The 1893 Bathurst Yowie Footprint Report

Record summary

A Bathurst-area story cited in Australian yowie chronologies reportedly involved unusually large footprints attributed to a hairy or humanlike bush creature. The episode is potentially useful for tracing the movement of “yahoo” and “wild man” motifs from local newspapers into twentieth-century cryptid literature. Its evidential value is limited because later accounts often omit the original paper, witness identity, dimensions and whether the prints were preserved. Researchers should search Bathurst and Sydney newspapers for the exact wording and assess whether the report was presented as news, folklore or a prank.