Transcript

Legendary Creatures of Australia - Documentary

From Fire of Learning · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 54 min · 8,587 words · 54 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Legendary Creatures of Australia - Documentary", an episode of Fire of Learning published February 28, 2025 (54 min, about 8,587 words). It mentions 14 people, works and ideas, including The Yahi, Bunyip, Yahi, Kelly Cahill, Graham Joiner.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Bill Rose, The Hunter
  2. – 15:00: Kelly Cahill, University of Tasmania
  3. – 25:00: Kelly Cahill
  4. – 30:00: David Unpen
  5. – 35:00: The Yahi, Bill Oi
  6. – 40:00: The Yahi, Graham Joiner, Rex Gilroy
  7. – 45:00: The Yahi, Rex Gilroy
  8. – 50:00: Bunyip, George Tapen, The Yahi, William F. Buckley
  9. – 53:40: Bunyip, Diprotodon

Notable quotes from "Legendary Creatures of Australia - Documentary"

  • Listed in a link in the description this video was made without the use of AI we would also like to thank Jesse and Bill Rose for being our most recent supporters on patreon…
    about Bill Rose · at
  • Uncertain but most researchers seem to believe it was anywhere from 6 to 10 years in the 2011 movie The Hunter starring William Defoe it is asserted that the silos scene…
    about The Hunter · at
  • The future August 7th 1993 a 27-year-old woman known as Kelly Cahill and her then husband Andrew were driving through the dandong ranges near the city of Melbourne in Southeastern Australia specifically along belgrave.
    about Kelly Cahill · at
  • Typical example of a story of an encounter with a creature found in Australian folklore known often as the yahi while this encounter is among the more famous it was not the…
    about The Yahi · at
  • Entity called the Yahoo this article was brought to light by Australian historian Graham Joiner in the 1970s who composed a list of newspaper reports of alleged Wildman…
    about Graham Joiner · at
  • Commonly referred to by the term yahi a term from an Aboriginal language which Paranormal Investigator Rex Gilroy helped popularize it was during the' 70s in particular that…
    about Rex Gilroy · at
  • However there is an enormous amount of variation to the descriptions of the bunyip across different indigenous mythologies and modern folklore in many cases it is described as…
    about Bunyip · at
  • Cultural memory of a creature called a diprotodon was a large herbivorous marsupial slightly smaller than a rhino that is believed to have inhabited the savannas and plains of Australia it's not often suggested that.
    about Diprotodon · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Kelly Cahill — Person · 4 mentions · first at
  • Graham Joiner — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Rex Gilroy — Person · 2 mentions · first at
  • Bill Rose — Person · 1 mention · first at
  • David Unpen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    A mythology of the Southeastern part of the island according to Aboriginal writer David unpen it is described as a horrifying humanoid creature sometimes said to be frog likee…
  • Bill Oi — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Time October 22nd 1977 a group of students including future Australian Senator Bill oi then age 12 are camping in the wilderness near the rural town of Springbrook in Queensland According To Oi at about 12:30 p.m. while looking through the.
  • George Tapen — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Who wander too close to the water according to the 19th century missionary George tapen it was believed that the bunyip had magical powers and could cause disease with its Roar…
  • William F. Buckley — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Among the indigenous with thorong people in modern day Southern Victoria named William Buckley was possibly the first European to believe he had seen a bunyip in the first…

Books & papers

Companies & orgs

  • University of Tasmania — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Where the thyine went extinct a team of researchers led by Dr Barry William Brook of the University of Tasmania performed a statistical analysis of 1,237 reported thilosene…

Concepts & topics

Full transcript with timestamps

Australia having been relatively isolated from the other continents for much of its history this land has developed and preserved many things which are not seen elsewhere can we say for certain that all of them are accounted for or is there more to discover in this unusual land ladies and gentlemen hello and welcome to fire of learning this is the campfire Series in this episode we're going to be traveling to the fifth world to discuss many of the strangest things said to have ever been encountered there from Cryptids to supernatural creatures to extraterrestrials and more before we begin we would like to mention that the sources we use to produce this video are listed in a link in the description this video was made without the use of AI we would also like to thank Jesse and Bill Rose for being our most recent supporters on patreon they join these supporters listed here who help to make

videos like this possible now then let's get to it for 4 and 1/2 years now here on our campfire series we have searched the planet analyzing dozens of mysterious stories and reports of creatures and entities alleged to exist but whose existence has yet to be confirmed by science however we wanted to begin this presentation today with a creature that is somewhat different from all the the others we have so far discussed in this series this creature can be regarded as a crypted in the sense that it is an animal which is claimed by some to exist but for which there is not sufficient evidence to prove scientifically that it does exist but it most definitely did exist in the past the recent past in fact the extinction of this animal occurred within living memory with the last of them perishing in 1936 presumably the last of them anyway way not everyone is so sure in fact there is good reason to question whether

this date was the true date of this animal's Extinction and even some cause to wonder if it's still out there hidden somewhere on the island of Tasmania this animal is the thilosene and it may be one of if not the most likely crypted to truly currently exist

