Wednesday 24 June 2009

Australia's Loch Ness monster?


Does Nessie’s cousin live down under ?

Dharuk tribal Aborigines of New South Wales, Australia,have oral traditions( stories) of enormous reptilian ‘water monsters’ living in the waterways.. They told early European settlers about these creatures in the Hawkesbury River. Ancient cave art along the river depicts these creatures, which they called ‘Mirreeulla’ (means giant water serpent). It was described as having a snake-like head, long neck, large body, two sets of flippers and an eel-like tail. In 1797 the platypus was first identified and scientifically described on the banks of the Hawkesbury River , so a place for strange beasties being found.

According to Australian naturalist Rex Gilroy, the best not only exists but that the beasties using the central coast as a breeding ground.And he says he has hundreds of reports to prove it , detailed sightings of the creature collected by himself and his wife Heather over the last 30 years, the most recent in November 2000.

"In recent years there have been sightings of creatures surfacing as far up as Windsor," Rex said. "The latest was in the St Albans where there was a report of a 25-30 foot creature spotted swimming in the river. Some people who had been out fishing saw it swimming past the jetty where they were standing, with a snake-like head about a metre or so above water."

"Information collected so far suggests to me that the creatures are breeding somewhere offshore and laying their eggs inland. This would not be out of character, as there were both freshwater and saltwater breeds during the Cretaceous period," he said.

"They are still being seen in the Hawkesbury River of course, which is not surprising because it is such a deep river. Actually it's a sunken valley."

Sightings put the greyish black creature between 7 and 24 metres in length. Like Nessie, the Hawkesbury River monster is described as having a large body, two sets of flippers and a long snakelike neck and head.

Rex said new species, as well as those previously thought to be extinct, were being constantly discovered and scientists should be more broadminded in their research.

The length of the river is up to 120 kilometres and is very deep in places so enough room for large creatures to hide. There is an abundance of wildlife and fish in the river. It is known for large fish being caught there.

One sighting took place shortly after World War II , at the mouth of the Hawkesbury River, when a Mr Doug Bradbury and another man were fishing in a small rowboat. Suddenly a giant snake-like head on the end of a long neck, rose 6 metres above the water. The men dropped their fishing equipment and rowed quickly for the nearby shore. From the shore they were able to get a good look at the creature. It displayed, apart from the long neck and serpent-like head, a large body, with two sets of long flippers which were partly obscured by the water, and a long thick eel-like tail.

Some more recent reports:

Hawkesbury River Bridge - August 1979

“I was not seeing things. It was right there in the water, out there in the middle of the river with its snakelike head moving from side to side, four feet above the water.” That was how Miss Rosemary Turner, a young bushwalker, described the horrible reptilian creature that surfaced nearby as she stood on the bank of the Hawkesbury River, a few kilometres west of the Hawkesbury River Bridge, one August day in 1979. Rosemary had been resting during a hike in the surrounding bush and on the Sydney side of the river. The water was calm on a sunny afternoon around 3 pm, she later recalled-when, suddenly, a dark shape began to appear in the water ahead of her. "All of a sudden this large, shiny, scaly, black pair of humps rose two feet out of the water to a length of about 20 feet. I could clearly see two long flippers, at least a few feet in length, moving below the surface. At this moment a head appeared 15 feet ahead of the humps. The animal appeared to be facing an east-west position. Four feet of head and neck rose above the water and I could partly make out the tail just below the surface some feet east of the body. The head of this monster reminded me of a snake-ugly, and about two feet in length (by now she was observing the creature with her binoculars hastily snatched from their case)-but it quickly sank beneath the waves, the tail rising out of the water in a quick flip as the monster plunged into the depths, leaving a great wake in the water." All this time, Rosemary stood petrified watching the creature, still not sure what it was. All she could tell was that the animal was at least 45 to 50 feet in length.

May 1979

Report by another woman, Judy Morgan, of Sydney, who saw a huge animal in the same region at about 4 pm one Sunday in May 1979. “I had been watching water-skiers from the top of a 50-foot bank (Sydney side of the river) with my binoculars. Soon after the skiers had passed up the river in the direction of the Hawkesbury River Bridge about four miles to the east, I observed from about 300 feet out in the centre of the river a large pair of humps rise out of the water up to three feet."From where I stood I could clearly see two sets of long paddle-like flippers just below the surface, and these may have extended out at least several feet from the body. I also spotted a tail partly visible below the surface, and this rose to the surface after about a minute before submerging again. So far the creature's head had not appeared; but this suddenly also rose out of the water, snakelike, and on the end of a long, thick neck several feet above the surface. I estimate the animal could have been a good 40 feet in length, at least!"

So a sea serpent still living in modern day Australia or mistaken identity. Well very large fish have been reported in the river but what type of fish this would be is anyone’s guess.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sightings, but no pictures right?