In the late 1990s his uncle bought a block of bush in Pillar Valley, in north-eastern New South Wales, with the nearest neighbour about two kilometres away. While the house was being built, the family of four lived in a large shed on the land: his uncle, his aunt, and their two daughters, aged six and ten.
One night, just as they were going to bed, their Jack Russell terrier began barking furiously at one end of the shed. His uncle opened the roller door into the enclosed carport, then one of the two heavy wooden doors to the outside. The other door barely moved, swollen against the concrete floor. The dog shot out into the tree line, still barking. A few seconds later it gave a yelp, and they heard it running away into the bush. Then nothing.
His uncle spent half an hour outside with a torch, calling the dog. When he came back in, his wife and daughters were huddled together in the middle of the room, staring at a window. Something, his aunt said, had been outside sniffing at the glass.
Before he could answer, they heard something heavy land on the roof, run the length of it and drop onto the gravel outside. His uncle hurried everyone upstairs to the bedroom and picked up a machete. Then it was on the roof again, crawling to the bedroom window, sniffing. The family squeezed into the small bathroom next door.
Whatever it was jumped down, ran right around the building to the carport and hit the wooden doors at full speed, throwing both of them open, including the one that was stuck fast. Then it pounded on the metal roller door four or five times before leaving, its heavy footsteps crunching away across the gravel.
In the morning they found the roller door bent inward, and both wooden doors forced open so hard that the concrete beneath them was gouged. The dog turned up two days later. The family lived on the property for about another ten years and, as far as their nephew knows, nothing like it ever happened again.