LAST Friday night, Faye Burke and her cousin Alana Garnett left their homes in Wingham with a trailer attached to the car.
They were driving towards Cundle Flat to load the trailer with fresh pumpkins from Faye's brother's home.
"It was half moonlight, the stars were out and it was a beautiful night," Faye said.
But oddly enough there was not a car on the Nowendoc Road. "I have been driving that road all my life and that's unusual," she said.
Driving steadily the pair were approaching Connelly's Creek Gap "just on the other side of Mt George".
"We were about 200 metres from the top of the hill when I clearly remember looking down at the car clock and it was exactly 7.30pm," Faye said.
"I looked back up at the road and I saw ahead in the headlights this big hairy animal thing on the side of the winding road.
"It was about eight foot tall and four foot wide."
Alana said they yelled out "holy hell" along with a list of other unmentionable words. "We panicked," they said.
"I couldn't turn the car around because I had the trailer and the road was too narrow," Faye said.
"I was s**t-scared and thought I better not mess with this thing in case it lifts the trailer up and tips us over the bank edge."
Keeping her foot on the accelerator and speeding past the thing, Faye said she turned to Alana and said: "Did you see that? She said in a scared voice: 'Do you mean that thing that looked like a Big Foot?' I said: No it was a Yowie."
And Alana screamed back: "Same thing!".
"After we reached the top of the hill I wanted to turn around and get a photo with my mobile phone," Faye said.
But Alana was too scared to go back. She said if the passenger window had been wound down she could have reached out and touched it.
Faye and Alana said the hairy thing stood perfectly still "like it was at attention".
"Its back was facing us and it was looking into the embankment next to the road and it had dark chocolate brown hair which was all matted," Alana said.
"The breeze of the car made the hair around its neck flick up as we drove past."
Neither Alana or Faye believe it was a person dressed up or a ghost. "It was real," they said.
"And I am absolutely convinced it was a yowie."
Faye just wishes she had gone back and taken a photo.
"I knew people wouldn't believe us and I didn't phone the police because I thought they would think we were loopy."
Faye said: "I am not a drinker and I hadn't been drinking but I did have a beer when I got to my brother's house that night.
"When we arrived at my brother's house we almost fell out of the car," she said. "He told us we both had white faces and we were both trying to tell our story at the same time."
They returned to the exact location the next morning to attempt to find hair samples and footprints and take photos.
"We didn't find any hair but we found an indentation in the ground resembling a giant footprint and a big spot of urine."
She said the urine had stripped part of the bark near a tree and looked like oily spots - "and it stunk".
"I will never forget what we saw," Faye said.
And it is an image neither can take out of their mind.
"I can't sleep at night because I can't stop thinking about it," Faye said.
And Alana said she still sees it when she closes her eyes and tries to go to sleep.
Miraculously when Faye was printing out her photos of the footprint at Big W in Taree, with her daughter, a woman next to her heard her conversation and said she saw a Yowie in Grafton.
"The goose bumps came all over me, up from my heel right up to my head, and I thought thank God for the confirmation that there are other people who have seen one too," Faye said
"I will never stop looking for it." But Alana believes "it is something they will never see again".
FACTS:
Yowie expert, Mr Rex Gilroy has spent more than 20 years gathering reported sightings and other evidence of the Yowie.
According to Mr Gilroy the characteristics of a Yowie are identical to those reported of America's "Bigfoot" and also the Himalayan "Abominable Snowman".
He is quoted on the web for saying the Aborigines have known of the Yowie for thousands of years.
Mr Gilroy saw a Yowie in 1970 in Katoomba and since then has returned to the area, led Yowie searches and asked for people to share their information and sightings.
He said generally, most people are reluctant to come forward with personal experiences of this nature for fear of ridicule.
However he ensures if these people contact him he will treat their information with the utmost discretion.
He has written books on the paranormal and is the author of the book Mysterious Australia.
For further information or to contact Rex Gilroy visit www.mysteriousaustralia.com
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