres out onto the mount before coming to a complete stop.
Well, I guess that answers my question anyway! thought Ernie as he received a thought image from the Elders apologising for the painful landing: "Psychokinesis is a little unstable and difficult to control over so great a distance," they explained as the two men pulled themselves to their feet.
"Well, that’s half of the problem solved," said Bear: "We’re on the mount. But how do we keep the hunting party away from the cave entrance?"
Ernie started to answer when they heard the sound of loud voices not far away and realised that the hunters were only a couple of hundred metres away, heading in their direction.
"Quick, what’ll we do?" demanded Bear.
Ernie desperately wracked his brain for a solution, then seeing his Range Rover still parked a little above the cave entrance, he had a touch of inspiration: "You try to join up with the hunting party and stall them as long as you can," he said.
"What about you?"
"I’ve got an idea I want to try. But it will take a little while to set up, so I need you to delay them for as long as you possibly can."
"Well, all right, but...?" started Bear, as Ernie raced across to his Range Rover.
Without stopping to talk further, he revved the motor and then started to drive the vehicle down the mountainside toward the forest below.
Bear stayed staring after Ernie in astonishment for a moment, then shrugged and started to head in the direction that the hunters’ voices were coming from.

The hunting party had been scouring the side of the mountain for more than ninety minutes without finding any trace of the cave entrance or Ernie’s brown Range Rover.
"Why can’t he have a white Rover, like any normal person?" cursed Sam Hart: "Then instead of vanishing into the darkness, it’d stand out like a beacon."
"For God’s sake give it a rest!" snapped Mel Forbes. Usually an easygoing man, like the others in the search party he had started to grow edgy after the fruitless hour and a half of searching for the cave entrance. Turning to Brian Horne, he demanded: "Are you sure it was Mount Wanderei?" voicing the fears of more than one person in the search party: "There are plenty of other mountains in the area."
"Of course I’m certain!" snapped Brian: "What kind of an idiot do you think I am!"
"How many kinds are there?" asked Kim Monroe, drawing a snicker from Don Blythe and smirking from one or two of the others.
Of course, it was Mount Wanderei! thought Brian, ignoring Kim’s sarcasm but secretly starting to have his doubts: The countryside around Harpertown, Glen Hartwell, and Merridale contains several mountains of various sizes: Mount Drynan, Mount Abergowrie, Mount Hargreaves, Mount Peterson, Mount Thompson, Mount Inverness and at least three or four others. But I know it was Mount Wanderei! I think!
"Maybe we should split up into smaller groups and check out some of the other mounts?" suggested Sam Hart, ignoring the flash of anger in Brian’s eyes.
"What do you think?" asked Mel, turning to the McGillivrays for advice.
"I think it’s too late in the evening for that," suggested Hettie.
"Yes," agreed her husband, Ron: "Either we stick together and try to cover every centimetre of Mount Wanderei tonight, or else we’ll have to wait till dawn tomorrow to try to search all the local mountains. At least the ones that are easily climbable."
"Yes," agreed Mel: "At least three of the local mounts are all but unclimbable: Mount Hargreaves, Mount Inverness, and Mount Abergowrie. We’d need professional mountain climbers to tackle any of those three."
"Which means we can safely leave them to last," suggested Kim Monroe: "Since they’d probably be unclimbable for the Yowies too."
"Not necessarily," suggested Ron: "Since the Yowies may be identical to the yetis of Tibet who easily scramble around the sides of the Himalayas, including Mount Everest. To the shock of Sir Edmund Hillary when he first climbed to the top of Everest in 1953 only to find the snow crisscrossed with what looked like naked human footprints."
"In any case, if that’s your decision, you’ll need to get busy tonight organising a lot more men to take part in the searches," advised Hettie: "The group we have now is barely large enough to do justice to one mountain, let alone be split up to scour ten or twelve mountains."
"All right, so what’s it to be?" asked Mel, turning to face the men behind him.
Des Hutchinson (one of the few locals with any experience with mountains, living on the side of Mount Drynan) started to offer his advice and then stopped gape-mouthed and pointed back over Mel’s shoulder.
Turning to see what Des was pointing at; Mel saw the great figure lumbering toward them from the shadows and said: "My God, it’s one of those Yowie creatures!"
