Australasian Ufologist Magazine
Volume 3, Number 3. 3rd Quarter 1999
Copyright (c) Rex Gilroy 1999
Giants of the Dreamtime
As an open-minded field researcher of Australia's ancient past and 'unexplained' mysteries generally, I have never been able to accept the 'traditional' view that the first stone-age inhabitants of Australia were the Aborigines.
Spurred on by this belief, in the mid-1960's I began an extensive field investigation in search of supportive evidence for my theory. After a three year search I stumbled upon an extinct Pleistocene [ice age] course of the Macquarie river near Bathurst, in central western New South Wales.
Projecting from a former bank of this river at one site, I discovered numbers of massive stone implements; hand-axes, clubs, adzes, knives, hammer-stones and other tools, ranging in weights of from 5.5 to 16.5 kg.
Such huge 'megatools' could only have been made and used by hominids of immense stature and strength. I afterwards learnt of local Aboriginal traditions of a race of giant men and women, the 'Jogungs', who stood twice the height of a normal human, and who once roamed central western New South Wales.
In the years ahead I recovered further 'megatools' at other locations around Bathurst, while other have also been recovered at sites in northern New south Wales and central Queensland. The most recent megatool is a monstrous 'chopper' made of basalt, it weighs 20 kg, having been found by me near Nundle, south-east of Tamworth, in the New England district of northern New South Wales.
It is the largest and heaviest megatool I have so far discovered. The former tribespeople of this region believed in a race of giant man-like beings called "Wolumbin", that roamed the earth in the long-ago 'dreamtime'.
But who were these giant toolmakers? Massive fossilised jaws and teeth, dating back 500,000 years have been excavated by archaeologists in Java and China, which anthropologists have named Meganthropus palaeojavanicus, the "Giant Java Man", a race of hominids of around three metres height, and of immense strength, weighing around several hundred kilograms.
Many anthropologists see Meganthropus as a giant, genetically mutated offshoot of the smaller 'Java Man'. Homo erectus, who gradually evolved into modern humans. Similarly, I maintain that the tool-making giants of Bathurst and elsewhere were a locally evolved, giant form of a Homo erectus population; and if so, this implies that Homo erectus had been resident here for a considerable period of time; a proposition supported by the combined researchers of leading geneticists and anthropologists worldwide, who suggest that a race can take up to 150,000 years to evolve.
Aboriginal tradition states that the giant people had inhabited the continent since before the appearance of their ancestors. If the ages suggested for some of the great many fossilised giant, and smaller hominid footprints found Australia-wide are any guide, new and startling conclusions will eventually have to be drawn by scientists concerning our human origins.
I maintains that, during early ice-age times, the land shelf that extended from mainland Asia down through what is now island south east Asia, did not stop at Indonesia as conservative science dictates, but that it continued onto New Guinea-Australia [then a single landmass that included Tasmania].
Recent geological findings are beginning to support my arguments. This 'bridge' would have enabled any number of primitive, pre-Aboriginal races to migrate here. Just how long ago Australia was first settled is a mystery, for while conservative university based archaeologists and anthropologists persist in their dogma that only Aborigines settled Australia, there are a growing number of enigmatic fossils being recovered throughout the continent which question this view.
During the gold rush days of the mid-19th century, when thousands of man worked the creeks over a wide area of the Kanangra-Oberon-Tarana-Bathurst district west of the Blue Mountains, prospectors found many giant-size and smaller man-like fossilised footprints, and huge stone 'megatools' in the course of their operations.
They were often informed by tribesmen that these relics belonged to 'Barrmi Birgoo' the "giant fella taller than gum tree", who inhabited the land since long before the Aborigines. As he walked across the countryside the ground shook, they said. The vast Kanangra Boyd National Park, south-west of Katoomba, itself part of the greater Blue Mountains National Park, has seen much volcanic activity in ages past, and it is in the solidified ash deposits that many human footprints occur, including those of more than one type of giant hominid.
My most important [fossil footprint] evidence of pre-Aboriginal giant and smaller Australian races to date has been recovered hereabouts. In September 1994, deep in the Kanangra wilderness, I discovered a shoal of solidified volcanic mud and ash at least two square kilometres in extend, which had covered an ancient swampland.
Upon a section of this shoal I stumbled upon a giant-size, fossilised hominid foot impression, a right foot with an opposable big toe facing east. More ape-like than human, it measured 62 cm in length by 36 cm width across the toes, with a heel 21 cm in width and embedded 10 cm deep into the rock.
Two metres south lay another large right foot impression, more human in appearance, facing west. It measured 52 cm in length by 25 cm width across the toes, with a 14 cm wide heel, embedded 2 cm deep in the rock. Twenty-one metres north of the first fossil foot find I later found a third example; an opposable big toed left foot, facing west, and measuring 65 cm in length by 33 cm across the toes, with a 15 cm width heed, embedded 4 cm in the rock.
These fossils demonstrate that at least two races of giant hominids inhabited this primordial swampland; one a primitive ape-like race, the other more human, the measurements of these tracks allowing for size distortion, suggest beings of three and four metre heights.
