Creature record / 1906
August 1906. In the Eden district, on the Far South Coast of New South Wales, a local man named Alf Smith saw something a short distance from him. A hairy man. He fired his shotgun at it. It had no effect. The Bega Budget printed the story in a single paragraph. Smith said the thing strongly resembled a gorilla. It stood between 5 and 6 ft. high, with long hair over the main body and short arms. Then the report slipped into the archive and was forgotten. Decades later, Sydney yowie researcher Paul Cropper found it again.
The Bega Budget was a twice-weekly paper published in Bega, on the Far South Coast of New South Wales. William Boot founded it on 30 September 1905, and it merged into the Bega District News in 1923. Within its first year it printed a paragraph that would outlast the paper itself. Today the creature it described has a name. The yowie. Australia's answer to Bigfoot.