while the thilosene may look like something from a fairy tale it was very much real the thilosene was a carnivorous marsupial that once lived in Tasmania Australia and the island of New Guinea it is also commonly referred to as the Tasmanian tiger or the Tasmanian wolf though this is purely because of its behavior and appearance being a marsupial it was not actually closely related to either just to be clear the Tasmanian Devil is a separate creature on average the thyen stood at a about 60 cm or 2 ft at the shoulder and was about 115 CM or about 4 ft long excluding the tail roughly equivalent in size to a dingo or coyote apart from its distinctive stripes the thyine was also known for its ability to open its jaw unusually wide up to about 80° both sexes also had pouches though only the females carried Offspring in them our understanding of thyine behavior is imperfect but according to historical

research chch it was nocturnal and crepuscular sleeping in dens during daytime it was reclusive quiet and relatively slow moving it walked on four legs but had the surprising ability to hop on two legs like a kangaroo possibly to move more quickly when alarmed it was probably an ambush Predator that primarily prayed on small animals it preferred to hunt in open grasslands shrub lands and Eucalyptus forests the length of the average lifespan is uncertain but most researchers seem to believe it was anywhere from 6 to 10 years in the 2011 movie The Hunter starring William Defoe it is asserted that the silos scene produced a Venom that paralyzed its prey this is not true this was invented to make the plot of the movie work unfortunately none of the noises the thos scenes made were ever recorded however various Witnesses from the 18 and early 1900s describe at least six distinct vocalizations for example

they seem to have made a noise that many witnesses described as a coughing wheezing or smothered bark the downfall of the species is believed to have begun around 3 to 4,000 years ago exactly why remains a subject of uncertainty in debate but regardless of what drove it it appears that silenes had disappeared from the Australian Mainland by at least 2,000 years ago they then persisted exclusively on the island of Tasmania for another few Millennia British settlement of Tasmania which began in 180 3 is believed to have been what finally drove the animal to Extinction the thilosene quickly became considered a pest because it prayed on livestock though it seems reports of livestock predation were exaggerated to what extent though is uncertain contrary to popular belief at the time experts today believe that the animal would have actually struggled to kill an animal the size of an adult sheep in the 19th

century the Tasmanian government began to offer a bounty for thyine scalps the popular ation was drastically harmed by this as farmers and Hunters killed thousands of them alongside this habitat destruction the introduction of dogs and possibly even disease may have contributed to the species decline as well it was not until July 10th of 1936 that the Tasmanian government moved to protect the species by this point it was far too late the last known wild thaline had been killed by a farmer 6 years earlier and only 2 months after received this protected status on September 7th 1936 the last known silus scene overall died in captivity at the bis Sue in Hobart Tasmania it is widely claimed that the last silos scene was a male named Benjamin but it was recently discovered that this is a myth that was invented in the 60s by someone who falsely claimed to have worked for the zoo the last stline was a female who did

not have a name so far as we can tell in 1982 after over 50 years since the last proven observation of the thine in the wild and 46 overall the animal was officially declared extinct 1936 is again the year in which the last known thyine died while there is no definitive evidence it is a very realistic possibility even probability that there were other members of the species who contined to live in the wild past this date but for how long it is difficult to say the odds that the thos scene still exists are admittedly not very good but they are not zero either and there are credible researchers who take the possibility that the animal remains alive hidden in the landscape of Tasmania seriously Tasmania is an island about the size of Ireland or West Virginia but as the home of only half a million people contains only a fraction of the population of either of these examples most of this population is

concentrated around the City of Hobart in the Southeast and in the Central North much of the island remains undeveloped Wilderness much of which is dense forest especially in the west of the island some of which can be difficult to access the idea that a species could Retreat to this Wilderness and remain hidden from humans for decades is entirely conceivable especially a relatively small shy animal again we don't have definitive evidence to say that this was the case but we certainly can't be confident that every single phocine had been accounted for the scientific Community has declared animals extinct only to find them alive later on before although admittedly many of these examples pertain to smaller and or more elusive Animals still the idea is controversial to say the least the conclusion that athine is extinct is not a careless assumption it is a conclusion reached after numerous thorough attempts

conducted by professional scientists and amateur enthusiasts alike to locate them that have been undertaken in the many years since its purported Extinction some of which were motivated by offers of large cash rewards each ended in Failure some of these researchers like Jeremy Griffith Eric R Gyer and Nick money devoted years of their lives to investigating sightings and searching for the thyine themselves only to come up empty-handed however there have been thousands of reported thly scene Encounters in the years since the extinction some of which were reinforced by photographic and video evidence while nothing has been proven legitimate it is important to note that some encounters were very detailed and made by credible and knowledgeable Witnesses such as Hans narding Hans narding was a Parks and Wildlife service ranger who lives in Tasmania he had been bird watching one day in March of 1982 the year the