The identity of the giant ape-like footprints is debatable, but they bring to mind the Gigantopithecus, a race of herbivorous three metre tall man-like apes, that inhabited mainland and wouth-east Asia in early ice-age times. Even larger gigantuan forms of Gigantopithecine [ie Barrmi Birgoo] description were known to tribespeople across Australia. But who was the maker of the modern human-looking giant footprint?
A giant Australian form of Homo erectus, or some other, as yet unknown giant form of primitive man, and who shared Australasia with Gigantopithecus? Homo erectus certainly occupied Australia at a remote period, as evidenced by two fossil Homo erectus endocast skull types, recovered by me at Mudgee [1997] and Warialda [1999] New South Wales.
These skulls and other evidence, also convince me that the giant and smaller Homo erectus forms were the origin of the Aboriginal Yowie ['hairy man'] traditions [and of which, like the skulls, more will be said in future Australasian Ufologist Magazine articles].
In the same volcanic deposits as the giant fossil hominid footprints, during September 1994, I uncovered the fossil 'trackway' of a single creature; several normal human-size footprints, extending on the former swamp shoreline for a distance of three metres from north to south. Allowing for distortion when made, the tracks measure 33 cm in length by 16 cm width, and up to 12 cm in depth.
As with the other, giant footprints, these more modern-size specimens had been impressed into recently cooled ash which later solidified. Yet another gigantic hominid fossil foot impression was added to the Kanangra list, when in December 1998, in the company of fellow 'unexplained mysteries enthusiasts, Andrew Leese and Erik Spinney, I stumbled across a specimen measuring 68 cm length by 50 cm width across the toes, 331 cm width at mid-foot and 27 cm width across the heel, being embedded 14 cm deep in the rock.
A right foot, the big toe impression measures 10 cm length by 8 cm width, the others measuring between 6 and 7 cm in length and between 7 and 11 cm in width. Even allowing for distortion in the originally soft cooled ash and mud, the owner of this 'titan tootsie' would easily have stood around four metres in height and been of powerful build!
But just how old are these footprints? According to geologists, the volcanic deposits hereabouts were laid during Pliocene times, up to three million year ago! In October 1996 at Katoomba, while exploring along a clifftop overlooking the Megalong Valley, I came across two fossilised footprints of a truly gigantuan man-ape creature. There was an incomplete right foot measuring 60 cm length by 50 cm across the toes, pointing south, with the second, complete [right] foot impression 34 cm away pointing west, measuring 73 cm in length by 50 cm across the toes.
Both tracks are in weathered mudstone about 3 cm in depth. The maker of these impressions would have been nothing less than four metres in height, possessing exceptional muscular strength! The Blue Mountains is a 'treasure house' of fossil hominid footprints. Other large outcrops of giant and smaller fossil tracks have been uncovered by me in the the New England district and Carrai Range of inland and north coastal New South Wales.
For example; Aboriginal tale s of former giant races occur Australia wide. The 'Illankanpanka' who roamed central Queensland in the long ago 'dream time', were said to be over four metres tall Monstrous stone implements found throughout this region, at least twice the size of the Bathurst NSW megatools, are claimed by Aborigines to have been made by these giants.
They resemble the 'Kraitbull' of South Australian Aboriginal lore, who also made implements of prodigious weight and size. Central Australian Aborigines still fear the 'Pankalanka People', three to four metre tall cannibalistic monsters who cut up their Aboriginal victims with big sone knives.
A similar giant race are the 'Tjangara' of South Australia; while Western Australian tribespeople feared the monstrous three metre or so tall gorilla-like 'Jimbra'. Throughout Queensland's far north, early Aborigines feared a race of hairy man-ape giant called by them the 'Turramulli'.
And Aborigines say that a number of huge fossilised footprints found near Maryborough, Victoria, were left by giant people fleeing a volcanic eruption. Their footprints were captured in the sand by flowing ash and lava, to be brought to the light of day after eons of time had elapsed, and their maker had vanished from the earth.
About the Author: Rex Gilroy, widely known as "Australia's Charles Fort" for his life-long fascination and research into all aspects of Australian unexplained mysteries and enigmas of our prehistory, dares [like his late great American counterpart] to question the blind dogma of scientific conformity with evidence for which university textbooks have no answers.
An historical researcher, archaeologist, speleologist and naturalist, Rex frequently tours the country to give lectures on his findings. His file bulge with thousands of reports on all aspects of Australian 'unexplained' phenomena and historical, zoological and other enigmas.
When not in the field, Rex operates his natural science museum, Rex Gilroy's Butterfly World [in conjunction with Goddard's Ag Museum] at Tamworth NSW, (Now at Rex's Katoomba Home) where he displays his huge natural history collection of thousands of insects, fossils, rocks and minerals as well as zoological, anthropological and archaeological specimens, gathered from throughout Australia and the world.
Rex Gilroy welcomes any information helpful to his researches and can be contacted at :- PO BOX 202, KATOOMBA. NSW. 2780. AUSTRALIA.