"This is for Bear and Ernie!" lied Sam Hart, levelling his Winchester repeater at the creature. Although he really wanted to kill a Yowie out of his love of killing, not out of any desire to rescue or avenge the two missing men.
"No, you don’t!" cried Hettie McGillivray. Jumping forward she grabbed the barrel of the rifle and pushed it into the air. As a result, it fired well over the head of the advancing creature, which immediately dived to the ground.
"We had an agreement with Sergeant Ross that the Yowies would not be shot on sight!" reminded Ron McGillivray rounding on Mel.
"That was before those monsters started kidnapping people!" shouted Sam. He pulled his rifle barrel out of the grip of Hettie, who promptly stepped between him and the fallen creature, making it impossible for him to take another shot at it.
"Get out of my way, you dopey bitch!" shouted Sam. He stepped to one side to aim past her, only to almost shoot Hettie as she stepped in front of his barrel again.
"Keep out of the way, or I’ll shoot you first, then it!" warned Sam.
"Cut that out, you idiot!" hissed Mel taking the rifle away from Sam: "They’re right, we did have an agreement not to start blasting away at every Yowie we saw. But more importantly, we’re here to try to find Bear and Ernie, hopefully alive and unharmed, not to start playing Dirty Harry!"
As they argued, the large figure climbed back to its feet and shambled toward them again.
"Don’t shoot, for God’s sake!" shouted Bear Ross stepping out into the circle of light thrown up by the powerful floodlights being used by the search party.
"Bear? How?" asked Mel in wonder. He turned to glare at Sam Hart who had very nearly killed one of the two men they had come to the mount to rescue.
Paling under Mel’s gaze, Sam said lamely: "Well, how was I to know it was him?"
"You might have at least found out one way or the other," said Hettie McGillivray: "Before trying to blow his head off!"
"I wasn’t trying to blow his head off," insisted Sam: "I was trying to blow the head off one of those Yowie creatures!"
"Which turned out to be him," pointed out Hettie.
"I didn’t know that...!"
"Shut up!" insisted Mel starting across to see if Bear was all right.
After making a quick examination of Bear, Hettie McGillivray said: "He seems to be all right, however, for safety’s sake we ought to get him to the Glen Hartwell Hospital as quickly as possible to have him checked over properly."
"But what about Ernie?" asked Brian Horne, reminding them of the second man they were looking for.
Thinking fast, not wanting them to have any excuse to keep looking for the cave entrance, Bear said: "Ernie escaped half an hour before I did. He drove off to try to get help to rescue me. Obviously, he didn’t notice there was already a search party on the side of the mount."
"So what’s the plan now?" asked Des Hutchinson: "Do we take Bear back to the Glen, or do we keep searching for the entrance to the Yowie city?"
"All we need is for one or two people to drive Bear into Glen Hartwell, the rest of us can keep on with the search!" insisted Sam Hart. He was determined not to let the unexpected appearance of the Glen Hartwell police chief rob him of a chance to bag one of the Yowies: "Why don’t you help Bear back to the Glen," he suggested to Mel, hoping to get both police sergeants out of the way so that they couldn’t prevent any serious shooting: "While I stay here and lead the hunting party?"
"And let you shoot up the countryside, taking pot-shots at everything that moves?" asked Hettie McGillivray incredulous, voicing Mel and Bear’s own thoughts: "No bloody way! If the two sergeants both did leave, there is still Constable Blewett to take charge," pointing to Terry Blewett who had been helping to tend to Bear, trying to see if he was all right.
"That’s right," agreed Terry, looking a little flabbergasted to be in the limelight suddenly: "I’ve had experience leading a hunt during the fox plague in 1980 when Lawrie was off work with flu." (Referring to Bear Ross’ predecessor, Lawrie Grimes who had been sergeant of police at Glen Hartwell from 1963 until late 1982.)
"Fox plague!" said Sam with contempt: "Foxes are piddling little things. It takes a special talent for hunting to deal with creatures like these Yowie monsters!"
"Experience which presumably you’ve had!" demanded Hettie, rounding on Sam.
