Where the Bush Goes Quiet: Yowie Tales from Wauchope
Apr 29, 2025
The second leg of this trip takes us to visit family in Wauchope. Wauchope might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of cryptids, but sometimes the quietest towns have the strangest stories.
Tucked inland from Port Macquarie on Australia’s Mid North Coast, Wauchope is surrounded by thick forests, winding rivers, and untouched bushland, the kind of landscape that leaves just enough room for something to stay hidden. And according to some, something very large has done exactly that.
Locals have long whispered about Yowie sightings in the region. Described as towering, hairy, ape-like creatures, Yowies are Australia’s answer to Bigfoot. They’re most commonly reported along the Great Dividing Range and into the dense forests of New South Wales and Queensland, but sightings from the Mid North Coast, including the hinterlands near Wauchope, have been quietly stacking up for decades.
One of the most talked-about incidents in the area involved a man traveling through the bushland west of Wauchope who claimed he saw what looked like a massive, upright figure move across the path ahead of him just after dusk. He described a musky smell and a heavy silence that followed, as if the rest of the forest had gone still. He never saw the creature again, but the memory stayed with him for years. His story echoed others from across the region: dark shapes seen in the distance, tree knocks in the early morning, footprints too large to be human. In fact, several documented sightings have emerged from Wauchope itself:
In June 2010, a couple living on a 2.5-acre property surrounded by thick bushland experienced a series of chilling events. On the evening of June 19, one of them heard heavy footsteps in the bush mirroring his movements as he approached his car. Each time he stopped, the footsteps did too. On June 26, his partner heard branches snapping and something heavy approaching. She described seeing a black, four-legged figure around 4.5 feet tall charging toward her in the dark. She screamed, and the creature vanished. The following night, the couple and a family member used a spotlight and observed a large, human-like silhouette on a nearby ridge about 300 meters away.
Another story dates back to the 1980s, when loggers working near Wauchope reportedly discovered enormous footprints with six toes, each measuring half a meter in length and spaced about three meters apart. The discovery was so bizarre it became a tale passed between workers, often shared as a warning not to wander too far alone. One man reportedly joked, “Don’t stray from the dump site to take your dump.” Whether serious or not, the prints left an impression, one that fed the area’s growing catalogue of strange, unexplainable encounters.
While many attribute the Yowie stories to misidentified wildlife or overactive imaginations, the sightings persist, enough that local researchers and enthusiasts have started mapping patterns of reports from Kempsey to Wingham, with Wauchope sitting right in the middle of what some call a “hot zone.”
Whether myth, misidentification, or something more, the stories coming out of Wauchope, and the thick wilderness surrounding it, serve as a reminder that Australia’s cryptid lore isn’t confined to dusty outback legends. Sometimes, it’s hidden in the hills just beyond the road, in the shadows of the trees, where silence still lingers long enough to wonder what else might be out there.