creature was officially declared extinct near to gari in the northwest of Tasmania that night he slept in his vehicle he awoke around 2: a.m. to the noise of something moving outside his vehicle he shined his flashlight into the cold rainy dark forested landscape and the light landed on what he claimed he quickly realized was a thilosene about 6 to 7 m in front of his car the sighting he claimed lasted for around 3 minutes during which time he studied the creature as best he could he claimed he was at absolutely confident that it was a thilosene even counting the number of stripes on its back and determining that it was a male he had been reluctant to reach for his camera for fear of disturbing the animal and indeed he claimed when he finally did so it ran off a detailed sighting from someone so knowledgeable and experienced with Tasmanian fauna encouraged an extensive year-long investigation into the area

this however was ultimately fruitless in a 2023 p paper titled resolving when and where the thyine went extinct a team of researchers led by Dr Barry William Brook of the University of Tasmania performed a statistical analysis of 1,237 reported thilosene sightings made from the year 1910 or about 26 years before Extinction up until recently which they organized according to the quality and credibility of the reports they argued that while the phos scene is probably currently EXT it may have actually lingered on for decades in the remote areas of the island until the 1980s or even early 2000s likely somewhere in the western part of the island while Dr Brooke told Australian Geographic that he would guess its Extinction likely happened in the 1980s and that the ubiquity of video cameras in the modern world specifically in the form of wildlife cameras should have led to the proven discovery of one

by now if it were still out there according to their analysis there is a small chance it still exists it should be noted that not all thyine reports are restricted to Tasmania some have come from the Australian Mainland a famous example is the 1973 Doyle sighting and accompanying video the video taken by Liz and Gary Doyle in South Australia shows an unidentified quadrupedal animal running from a distance the footage is interesting and that the animal appears to be a light Brown doglike animal with an unusual gate and what vaguely even looks like stripes on its back however unfortunately the footage is not of sufficient quality to determine what exactly the animal was it has been suggested that it could have been a fox suffering from mange scientists are less convinced of the possibility of the species continued existence on the Australian Mainland largely because the available evidence suggests they

disappeared there thousands of years ago some have also considered that there may still be thines in the dense poorly explored forests of New Guinea with rumors specifically pointing to the balm Valley in the Indonesian half of New Guinea oddly there have even been a handful of relatively recent siline sightings in the US Canada and Britain but while some of the sightings specifically those in Tasmania May indeed be genuine and point to a later Extinction date for the thilosene if if not its continued existence certainly not all reports can be relied upon animals like dogs cats foxes and pelons have been misidentified as thines numerous times and hoaxes have been perpetrated as well for example people have painted stripes on dogs and photographed them from afar in attempts to fool the public the most recent hoax occurred in April of 2024 when a supposed American Tourist claimed to have encountered a living Liv silus

scene in Tasmania while driving at night he sent pictures of his purported encounter to The prominent wildlife biologist Forest galante various experts have analyzed the photographs and there seems to be a consensus that the incident was a hoax the evidence we have cited in this video suggests that the last phocine died with dignity having lived its life perhaps a full life mostly away from humans in the dense forest of Tasmania just a few decades ago but this is not certain and thus we can't help but Wonder Could it still be out there either way there will likely be more to be said about this magnificent animal and we look forward to what further research brings us in the future August 7th 1993 a 27-year-old woman known as Kelly Cahill and her then husband Andrew were driving through the dandong ranges near the city of Melbourne in Southeastern Australia specifically along belgrave Hallam Road in Nar Warren they were on

their way to an evening barbecue at a friend's house at some point along their Journey Miss Cahill noticed an unusual sight which described as five to six orange lights arranged on a distinct circular blimp shaped object sitting low on the ground in a padic off in the distance something unlike anything she had ever seen before she was was only able to glance at it for a few seconds before it passed behind the trees as they drove into a forested area when the couple arrived at their friend's house she mentioned the strange sighting to them but not much was made of it as the kills relaxed and conversed with friends she forgot about her sighting Miss Cahill had no idea that she was about to become the primary subject of the most famous story in Australian history of an encounter with entities alleged to be extraterrestrial in origin at around midnight the couple were driving home in the same area When

Miss Cahill noticed the mysterious object appear again this time it was in the air at a height of about twice the height of the trees she was now able to get a better view of it she claims that she realized that the orange lights were actually windows and that she could even see figures in them the object then flew away at great speed then returned a few moments later and flew over a field near them at this point which described as a wall of light appeared on the road ahead of them which blinded them as they drove into it then she blacked out the next thing she knew she and her husband were hundreds of meters further down the road with no memory of having gotten there there was no object nor anything unusual in sight just the countryside the road and her husband driving along it she claimed she felt quote unquote strangely relaxed the couple continued on their way home when they arrived Miss Cahill noticed

that they were an hour and a half later than expected and could not recall how that had happened this was only the beginning of a series of unusual difficult to explain things she noticed after passing into the light later upon examining herself she discovered a red 10 mm triangular Mark below her navl she could not explain a few weeks after that she was hospitalized for a womb infection which she claimed doctors treated with antibiotics but could not explain the origins of she also began to suffer from headaches and what she called out of body and out of mind experiences a number of strange things also began to happen around their house for example the television would turn on and off and their car would start all on their own around the same time the visitations began Miss Gill claimed she would awaken sometime at night during disturbing dreams to find that she and her family were not alone in their home a tall dark