"Look I’ve had just about as much of your lip as I’m going to take!" cried Sam Hart. He started toward the scientist menacingly.
"Give it a rest!" shouted Mel, advancing on Sam.
Before they could argue any further, however, there was a rustling in the Mulga bushes a short distance from where they stood: "Yowie!" shouted Kim Monroe pointing back the way Bear had arrived a short time earlier.
"Shut up, you idiot!" hissed Sam Hart afraid the creature would be scared away by the sound of Kim’s voice.
Turning to look where Kim had pointed, they could barely make out the large, black figure moving through the forest twenty metres away. To Sam’s delight, the creature seemed inexplicably not to have heard Kim Monroe’s outburst.
As the other hunters aimed their rifles at the creature, Sam looked in frustration toward his own Winchester, which Mel Forbes still held: "Hey, fair’s fair," whined Sam: "How am I supposed to have a fair chance to shoot it when I don’t have my rifle?"
"No one is going to shoot anything until we see what we’re dealing with!" yelled Mel. At his words most of the hunters lowered their rifles, although a few kept their weapons sighted, ready to fire if and when given permission.
While they argued the point, the creature continued to advance and they could soon see that although large, it was much too small to be a Yowie.
"Only a dingo by the looks of it," suggested Kim Monroe as the creature came close enough for them to discern its four-legged stance.
Expecting to see the yellow-brown pelt of a dingo, the men were surprised to see the canine figure was jet black and much too large for any dingo they had ever seen.
Kim Monroe sighed in exasperation and said: "It’s only a bloody wolf."
"Not just a wolf!" corrected Sam Hart snatching for his rifle. After a moment’s hesitation, Mel released the Winchester and Sam started to raise it to the firing position, saying: "It’s the black wolf!"
"Come on," cried Kim: "Let’s get after the Yowies, this isn’t what we’re after!"
"You go on if you like," offered Sam, lining the wolf up in his sights: "I’ve been trying to nail this bastard for more than three years now!"
The black wolf did his best not to let on that he knew that the hunters were nearby. As Sam Hart lined him up in the sights of his Winchester repeating rifle, the wolf tried not to move a muscle ... until a split second before Sam fired. Then the black wolf leapt a few centimetres to one side.
The bullet brought up a puff of dried gum leaves behind the black wolf which immediately took off at a slow, steady pace. Despite his fear of being shot, the wolf did his best to keep to a steady pace, not wanting to thunder out of sight while the hunters were still undecided whether to go after him or continue hunting the Yowies.
"Come on!" shouted Sam Hart starting after the black wolf.
"What about the Yowies?" demanded Kim Monroe.
"To Hell with the bloody things, let’s get this blasted wolf!" ordered Sam.
"Whatever you say, you’re the boss," said Kim. And after a moment’s indecision, the hunting party started after Sam.
Seeing Mel and the McGillivrays hesitating, Bear said: "Come on, at least we can keep an eye on the bastards."
Although he didn’t want to see the black wolf shot, he decided that having the hunters trail the wolf would at least get them away from Mount Wanderei and any thoughts of locating the entrance to the Yowies' underground city.
"Hey, not you!" protested Brian Horne as the big man started to lope after the rapidly disappearing hunting party: "We have to get you back to the Glen to let Gina Foley check you out to see that you’re okay!"
"He’s right," agreed Mel.
"Oh, I’m fine!" insisted Bear, never one to like having people fuss over him.
"Bear!" protested Mel, reluctantly starting down the mountain after his friend.
Although relieved to hear that the hunters had started after him, the black wolf was conscious that he had to stay out of rifle range long enough to lead them away from the Yowie cave, without getting far enough ahead that they might lose interest in him. I have to stay close enough for them not to give up, he thought: But not close enough for one of them to actually shoot me!
"Come on!" ordered Sam Hart as the hunters seemed to be lagging too far behind.
"Don’t worry, we won’t lose him," assured Kim Monroe. He flashed the beam of one of the powerful floodlights onto the fleeing wolf.
"Got him!" cried Sam with satisfaction, after firing off a round with his Winchester, certain that he had hit the black wolf.
But when the hunters raced forward where they expected to find the wolf carcase, there was no sign of it.
"Got him, like Hell!" sneered Don Blythe.
