Around 1989 the family lived in the hinterland behind Queensland's Sunshine Coast, in a house that backed onto a wooded hill. One night the sixteen-year-old in the family couldn't sleep and lay listening to the drizzle.
Then came footsteps: heavy, deliberate thuds walking up the side of the house, as if someone was following the line of the awning to stay out of the rain, splashing through the puddles as they went. The rhythm was wrong for a kangaroo. The teenager froze while the rest of the family slept, as the steps passed right by the open bedroom window.
Within seconds whatever it was had climbed the eight-foot embankment behind the house toward the treeline, about 20 metres from the window. From up there came a guttural roar that rolled right across the valley. It swung between high and low pitches in a few seconds, and it was so loud the teenager felt it hit like something physical. On the far side of the valley, about two kilometres away, the neighbours' dogs went wild. They had never been heard before that night, and weren't heard again.
It was ten or fifteen minutes before the teenager could move, and only because a father had got up and was in the kitchen. He had heard it too but wasn't sure what to make of it. Years later, listening to recordings of supposed yowie and bigfoot calls, his child recognised the sound at once, and has no doubt now that a yowie walked past the house that night.