shadowy figure with glowing red eyes wearing what appeared to be a hood had somehow entered her room during the night as she slept and stood over her watching her speaking to her while she slept each time just as she woke up enough to confront the Intruder it would stare for a moment then fade from sight as these unusual disturbances continued Miss kahill became certain that there was more to the night they had seen the strange object than she or her husband could recall fearing her memory had been lost she returned to the area in which she had seen the light and even consulted hypnotists to attempt to recollect any lost memories indeed over time memories of a profoundly dramatic and frightening experience began to surface and fill in the Gap in between the wall of light and the moment she awoke in the car she recalled that when they passed into the light she and her husband stopped the car and got out to look at the

object which they could now see was enormous the height of a three-story building and as long as an Olympic swimming pool they noticed two other cars had done the same meaning four other people were present six in total it was hovering over the field with its orange lights glowing and what she described as a blue fluorescent Mist underneath it then she noticed seven or eight figures emerg in front of the object tall dark skinny figures much like those which would later appear to her in her bedroom she was able to hear them speak but not audibly it was more like she heard them speaking telepathically she claimed she heard one of the figures suggest killing them the figures began moving towards them as they did so she said their eyes began to glow red she wanted to move but felt her body frozen and her mind dulled by some kind of unseen Force she was then hit in the stomach with what she described as a

kind of energy force that knocked her backwards she then went blind and felt incredibly ill paradoxically as they came close to her Miss Cahill claims she heard one of them this time audibly tell her and her husband we don't mean you any harm end qu she then felt a figure Place its hands on her and then her memory went blank to a point she could not recover the next thing she could recall was the memory of waking up in the car realizing what had happened Cahill began to contact local UFO and paranormal investigators namely Bill Chalker and John Alcatel Alcatel was the head of an organization called phenomena research Australia or P these researchers interviewed her and investigated the location in which it was said to have occurred when P put advertisements in local newspapers asking with intentional vagueness for anyone who had experienced anything unusual in that area to contact them they allegedly received many calls from

people claiming they had seen UFOs in that area as well as eventually four Witnesses who came forward claiming to have been the occupants of the cars that had stopped on the road alongside the K Hills after the researchers interviewed these other Witnesses it was claimed that their stories descriptions and experiences before and after the encounter were not not only incredibly similar to kahills In Spite of never having heard her story but that they were even able to add further details one of them claimed to recall being examined by a dark hooded entity while lying on a table in 1996 Kelly Cahill published a book detailing her experience titled encounter which became very popular in Australia she went on to give many interviews and talks about her experience around the world however then suddenly in 199 8 she stopped and withdrew completely from the public eye none of the other Witnesses

including her husband ever came forward publicly to discuss the incident and reinforce her claims P which had tasked itself with searching for physical evidence and interviewing the witnesses and had promised a 300 page report on the subject never published anything the case essentially suddenly halted and went quiet shortly before the turn of the millennium what happened to Kelly Cahill and the others involved in this case a point of great interest is that Miss K Hill's story Bears very striking resemblance to a famous incident which we have dedicated an entire video to the Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill which had occurred 32 years prior late one night in September of 1961 an American couple Betty and Barney Hill were driving through the mountains of New Hampshire when an unus usual light appeared in the sky the light gradually came closer and closer to them until suddenly everything went blank the hills

then awoke what seemed like a moment later to find themselves driving much further up the road with no recollection of what had happened to them feeling calm and relaxed they too arrived home much later than they expected in the days following they noticed unusual things on their bodies in vehicle and began having nightmares this led them to seek out hypnosis which alleged L revealed memories of having been taken aboard a strange ship and analyzed by unusual beings in the decades that followed there would be many other cases like this however Kelly Cahill's experience was distinguished by one very important detail the number of witnesses however while it seems to be what made this story famous there is an issue with this detail as we mentioned the other Witnesses have to date never stepped forward publicly preferring to remain anonymous allegedly two of them tried and even gave presentations about their

experience but then quickly withdrew from the public eye for fear of losing their jobs we could find no records of these presentations though that is not to say that they did not happen as far as we know and it is possible that we're mistaken it seems Miss Cahill never even met these other Witnesses therefore everything we know of every other witness apart from Miss kahill's husband has come secondhand from the UFO researchers thus we cannot verify that these Witnesses even existed let alone that they were really there that night nor especially that their stories really did match as for Mr kahill much like Barney Hill Miss kho claimed he initially said that he was not convinced that the abduction really took place even vehemently arguing that the whole thing was Her Imagination she claimed that their disagreements and the strain that the incident and the publicity that followed it placed on them was the main

