YOU have probably never seen a yowie. You might not have even heard of them.

But one man has not only dedicated his life to hunting down the mythological beast, he says he’s been almost killed by one — twice.

Yowie researcher Dean Harrison has described his too-close encounters with the mysterious apelike creature, which is comparable to the North American Sasquatch or the Himalayan yeti.

He says he was nearly killed by a yowie on two occasions, first in Ormeau in the Gold Coast hinterland and again in Kilkivan near Gympie.

“That was a game changer. I can’t go back into the bush by myself. I just got hit with a big dose of reality,” he toldQT.

“I nearly got taken down by one at Ormeau in 1997 and that was really scary. It was only by the grace of God that I survived.

“I made a phone call at 11pm in a clearing before going into the bush and if I hadn’t I wouldn’t be here today. This thing really meant business.

“But the crunchier was in 2009 at Kilkivan and if a few guys weren’t there to rescue me I wouldn’t be here. That took a good eight months to get over.

“The scary thing is that yowies have a massive advantage over us because of their eyesight in the dark. The thing that knocked me over ran down a hill in pitch darkness past obstacles, tree, and logs. The angles were so steep but it sprinted down.

“It didn’t miss a beat. The one that chased me at Ormeau was the same.”

The yowie is Australia’s very own Bigfoot. They are reputed to live in the wilderness and witnesses claim to have seen them in all states and territories on the Australian mainland.

Ipswich, west of Brisbane, is right now considered a yowie hotspot among researchers.

Yowies go by a few names in various regions — puttikan, yahoo and tjangara among them — and tales of their existence have long featured in Aboriginal stories and oral histories.

The first so-called interaction between a yowie and a white man was thought to be in 1882, involving amateur naturalist Henry James McCooey somewhere between Ulladulla and Bateman’s Bay on the NSW coast.

But you’re more likely to encounter a yowie in the form of the chocolate bar that shares its name.

Yowies, like the Abominable Snowman, are overwhelmingly considered the stuff of legend, perhaps even an endearing part of Australian folklore. Alleged sightings have been deemed misidentification or pure hoax.

But a significant community of believers, such as Mr Harrison, are adamant these two-metre-tall creatures do exist, and are roaming freely in the Australian bush.

He told the QT he believed the yowie could be a Homo erectus, which is thought to be an extinct species of hominid.

“They are said to be extinct but there are so many sightings, almost daily, that can’t be ignored,” Mr Harrison said.

“It has been happening ever since white settlers arrived here. We are told by the Aboriginal people about the hairy man in the bush and we thought it was a ploy to scare us away.

“But as we were building roads and towns in virgin forests we were seeing them all around the country at the same time.

“They were reporting back to London that we had our own indigenous primate.

“I think their genes are very strong and that they might have a life expectancy pretty close to ours. Maybe not as long as ours, because if something goes severely wrong they can’t go to the doctor.”

That’s not all. Mr Harrison, who has been researching yowies for 20 years, also says many people who go missing in the bush were likely abducted by the creatures. He has even claimed he once saw a yowie get tagged with a tracking device by intelligence agents at a rural Queensland army base in the 1990s.

However, ASIO has confirmed it is “not currently monitoring any yowies”.

But not only are they out there, they might also be able to speak English and Latin, another witness, Tony Duffy, claims.

He said he encountered a yowie one night in the bush near Gympie.

“I got a fright and so did he,” he told the Gympie Times.

“He was quickly able to learn a few words in English and we spoke for about two hours. They’re very intelligent.”

He said the yowie returned the next night “with his wife and daughter”.

Mr Duffy believes yowies are endangered creatures whose basic shelters in forests are often destroyed by humans.

“My whole mission is to protect them and to convince people to leave them alone and not hurt them,” he said.

“In the last 12 months I have had close contact with yowies on at least seven occasions.

“These creatures must be protected and respected. Yowies are clearly ‘the missing link’ that scientists have looked for decades. I believe they are the greatest discovery in the history of natural science.”

