Hughes Trail  New South Wales 2019

In May 2019 two bushwalkers were confronted by a "black-haired giant" on Hughes Trail in the Mt Jerusalem area of New South Wales. Peter and Justine Wentworth had been staying at a friend's place in the area and had checked out Rowlands Creek the day before and decided to walk along Hughes trail the following day. This is their account of what happened as told by Peter.

We had noticed the Hughes trail track the day previous and decided we’d go for a quick hike and explore it before heading off for another hike near Unicorn falls.  It looked like it was only about a km or so and we knew it wouldn’t take us long to get to the end. We had walked as far as we wanted to go and decided we would head back. It was a really nice morning and the sunlight filtering down through the trees created a beautiful atmosphere for walking.

Location of Mount Jerusalem

Location of Hughes Trail.

We were about halfway back along the track when Justine commented how silent the bush had become. It was so silent we stopped to listen for any sounds. It was then that we began hearing some faint disturbance in the bush up to our left. The disturbance in the bush was gradually getting closer when Justine said there is someone walking through the bush. I didn’t really think much of it as we would often come across other hikers when we were on our walks, and they weren’t always on the trail.

We started to walk again and looked up ahead expecting someone to pop out on the track. As we got closer to the movement in the bush we were peering into the trees when all of a sudden, we watched as a huge figure stepped onto the track about 50m in front of us. Justine grabbed my arm as we stopped in our tracks trying to process what we were seeing. Everything seemed to be in slow motion as we stared at the black-haired giant that was staring back at us. I quickly became incredibly frightened, and my heart was pumping with fear. I could feel Justine’s grip tightening as the creature turned slowly to fully face us. This thing would have been a good 7-8ft tall, easily, but it looked like its lower legs were too short and its thick upper legs too long. Its arms hung beside its body and came so far down that the hands were below its knees. Its head was big but dwarfed by its massive shoulders and its eyes looked very large and set back under a protruding brow ridge. I thought to myself, what the hell are you?

In the dappled light, we could see it had very dark hair all over its body, but the chest and face looked dark but hairless. The creature was almost as wide as the track and its body was so thick. I just remember locking gaze with its huge eyes that scared the crap out of me. In an instant, the creature began taking in loud deep breaths, one after another, after another and I remember Justine saying Oh no. We thought we were about to be attacked and we had nowhere to go, and nothing we had would ward of something as massive as this creature. It was just as we were expecting the creature to approach us and we run, that it half turned and moved swiftly into the bush. It was so fast that I further panicked thinking it was going to come around behind and ambush us. It didn’t happen. We stood motionless and listened to the sound of crunching and breaking of branches gradually receding. Just then Justine vomited violently and when she stood upright, she had tears rolling down her face. She said what was that and I grabbed her hand, and we bolted along the track in absolute fear we were about to get ambushed by the giant. I thought about making a beeline for into the bush towards houses we knew were somewhere off to our right, but I decided this would not be a good idea if we got lost. We made it back to where we parked, sick with fear, and took off back to our friend’s place. Justine cried the entire way.

Both of us had no idea what the word Yowie meant prior to this happening to and it was only after some friends made us aware of the name which I researched that I realized what we had seen.

We appreciate Peter allowing us to publish his encounter.

If you have had a Yowie encounter, please get in touch and we will respect your privacy 100%. We only publish reports if the eyewitnesses allow us to otherwise, we add the sighting information to our research database. Our email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.