reason for their eventual divorce however according to miss Cahill years later Mr Kill admitted to her that he did recall the abduction and had even seen UFOs before that encounter but having come from a deeply religious Islamic background did not believe the creatures were extraterrestrials but rather demons and therefore wanted to avoid the subject entirely he seemingly still does and thus has never provided his own account therefore while these other Witnesses may very well exist and while miss Cahill's explanation for her husband's reluctance to publicly support her story may very well be true the only verifiable witness of this incident is Miss kill what about the results of the investigation carried out by P why was their report Never released to the public according to a 2020 article by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as Miss Cahill began withdrawing from public life she asked the researchers to

remove more and more of her information from the draft of the report until Alcatel regarded it as so reduced as to be useless allegedly according to miss Cahill the investigation was 18 months long and cost the modern equivalent of over half a million Australian dollars the researchers allegedly uncovered a large triangular Mark in the field made of Pyne remnants of tanic acid coated in an unidentifiable axy substance a high amount of sulfur in the area and what was described as a large semicircle-shaped magnetic anomaly as well as a number of other irregularities Alcatel has reportedly mentioned that he is still open to releasing their research but remains reluctant suggesting he isn't willing to spearhead the case without Cahill or the other Witnesses and what caused Miss kahill's disappearance according to the same ABC article Bill Chalker claimed the unwillingness of the other witnesses

to step forward and what he claimed was a lack of support from P harmed The cas's credibility and discouraged her she eventually wanted nothing to do with the incident and moved past it and thus perhaps Australia's most dramatic UFO incident was publicized exploded and then evaporated with no evidence to analyze nor other witnesses to consult for the time being the story remains only a story we hope that you are enjoying the video so far if so we would like to encourage you to consider subscribing to support the channel and keep up with more content like this in the future now back to the video the Aboriginal peoples of Australia have long told of an ancient race of beings that dwell in the forests along the Pacific coast of the island who are to be avoided at all costs they have been referred to as the Australian vampires though this is an imperfect comparison indeed there is not much that

compares to these horrendous creatures they are known as the yahu or the yaru the yahu are specifically found in a mythology of the Southeastern part of the island according to Aboriginal writer David unpen it is described as a horrifying humanoid creature sometimes said to be frog likee in its appearance it stands at about 4 feet in height its skin hair and eyes are blood red its head is disproportionately large it does not have teeth and instead opens its large mouth to swallow its prey whole much like a snake its favorite prey is human beings the yaray yahu is said to wait at the top of fig trees for its prey to pass under it it then leaps onto its victim latches onto them and begins drawing their blood with cup-shaped suckers on the tips of its hands and feet the creature draws just enough blood to leave leave its victim alive but faint it will then stop and walk around for a short while while the

victim lays there in an agonizing days the yay yahu will then return lay upon the ground and devour its victim head first like a snake it will then rise walk to a nearby stream or lake to drink a copious amount of water and then sleep when it awakes it will regurgitate the victim who has likely remained alive throughout this process and then will rest again when the Yar Yahoo awakes it will agitate its victim to check for signs of life if none are shown it will walk away then return and try again if still no signs of Life are shown it will repeat this process two more times walking further each time before returning if no signs of Life are shown by the final attempt it will hide in wait for the victim to reawaken watching them closely should the yaray yahu fail to perform this ritual it is said that the spirit of the Tree in which it dwells will enter the creature's body and produce a loud mumbling noise that

ends with what is described as an intense silence that kills the yur yahu its Spirit then becomes a fungus that grows on the tree and produces a dull glow at night Tails advise that the best opportunity to escape the yay yahu is when it is napping after first regurgitating its victim others recommend playing dead until sunset when the creature sleeps as it will not eat a corpse the yayah who cannot run quickly and thus if the victim is able to their odds of Escape become favorable should they fail to escape however the yaray yahu will repeat this process of consumption and regurgitation each time its victim will reemerge shorter and with redder skin until eventually they become a yaray yahu themselves Aboriginal mythology adds that if a victim does escape aay yahu the creature may cause a drought throughout the land which will force the people to come to the trees to attempt to extract sap from

the bark which allows the yay yahu another opportunity to attack in the north of the island in a region known as arnam Land There is a somewhat similar figure known as garan garane is the name of an individual spirit being who lives in the rainforest of this region along the banks of the Liverpool River he is a humanoid creature though he has flaps of skin on his arms and legs that allow him to glide through the air by day garan sleeps under piles of leaves but it is held that when the sun sets he awakens to hunt and kill Those whom he finds in his domain garan leaps from the tops of trees onto his victims envelops them in his wings and then suffocates them to death he then proceeds to consume the interloper Aboriginal Tales emphasize that he does not know the secret of fire and thus consumes his prey raw the spirit of the victim will then be doomed to to wander the Wilderness for eternity

unable to rest Tales of beings such as these remind The Listener that should they find themselves in the forest of Australia they should proceed with caution and remember to check above them from time to time October 22nd 1977 a group of students including future Australian Senator Bill oi then age 12 are camping in the wilderness near the rural town of Springbrook in Queensland According To Oi at about 12:30 p.m. while looking through the window in their cabin he and his peers observed something unusual emerged from the nearby Wilderness he described it by saying it was quote about 3 m or 10 ft tall covered in hair had a flat face and walked to one side in a craba likee style end quote he added that it was smashing trees and saplings like matchsticks as it walked along its path the creature was allegedly seen several times on that day in clear weather and broad daylight and then again on the