Former Queensland senator Bill O’Chee has also claimed to have seen a “hairy, apelike thing that probably would have stood about eight feet (2.4m) tall” at a campsite at the Gold Coast hinterland in the 1970s.

Just as there are countless reports by sceptics on the internet that scoff at the suggestion of yowies, there are earnest claims to the contrary.

And not just in Queensland — Mr Harrison’s website has videos of eyewitness testimonies of sightings in places such as Brooklyn, Grafton and Kempsey in NSW, Kalamunda in Western Australia and Bendigo and Beauchamp Falls in Victoria.

Aside from these accounts, evidence for yowies has included unusual nocturnal noises, scratchings on tree bark and casts of footprints.

These have each been dismissed by sceptics — noises can belong to other creatures, scratching can be caused by lightning strikes, footprints can be faked.

So there remains no irrefutable proof that yowies exist. But pulses did race in 2013 when Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes claimed he had used DNA testing of hair samples to solve the mystery of the yeti. The results were subsequently challenged.

But Professor Bill Laurance from James Cook University says we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the dedicated work of cryptobiologists, such as Dean Harrison, as they hunt down these elusive beasts.

“While it’s tempting to giggle occasionally, cryptobiologists have made many valuable discoveries,” he said in 2013, pointing to Lazarus species such as the Mindoro fruit bat, the Laotian rock rat and Australia’s mountain pygmy possum and Wollemi pine.

“All of us — even including soberminded scientists — enjoy a mystery and the search for the unknown,” he continued.

“And it’s not as though nature has come even close to revealing all its secrets. It’s currently thought, for instance, that less than half of the plant species in the Amazon have been scientifically discovered, and possibly just a tenth of the planet’s insect species.

“All this means we should probably keep an open mind about the world’s biological mysteries.”

OTHER MYSTERIOUS CREATURES

Yeti, Himalayas

For decades mountaineers have reported seeing an ape-life creature roam the snowy Himalayas. Also known as the abominable snowman, the mythical yeti has its roots in the Sherpa lore and has been prominently depicted in popular culture as a tall, hirsute humanoid with sabre-like teeth. Questions over whether the yeti truly existed returned scientific discussion in 2013 when famed UK geneticist Bryan Sykes claimed he’d matched hair from an “unidentified animal” to samples from an ancient Norwegian polar bear. It was later found the hair belonged to a species of brown bear.

Loch Ness monster, Scotland

This legendary aquatic creature supposedly lurks in the vast waters of Loch Ness in the Scottish Highlands. The desperate search for Nessie has sparked numerous expeditions and sonar studies, and photographs purporting to be of the monster have long captured the public’s imagination. A popular theory suggests the monster is a prehistoric marine reptile. People have claimed to have spotted Nessie for decades, but this year sightings are reported to be at a 13-year high.

Bunyip, Australia

The bunyip, a terrifying creature with a bloodcurdling cry that supposedly inhabits inland swamps and billabongs, is firmly regarded as a fictional monster derived from ancient stories. But there have been numerous claims of sightings of the creature, dating back to the early days of European colonisation. Stories of the bunyip have been used to by parents to deter kids from roaming in the bush or falling into waterholes. Former prime minister Paul Keating also famously used the insult “bunyip barons” to describe the Opposition.

Sasquatch, North America

Sasquatch, or Bigfoot, is one of the most iconic subjects of zoocryptology — the study of creatures that are rumoured to exist. Sasquatch is reputed to live in forests around the Pacific Northwest region of North America, in the US and Canada. Its legend was immortalised in an infamous 1967 short film that depicts a hairy, unidentified creature — many believe it was proof of the creature, while many others said it is a hoax carried out by a man in an ape suit.

What's the deal with Bigfoot? What's the deal with Bigfoot.

Drop Bear, Australia

If you’re reading this from overseas, be warned: do not mess with drop bears.

They are supposedly a large, predatory creature related to the koala.