"There he goes," cried Kim. He pointed to where the black wolf was fleeing, with a definite limp in his left leg, about sixty metres ahead of them.
"Ha! Told you I got him!" shouted Sam charging forward after the limping wolf.
Although the black wolf managed to stay safely ahead of the pursuing hunters, the ache in his left foot where Sam’s rifle had nicked him had started to slow him up. He realised that they would soon overtake him unless he reached safety quickly.
He had almost given up hope when his superior werewolf vision allowed him to discern the brown form of his Range Rover fifty metres or so ahead of him.
Now comes the tricky part! he thought, knowing that he could never drive the Rover in wolf form. Although he had managed to shapeshift from man to wolf by choice on a handful of occasions, in more than three years as the black wolf, he had never yet managed to change back to human form by choosing to do so.
Trying to ignore the pain in his left foot for fear of whimpering and giving his location away to the hunters, the black wolf limped toward the brown Range Rover furiously trying to force himself to transform back to Ernie Singleton. Come on! pleaded Ernie: Either I change back out here, or I’m dead!
He had almost given up hope, when, still five metres from the vehicle, he suddenly transformed back to human form and was unable to stifle a cry of pain as his now human left foot throbbed from agony.
"What was that?" demanded Sam Hart hearing Ernie’s cry from sixty metres away.
"Sounded like a man crying out," said Hettie McGillivray.
"Don’t be bloody stupid!" protested Sam: "Who else besides us would be out in the forest this late at night?"
"One of those bloody Yowie things?" suggested Kim Monroe.
"Don’t be so..." started Sam, before deciding that Kim might be right: "Yes! That would explain why I’ve never been able to shoot the black wolf! If the bugger is in cahoots with the Yowies!"
"Either that or you’re just a lousy shot!" suggested Kim, drawing snickers from some of the hunters.
"Don’t be such a bloody idiot!" hissed Sam Hart.
"You’re the bloody idiot," said Hettie: "If you really believe the Yowies and your black wolf could have teamed up somehow!"
"Yes, Sam, get serious!" cried Mel.

Hobbling the last few metres naked in human form, Ernie slumped into the driver’s seat of his Range Rover, wincing as a bolt of pain rocketed through his left foot. Knowing that he had no time for modesty, without stopping to dress, he threw the car into gear and drove away into the forest, heading back toward the safety of his sheep station on the outskirts of Merridale.
"What was that?" demanded Sam Hart hearing the sound of Ernie’s Range Rover.
"Sounded like a car driving away," pointed out Bear Ross.
"Who would be driving a car in the forest in the dark?" demanded Mel Forbes.
They continued to follow the spoors of the black wolf even after losing sight of the wolf itself. But after a while, the wolf prints suddenly vanished...
To be replaced by the imprints of naked human feet!
"So, I’m an idiot am I?" demanded Sam, his hard weasel-like face sneering with satisfaction as he pointed toward the footprints.
"Well," said Kim Monroe: "We didn’t want to have to be the ones to tell you ... but since you asked...!"
Ignoring the sarcasm, Sam said: "This proves the black wolf is in cahoots with the Yowies! See how the wolf tracks vanish as soon as the ape ones appear. Seeing the wolf was hurt one of the monsters picked him up and carried him from here."
Noticing the tyre tracks from Ernie’s Range Rover a few metres further on, Mel asked: "Then how do you explain these? Surely the Yowies don’t own or drive cars?"
Stumped for only a moment, Sam quickly recovered to say: "Those have nothing to do with it. They’re obviously the tracks of Ernie’s Range Rover. Obviously, he drove past this way when he went to get help an hour or so back!"
"How do you know they’re not the tracks of the car we just beard?" asked Mel.
"Don’t be stupid," hissed Sam: "As you just said, who’d be driving a car out in the forest this late at night? No, this is where Ernie drove past ages ago. Obviously, a Yowie carried the black wolf away from here."
"But where to?" demanded Kim Monroe, looking around in vain for some further sign of the naked human footprints.
Having spent the last half hour wondering what could have happened to Ernie.
"Could a man be with the black wolf?" asked Des Hutchinson: "Could someone in the area have become friendly with it somehow and...?"
