WEIRD WEEKEND 2009: Tim the Yowie Man

A profile of one of this year's headlining speakers:

Tim the Yowie Man is an Australian cryptozoologist and paranormal investigator. Although so named after Australia’s Bigfoot-type creature, Tim spends most of his time investigating a smorgasboard of other Aussie cryptids including the bunyip, alien big cat, sea serpents and thylacine.

Tim also hosts ghost and mystery tours in and around Canberra – the Australian Capital – and travels extensively in search of the strange, the bizarre and the unusual. In search of the truth, Tim the Yowie Man has led a pack of huskies across the Arctic circle in search of the hairy man of the Yukon tundra, been cursed by a shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, offered himself as bait to the Loch Ness monster, teamed up with First Nation trackers to investigate the British Columbia Sasquatch, cradled the alien starchild skull, been attacked by apes at the Rock of Gibraltar while searching for ghosts, tracked down the Hawaiian lava tube mutant pig monster, uncovered a lost pyramid in Samoa, encountered a spook man in the Swiss Alps, had a fishing rod chomped on by the Amalfi Coast sea serpent…and heck… he’s even put flowers on Jay's Grave on Dartmoor.

Tim contributes regularly to mainstream publications including The Sunday Telegraph and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and recently finished a stint as the resident cryptonaturalist at the National Museum of Australia. Tim is author of the imaginatively titled The Adventures of Tim the Yowie Man (Random House 2001) and the more recent coffee table tome Haunted and Mysterious Australia (New Holland).

In 2008, he was nominated for Australian of the Year for his work in raising environmental awareness.

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POLICE: WHEN CROP CIRCLES ATTACK

For years there have been stories of shadowy armed police or troops involved with crop circles. For example, in The Rising of the Moon, the book I wrote with Nigel Wright ten years back, I wrote of such rumours, but now we have received this extraordinary photograph. However, whoa there young conspiracy buffs, `cos this ain't what it looks like it could have been.

A person on a crop circle forum (sent to me via Matty W) writes: At long last I have seen some Police out in force over our local crop circles; in fact Her Maj's finest armed response team came bounding over my farm, with helicopter hovering, to find me. All because of this:

Crop Circle at Cannings Cross, Near Allington, Wiltshire, reported 10th July 2009

Once I persuaded the nice Mr Policeman that I wasn't a threat I was able to point out that it wasn't on my land, and as for reports that someone is "employed to keep people off it with a shotgun" I didn't know anything but thought it more likely he was there to keep the rooks off the corn (they love to start stripping a field from the damaged edges of a circle) because no one would be silly enough to try and keep vandals off their land with a shotgun, would they?

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/archives/007579.html

KIWI WITH WEIRD FOOT

Fleur Fulcher drew our attention to this:

Sometime before 1938 a Mr C. Haylock collected a kiwi with an unusual foot near Kawhia. The left foot lacked pigment and was presumably a pale pinkish colour in contrast to the normal brown of the kiwi's leg and foot. Now, as a dried specimen, the foot looks like it has been dipped into a tray of whitewash. In all other ways the kiwi's colouration is normal. It is a half-grown bird and is an example of the North Island brown kiwi (Apteryx mantelli), found originally in forest throughout the North Island but now much reduced in range as a result of habitat destruction and the impact of predatory mammals. Albino individuals turn up occasionally in most bird species, as they do among humans.

Partial albinos are also common in birds, for example, the common blackbirds are sometimes seen about town with patches of white plumage. The Kawhia kiwi is presumably a partial albino.

RICHARD FREEMAN: Search for the Bull**** Killer

Guest Blogger time for Richard Freeman again. It almost seems silly introducing Richard to you all once again when he makes an appearance as guest blogger several times a week. However, our viewing audience/ readers (whatever you like to call yourselves) is growing so fast that it is certain that some of you missed the last time I introduced him.

Recently Animal Planet was crowing about a premiere documentary called Anaconda: Search of the Bullkiller. I didn’t recognise the title so I tuned in. You may recall some weeks ago I wrote a scathing review of an unbelievably contrived Loch Ness ‘documentary’. Well, the Animal Planet offering was hardly better. The film, which incidentally was several years old, involved a German expedition to Guyana in search of giant anacondas.

The group boasted a remote controlled submarine, car and helicopter, all fitted with cameras. Apparently they also had the technology to measure the size and distance of living things!

After interviewing an old native man whose brother was almost eaten at a remote lake by a huge anaconda we are never told how huge. All throughout the film we are told that you cannot reach the lake on foot. This begs the question of how the native chap and his brother got there. Anyhow, the team intend to use their technology to hunt anacondas around the unapproachable lake.

On the way we are shown footage of a puma hunting a tapir. The two animals are never together in the same shot and are transparently filmed at totally different locations. Also we are told that the group come upon a black caiman. But the animal is already being filmed from the opposite angle when the group’s canoe appears.

The helicopter is tested out and films and measures a five-metre anaconda. The display we are shown looks suspiciously like computer animation rather than a real computer programme. On its next flight the helicopter crashes and is lost. Next they use the tiny submarine. The group panic when it disappears in a lake but lo and behold, there is already a cameraman in the lake to film the sub getting tangled in weeds. A woman from the group dives in to fix it and meets what we are told is an 8 metre anaconda. Judging by the girth it looks closer to 5 metres than eight.

Next two of the group use the remote control car to explore the jungle. And at the height of farce another two try to use a toy monkey suspended over the water to bait a giant anaconda.

Of course these clowns find nothing of consequence. In fact the whole sorry saga looked 100% staged from start to finish.

The CFZ wants to return to Guyana with the help of Damon Corrie to hunt the real giant anaconda. So far we have failed to interest any TV company in sponsoring us so when this shit befouls our screens it is all the more galling.

RICHARD MUIRHEAD: Polecats in Wiltshire

RICHARD MUIRHEAD WRITES: Hi folks, I found this article and blurred photo of a polecat today in my files. It is from The Salisbury Journal of June 14th 1984. I believe in the mid 1980s polecats had been absent from Wiltshire for something like 70 years.

If so, what was this one doing in Salisbury in 1984? The references to other sightings in the article are intriguing.

NZ MONTAUK MONSTER?

Just in: another strange carcass found on a beach; this time in Gisbourne, North Island, New Zealand.

It was found a day or so back by bloggo correspondent and doyen of NZ Cryptozoology, Tony Lucas.

You must admit that it looks considerably freakier than the Montauk Monster, with a weird ratlike tail and a fleshy protuberant nose.

In our opinion it is no placental mammal known to science.
This time it certainly ain't a dead racoon that had been given a Viking Burial by a bunch of stoned surfers. It was, by the way "about the size of a fox terrier" says Tony.

Watch this space. More later....

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday’s News Today

Yesterday’s News Today
http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

More news. If I didn’t know better I’d swear this was a daily occurrence….

Manly penguins get sniper bodyguard
Crickets and grasshoppers act as climate detectives
The watery grave of Europe's monsters
Big "Transsexual" Fish in Peril
Scotland tops league for fat dogs
Stolen swearing parrot returned
Cats 'exploit' humans by purring
Call to do more for vanishing bees
Invasive species 'spread around world in ships' ballast tanks'

To be fair, they must have ‘ballasts’ of steal to travel round the world like that…
(Yes, it is getting harder to come up with a pun every day, no matter how bad)