One of the familiar phenomena arising from the COVID-19 lockdown is the iso-beard. Chaps and chums all over the globe, liberated from the repressive regime of grooming for work, have thrown in the razor and joyfully sprouted facial fungus. On a recent four-way Zoom with some UK mates, three participants were sporting some degree of hirsuosity – and proudly sporting florid whiskers was none other than your current author.

So what? it would be reasonable to ask. Well, it turns out that there’s a phenomenon hereabouts which has been described in a book, The Hairy Man of South East Australia by historian Graham Joyner. True, it’s not about local men with iso beards – rather, it looks into a phenomenon some call the Yowie.  Versions of this creature appear in some form or another in many cultures: a cryptid – a mythical or legendary animal the existence of which is yet to be proved, like Bigfoot, Sasquatch or the Yeti.

I don’t really want to go into all the whys and wherefores about whether these things exist or not, but it is interesting that they show some broad similarities: an ape-like animal, very tall (up to 3.6m or 12 feet), very hairy, with long arms and more often than not sporting very large feet. In Australia, the Yowie seems to be based on Aboriginal myths, possibly linked to the dreamtime.

In Queensland, it’s called a quinkin and is depicted in numerous cave paintings as a tall, thin creature with boggly eyes and stick-like limbs. But across this vast and dusty land, there are all number of names: no less an authority than Wikipedia lists ghindaring, jurrawarra, myngawin, puttikan, doolaga, gulaga, thoolagal, yaroma, noocoonah, wawee, pangkarlangu, jimbra and tjangara. Something for everyone there.

There’s some dispute about the name Yowie, though. Joyner argues that this name only came about in 1975, following a local paper’s review of an American book about Yetis and Sasquatches. Before that, there hadn’t been much Australian interest in the hairy man phenomenon for decades. And when there was, it was called the Yahoo, not the Yowie. That same year, with the rekindled interest in the Yowie, a bounty of $200,000 was offered for a live specimen, which remains unclaimed to this day.

Whatever the name, the Braidwood area is a hotbed of activity. Batemans Bay, just down the road, boasts the first contact between settler and Yowie in 1882, when one Henry James McCooey saw a dark, hairy figure being mobbed by birds, and although it stood a mere 5’ high, its limbs were disproportionately long. The curator of  Sydney Museum scoffed at this sighting and offered McCooey £100 to hunt down the creature. And the reward remained unclaimed.

But get this, in 1893, right here in Braidwood, a gentleman by the name of Arthur Marrin, a producer of soft drinks, was out making a delivery when he was scared by a mysterious creature. It was “standing on its hind legs like a man,” he recounted, so he flung a stone at it, knocking it over, and bashed it on the head with the butt of his whip, killing it. With a rather modern eye to publicity, he displayed the body to an assemblage of journalists before burying it in an unknown location – which means it can’t be exhumed for modern scientific analysis.

As recently as 1996, a couple driving from Braidwood to Batemans Bay encountered a creature they described as ‘man-like’, only taller at 7’4”, with excessively long arms. It crossed the road and went into the bush – but not before taking a backward look at the gobsmacked couple, who’d brought their car to a halt on eyeballing the furry apparition. They were justifiably rattled, neglecting to pull out their smartphones to record the encounter, and continued on their way with renewed haste.

We’ve driven this road a few times, and believe me, when it’s raining and night is falling, you half expect something inhuman to shamble across the road in the half-light and scare the bejesus out of you.

Unsurprisingly, a community of Yowie-hunters has grown up over the years, aided by the power of the interwebs to bring like-minded people together to share information. Australian Yowie Research is a hub where you can read up on Yowie lore and report your Yowie sightings. There are a lot of sightings — put it all together and it’s not surprising that people passionately believe the species exists and is out there still, waiting to be discovered.

Chocolatiers Cadbury even launched a choccy Yowie which became Australia’s top confectionary choice. Ludicrously, when Canberra journalist and cryptid-hunter Timothy Bull branded himself Tim the Yowie Man, Cadbury sued him for using ‘their’ name. Tim won, having proven to the judge’s satisfaction that it was unlikely people would confuse him with a small piece of brightly-wrapped chocolate.

The burning question is, in this time of the iso-beard, will Yowie sightings increase? It’s a worry — you could be out there, lurking about the forest with, say, your camera, stalking tiny birds, with a hoodie on and your iso mutton-chops flourishing, and someone shoots you for the $200,000 bounty. Just saying. Unintended consequences and all that — it pays to be careful.