cont....
The weather turned cold, damp and misty as we drove our car up Wandandian Mountain road, which took us 65 km deep into the range. Leaving our vehicle to follow a disused forestry commission track on foot we examined broken wattle saplings, up to 8 cm thick, that Alf had found recently and which had been snapped off up to 1.6 m above the ground, and split down the centre by 'something' as if to get at the Witchetty Grub caterpillars burrowing inside. The area had been drenched with rain overnight and mist was shrouding the area. We found traces of large footprints embedded in the muddy, grassy forest soil and a faint musty smell still hung about the site.
Soon afterwards we found several indistinct footprints leading through ferns. These we measured. They were 22 cm wide at the heel and 60 cm long, but the toe impressions had been weathered away by the rain. Near the footprints Alf found a large tuft of sword grass, pulled almost out of the ground, an act requiring considerable strength.
We also found a large Woolybutt tree sapling broken in half and twisted, something that no normal human being would have been capable of. Next to it a large wattle sapling had been pushed over, its roots ripped out of the ground. A few metres away from this was a long thick rotting tree trunk 30 cm in thickness, the top of which had been ripped away by something searching for grubs and other insects.
As we continued our search nearby, we found another large wattle sapling pushed over and in the wet forest soil a number of footprints measuring 60 cm long by 30 cm wide but the toes were again indistinct owing to the rain. I also found another footprint 60 cm long by 22 cm wide across the toe area. The heel measured 18 cm wide by 19 cm long. The prints were near a thicket of wattle saplings, most of which had been broken over and the ground disturbed, as if a search for beetles had been conducted.. The prints were probably only a day old. Here also we could still detect a faint musty odour.
We also had the distinct feeling that we were not alone. No sounds of birds or any other animal life could be heard. Pouring rain forced us to abandon our investigation at this point and we made our way back to the car. However, Alf directed us further along the Wandandian road to the area where he had earlier found the long tuft of hair.
The location was above a 20 m high cliff overlooking a valley into which we found a way down through a cutting to the dense forest below. Hereabouts, strewn like giant's toy building blocks were enormous, monolithic blocks of sandstone/ironstone containing masses of crevasses, caves and ledges. The area showed no signs of previous human visitation, but the unmistakable feeling that we were being watched by something was present. The situation was made all the more eerie by the lack of bird sound in the trees. After almost getting ourselves lost amid the monolithic blocks and dense forest terrain we finally found our way back out of the mist-shrouded valley.