following day by about 20 kids overall at the closest sighting the creature was a mere 10 m or about 30 ft from the camp though this occurred at night the creature was often observed through binoculars however and oi claimed that they were even able to measure its Footprints up close in spite of its humanoid appearance it was said that the footprints were too large to be those of a human this story was publicized in an article published The Following month by the Gold Coast bulletin after Ochi contacted them and reported it against the wishes of his teachers it is a typical example of a story of an encounter with a creature found in Australian folklore known often as the yahi while this encounter is among the more famous it was not the first nor the last all around the world there are numerous stories and reports of a certain category of crypted that could be termed Apen these are large at least

the size of a man but usually much greater bipedal primate like creatures said to reside in secluded areas famous examples include these sasquat of North America and the yeti of Asia as we have just seen reports of such creatures are likewise present in Australia as well in the form of the yahi descriptions of the yahwe vary across austral Australia but regarding the traits that are often reported it is said to be a hairy bipedal foul smelling aplike figure which stands anywhere from 6 to 12 ft its feet are said to be quite large its head round and it may have two teeth which protrude like fangs the hair is typically described as a kind of reddish brown or chestnut color the others have reported white gray and black hair reports concerning Its Behavior vary some describe it as shy and reclusive iive others speak of an aggressive and destructive creature over the years many incidents of property damage and harm to

both animals and humans have been attributed to the yahoi a man named Les Holland recounted an incident that occurred sometime before the late 90s while he and a friend known only as Stan were working on King Ranch in Cape York he claimed that one day Stan got in his Jeep and drove off to check on the cattle that were located about 2 miles away he was shocked to find Stan returning sometime later on foot he informed Les that while driving along a dirt road a huge ap-like creature had jumped out from the forest attacked his Jeep and knocked it over thankfully Stan managed to escape Upon returning to the site Les indeed found the car on its side with Dusty scuff marks on it though the culprit was nowhere in sight consistent with its aggression the yahi is said to be carnivorous or at least omnivorous it has been reported in many different environments though it is said to be most common in forest and

Wilderness and a top mountains the origins of the Yahweh Legend is a highly debated subject across the continent Aboriginal Australians have since before recorded history told of a number of creatures referred to by names such as changara nacona Jora guba dagar Etc which some have argued are merely separate names for the same creature perhaps the creature that we call the yahi as far as written records go the first we could verify dates to 1842 nearly 60 years after British arrival on the continent it was in that year that the Australia and New Zealand magazine published an article which discussed Aboriginal belief in a type of Wildman entity called the Yahoo this article was brought to light by Australian historian Graham Joiner in the 1970s who composed a list of newspaper reports of alleged Wildman encounters dating from 1842 to 1935 which he published in his 1977 book The hairy man of Southeastern Australia

he showed that there were numerous reported Encounters in Australia throughout this period with creatures that were often called yahoos wild men or Apen the term yahi was not very much in use at this time at least not by British Australians these reports describe Yahoo appearing to people in the wilderness outrunning horses harassing animals and people one man even claimed to have killed one that was harassing his neighbor pets in the 1880s however as was discussed in the 2006 book The yahi in search of Australia's Bigfoot by Tony Healey and Paul Cropper while it seemed Yahoo myths were well known among British Australians throughout much of the 1800s around the turn of the century the reports became very uncommon between the years 1900 and 1974 only 10 reports were noted then in the 1970s talk of Apen once again became very popular in Australia this time the creature was commonly referred to by the term yahi a

term from an Aboriginal language which Paranormal Investigator Rex Gilroy helped popularize it was during the' 70s in particular that reports of yahi encounters like Billow cheese were very common before long reports were accompanied by photographs videos and audio recordings of alleged yahs to this very day yahi sightings continue throughout Australia is the yahi real if so what is it if not what is it Australia is not nor has it ever been home to any known non-human primate the continent has been cut off from the other continents by C for 10 of millions of years thus if the yahi truly is real then it is either descended from apes that somehow manag to cross the sea in a way that nearly all other Afro Eurasian land animals could not which is not necessarily impossible or it is not a true ape but rather something quite unique some have proposed that it could be something more closely related to a

wombat or another marsupial species the idea that the yahi could be a marsupial Bigfoot and that nine foot wild men with a gift for alluding Discovery have convergently evolved multiple times may be just a bit too much to accept but it wouldn't necessarily have to be that identical Graham Joiner held a position similar to this he argued that the yaho was likely a real creature something more like a bear like marsupial and that many of the 19th century reports refer to this creature incorrectly labeling it an ape however he believes that the drop in sightings that the the beginning of the 1900s suggests it went extinct around that time and that the yahi is distinct from the Yahoo with the yahi being a fiction partly inspired by the 19th century Yahoo not many researchers have embraced joiner's hypothesis hel and Cropper argued that the droppen sightings could be because of the rapid urbanization of