"Don’t be bloody stupid!" snarled Sam Hart not liking to be contradicted: "Why would a man go barefoot through the forest at night? No, it has to be a bloody Yowie! The Yowies and the black wolf must be in it together!"
"In what together?" asked Hettie McGillivray trying to bring Sam back to earth before his theories got any wilder or woollier.
"But how could they have teamed up?" asked Des Hutchinson. Like Sam Hart, Des was no friend of the black wolf, but unlike Sam, he was not given to fanciful theories.
"Well, the black wolf is a psychotic killer, right?" asked Sam. He glared toward Bear Ross, who wisely decided not to risk Hart's wrath by standing up for the wolf as he had done on previous occasions.
"If you say so," replied Des.
"Well, so are the Yowies, right?"
"What?" cried Hettie McGillivray from rage and frustration: "You haven’t a shred of evidence to support that...!"
"What about the attack on Don and Kim’s hunting party a few nights back?"
"It didn’t attack ... it was your hunters who opened fire on it!"
"Well, strictly speaking, she’s right," agreed Kim Monroe sheepishly: "When we saw that great thing lit up in the spotlight beam we started firing and it took off at top speed."
"All right!" shouted Sam, not used to being contradicted: "But one of them did attack our hunting party last night and abducted Bear. Not to mention a pair of them totalling Clem Horne’s Jeep. Or the kidnapping of Ernie for that matter...."
He stopped long enough to scan the circle of faces to be certain that he had successfully covered any possible further argument, before continuing.
"Despite what Mrs. McGillivray might think, we have ample proof that the Yowies are psychotic killers, and we’ve already agreed that about the black wolf! So what could be more natural than for them to pair up?" He thought for a moment before adding: "Like Bonnie and Clyde, Burke and Hare, or Jekyll and Hyde? Psychotic killers naturally tend to team up together!"
Now that’s what I call a logical comparison! thought Bear, not knowing whether to laugh or cry: The poor black wolf and those harmless creatures being compared to two of the greatest tyrants of this century!

Trying to ignore the bolts of agony shooting through his left foot, Ernie continued to drive through the forest until reaching the Singleton sheep station.
He parked the Rover near the woodpile outside the wire mesh fence around the farmhouse yard. Then tentatively stepping out of the car, trying not to place too much weight on his throbbing left foot, he gathered up his clothes and hobbled naked across the yard toward the farmhouse.
On the back porch, he searched through his trouser pockets for the keys to his house, then limped inside and headed for the bathroom to examine his injury. Due to the agony wracking his foot, he had assumed that a bullet had lodged in his foot. But after washing and examining the injury he saw that there was a long bloody groove down the flesh where it had been grazed by a bullet from Sam Hart’s Winchester.
He washed the wound with Dettol and iodine, before bandaging his foot. Then after taking a couple of Panadeine to kill the pain plus two Mogadons to help him sleep, he headed to the bedroom.
For the next few days, Ernie could only hobble around the house. When he finally felt up to driving back to Mount Wanderei to see what had happened to the Yowies, he found that the entrance to the underground city had collapsed inward, filling the tunnel with rock and earth, making it impassable. Although it was quite possibly a natural cave-in, Ernie realised that it was more likely that the Yowies had used a concentrated burst of psychic energy to collapse the tunnel to protect the city from discovery by Sam Hart.
"It seems a shame," said Bear Ross when the two men talked about it a few days later in the police station in Mitchell Street, Glen Hartwell: "But maybe it was all for the best. The Yowies are too peace-loving still to be able to survive contact with our breed of humanity for too long."
"I guess so," agreed Ernie. However, like Bear, he was disappointed at the lost opportunity for mankind to learn from its forebears that communication with the Yowies might have offered.
Although both men had expected the Yowie hysteria to continue with Sam Hart and the news media, they found to their delight that with the loss of the Yowie corpse and autopsy photographs taken from the morgue in Baltimore Drive, the media’s interest in Glen Hartwell died out virtually overnight. Sam Hart concentrated on hunting his pet enemy the black wolf, and without his manic leadership, the other hunters quickly lost interest in the Yowies and returned to spot-shooting rabbits and foxes.

THE END
© Copyright 2024 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia