Burrum River Swimmer - Yowie sighting QLD
At daybreak in October 2018 Josh and Robert were fishing from their boat in the Burrum River near Howard, Qld, and watched in awe as a Yowie swam across the narrow tributary they had anchored in.
This the encounter report as told by Josh.
I often go up to Howard to visit my friend Robert who has a great place beside the Burrum River and do some fishing. This particular morning we had launched our tinnie in the dark just before dawn and headed to a favourite spot to fish and watch the sun come up.
We had positioned our boat fairly close to the bank and dropped anchor, set our fishing lines, and had settled back to watch to sunrise over the river in front of us. It was about 20 minutes or so after we had set anchor and we were watching a beautiful early morning glow down the river as sunrise approached when we heard a large splash behind us and to our right.
We both turned thinking a tree had fallen into the water and were amazed to see, what we thought, was someone swimming across the river. Robert said to me “there is someone swimming across the river” and we watched as we could make out a head and shoulders bobbing up and down as it made its way through the water about 70-80 meters away.The bobbing motion looked weird and not anything like you would expect to see from someone swimming in the river. Neither of us uttered a word at this stage as we were trying to comprehend who would be swimming in the river at this time of the early morning and in this remote part of the river and across to a densely wooded and small island in the river. I knew there were several rural properties along the river but you wouldn’t swim here as the river's edge was quite rugged.
Burrum River location map.
We had both turned fully around by this stage and continued to watch the swimmer make his way across the river in a slow bobbing way but at no stage did we see any splash from arms. The swimmer reached the other side of the river and I was completely astonished when the swimmer climbed onto the bank. Robert said exactly what I was thinking, “what the Fxxx is that. We were watching a huge black figure climb from the river onto the bank standing upright and still for about 20 seconds as if to get its bearings and then disappear into the dense bush. We could see the incredible size and mass of this creature with a short stumpy head which we could only see from side-on. We looked at each other gobsmacked and looked back to where the creature had come out of the water and we could hear it walking through the scrub. We thought the creature was going to cross the small island and continue across the river to the other side so we quickly pulled in our lines, pulled anchor, and began to motor around the island to where we thought the creature would emerge. We went back and forth along the entire length of the island but never spotted the creature.
We finally decided to head back and contemplate what we had seen. It was an incredible experience!
A great report by Josh!!
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