the country in that time which led to the abandonment of the rural communities in which the Yahoo was frequently found Gary opid argu that modern environmentalist efforts have allowed the species to regain some of its numbers however the' 70s were a time in which Sasquatches and yetis became a Hot Topic around the world not just Australia this interest was sparked by the publication of the famous Patterson gimin film in 1967 which allegedly showed footage of a Sasquatch in California Brian Dunning of skeptoid tocom noted that the topic attracted the attention of the aforementioned par paranormal researcher Rex Gilroy around 1972 Gilroy began to look for Legends of eight men in Australian history and Aboriginal mythology indeed he found many examples in Aboriginal mythology of entities which ostensibly bore some resemblance to these creatures having made this discovery he contacted local

media Outlets soon it was reported across the country that Australia had its own Bigfoot as people set off to look for it reports of citing began to take off when Gilroy read joiner's Research into the 19th century Yahoo he concluded that the term yaho must be related to the word yahi a word he had encountered which referred to a certain mythical creature of indigenous mythology thus this became the predominant term for the Australian apman but were the terms actually related moreover how similar were the descriptions of these indigenous mythological creatures to the modern yah descriptions while the mythology behind some of these entities has unfortunately been lost we do know enough to say that many of them do have attributes that are different from those attributed to the modern apan sometimes starkly the 1842 article reporting on the Yahoo for example claims that native peoples describe it as a creature the size of a

man with long white hair that hangs from its head and covers its face extraordinarily long arms Talons on the ends of its hands and backwards feet other Legends of the supposedly connected entities s of beings that possess the power to hypnotize others and even some which can fly it seems as though the resemblance of the indigenous entities to the modern Bigfoot type yahwe and the 19th century yaho are rather tenuous at least in many cases as Dunning points out they are also not very similar to each other drawing into question whether they are really different names for the same entity the idea that the word yahoo was derived from the Aboriginal word yahi is also uncertain it's possible that it was again the 1842 article claims that Yahoo was what some Aboriginal peoples called a certain kind of creature that the British interpreted as a giant wild man this may have been an anglicization of

the word yahwe however Jonathan Swift's 1727 book guler's travels describes a fictional race of primat likee creatures called yahoos that dwell on island off the coast of Australia the book was published decades before Europeans knew much at all about Australia let alone indigenous folklor because of the popularity of the book British explorers use the word to refer to any sort of aplike Creature from the East like a rtings from Asia it may be that British Settlers of Australia used Swift's invented word yahoo to refer to the ape men of their own independently invented Legends and that the indigenous y ywi had no actual relation to the word yahoo the word yahi may simply have been chosen in the 70s from among the many names in Aboriginal mythology for various creatures because it most resembled the word yahoo thus in essence Skeptics argue that the yahi as it is known today May simply be the Bigfoot

and Yeti Legends transported to Australia in the 70s and then connected the creatures from indigenous Legends which may or may not have resembled it and British stories about yahoos after the fact in order to legitimize it it may be that each of these three categories of entity have their own independent unrelated origin even if inspiration from the others was involved in the latter two cases however the question remains if the yahi is not real what have so many people been seeing and Reporting as for joiners be like marsupio that went extinct in the 1800s idea it's an inter idea but there isn't any more evidence for that than there is the modern yahi actually less because no one has ever described seeing a creature like that there are then admittedly not many animals in Australia that could be easily mistaken for a yahi the only native animals which can reach a comparable height are emu and kangaroos

perhaps the best candidate is the red kangaroo which standing at about 6 to 7 ft on average matches the yahan size and and with its red fur in color they also scream and growl in ways that sound like what one might expect from a yahi the red kangaroo may very well be responsible for at least some sightings though the resemblance is not exactly striking many yahi sightings like OES are made in broad daylight with many witnesses involved How likely is it to mistake a kangaroo for a yahi in those conditions as always other explanations like hoaxes are not off the table though it has to be admitted that some stories are hard to explain still Skeptics are largely of the opinion that there should have been clear indisputable evidence of something as distinctive and large as the Yahweh by now if it truly did exist the evidence that does exist is far from conclusive and often inconsistent however Believers disagree and many

witnesses are confident in what they have seen ultimately until more tangible evidence is produced the yahi will remain a mystery it is in the Inland Waters and swamps of Southeastern Australia where one of if not the country's most well-known crypted is often said to dwell with a firm presence in the mythology of many of Australia's Aboriginal cultures the stories of this creature long predate European settlement by thousands or some have argued perhap perhaps tens of thousands of years the creature is known by many names but in English as the bnip the bip is described as a large amphibious or semi amphibious entity which poses substantial danger to any humans who have the misfortune of crossing paths with it it is generally said to be extraordinarily quiet but will from time to time make a great booming Roar a trait for which it is famous Beyond this however there is an enormous amount of

variation to the descriptions of the bunyip across different indigenous mythologies and modern folklore in many cases it is described as a long necked creature with the head of a horse or an emu large ears and tusks in some stories the bunp is a kind of giant monstrous starfish in others a half man half fish type creature with a matted crop of reeds for hair which lives in groups and in some stories its appearance lacks comparison appearing as a sort of unnatural Wicked Beast however most of the time especially as Paul Cropper and Tony Healey noted when it is described in a sighting as opposed to a myth it appears as a kind of seal dog type creature about 5 ft in length with black or brown hair prominent ears whiskers and no tail in Aboriginal mythology the bunyip is considered to be a kind of water spirit whose Origins lie in the Dreaming or the dream time the period when the world was formed by the

ancestral Spirits as mentioned it is often regarded as a malicious Beast said to attack drown and consume any humans who wander too close to the water according to the 19th century missionary George tapen it was believed that the bunyip had magical powers and could cause disease with its Roar when British Scholars and explorers first arrived in Australia and heard the tales of the bunyip in the late 18th and 19th centuries they took a great interest in it and set off to look for it however as some natives reportedly believed that the horses of the British were bunyips upon first Contact there was some doubt as to the reality of the creature's existence in spite of this some claimed they did manage to encounter what they believed to be bunyips or the remains which began debate about whether or not the bunyip was a real creature debate which lasts to this day an escaped convict who lived among the indigenous with thorong people

in modern day Southern Victoria named William Buckley was possibly the first European to believe he had seen a bunyip in the first third of the 19th century he described what he saw as something the size of a calf a Dusky gray color and covered in feathers and said that it only appeared when the water was calm though he claimed he could see only their backs never their heads or tails he mentioned that the natives were completely terrified of the creature and would flee at the first sign of one he claimed he intended to hunt one but was warned that the supernatural power of the Beast was too great and that even if he succeeded a curse would be placed on him in the following years sightings of alleged bunyips continued and supposed remains were even produced though a portion of these were demonstrated to be hoaxes or misidentifications still the possibility that the term referred to a real likely

mythologized creature remained serious to the naturalist of the day but what kind of creature while some expected to find a to new Beast others proposed that a creature already known to science was responsible for the sightings given the wide variety of descriptions of the bunyip essentially any animal was on the table although it was likely to be something uncommon a type of marine animal known as a dong which would sometimes end up in Inland Waters and crocodiles were considered because dongs and crocodiles live only in the north of Australia it was considered that their appearance in the south would have been unusual and inspired the bunyip legend seals specifically leopard and elephant seals which could also end up in Inland Waters were also top contenders it has also been considered that the creature responsible for the famous booming noise may be the australasian bitter as males make loud booming calls near bodies of

water during mating season however as it was considered that these creatures should have been well known to at least some Aboriginal groups and and as the continent and its fauna became better explored and understood other explanations arose one was that the creature was real but has been extinct for a long time a very long time this hypothesis was briefly discussed in our 2024 documentary what are the world's oldest stories in 1871 naturalist George Bennett of the Australian Museum proposed that the bunyip could be a cultural memory of a creature called called a diprotodon diprotodon was a large herbivorous marsupial slightly smaller than a rhino that is believed to have inhabited the savannas and plains of Australia it's not often suggested that it was semi- aquatic though even if not it or its fossils could have still inspired the legend another candidate is po chesties an extinct genus of

creatures very similar to diprotodon the idea is that even though these animals went extinct many thousands of years ago it is possible that they survived in the Legends and mythology of the Aboriginal Australian peoples whose ancestors did encounter them as was the focus of the aforementioned video preservation of oral traditions for many thousands of years does seem to be possible however researchers take the idea that the bunyip legend comes from a cultural memory of a real extinct creature with a grain of salt while it is possible there is nothing specifically suggesting it is the case currently bunyip sightings declined substantially in the 20th century however while less common to this day mysterious large unidentified SEI creatures are still reported in Australia's Inland Waters researchers tend to favor the explanations proposed in the 19th century that these sightings can be attributed to sightings of dugong

and seals and such things but is that really all there is to the bunyip regardless of what you believe we would encourage caution around the Inland Waters of Australia we hope you enjoyed this video if so we invite you to come check out the rest of fire of learning especially our other campfire videos and to subscribe to see more videos like this in the future our last campfire video looked at Germany there are not many true cryptids in Germany but plenty of mythical creatures to support the channel further there is a link to our patreon in the description a special thanks once again to our current suppor ERS listed here thank you for watching and be sure to join us next time around the campfire

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Legendary Creatures of Australia - Documentary"?

In order: 0:00 Bill Rose, The Hunter; 10:00 Kelly Cahill, University of Tasmania; 20:00 Kelly Cahill; 25:00 David Unpen; 30:00 The Yahi, Bill Oi; 35:00 The Yahi, Graham Joiner, Rex Gilroy; 40:00 The Yahi, Rex Gilroy; 45:00 Bunyip, George Tapen, The Yahi, William F. Buckley; 50:00 Bunyip, Diprotodon.

What is mentioned in this Fire of Learning episode?

14 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including The Yahi, Bunyip, Yahi, Kelly Cahill, Graham Joiner, Rex Gilroy. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Legendary Creatures of Australia - Documentary"?

The episode runs 54 min; the transcript is about 8,587 words in 54 timestamped sections.

More from Fire of Learning

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.