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!"
Then I came across some more recent sightings :
The first account was from Martin Shaw, who in 1999
or 2000, saw a very strange-looking animal, that at first he thought was a log,
surfacing repeatedly.From a rock 100 metres away, he estimated the animal was
around the same size as a seven-metre boat he owned."It surfaced
repeatedly, loafing around, and articulated around the centre, like a
semi-trailer - slowly bending back and forth. I saw it pretty clearly. There
was no sign of dorsal fins, etc. I estimate it was up to one metre [broad] at
either end, but narrowed towards the centre to about half that,"
A similar sighting by 'A. M.' occurred in 1995 when
he was 12 years old. From 100 to 150 metres away, he saw an animal about 20 feet
long, just above the water, which appeared similar to a crocodile. He said it
moved stealthily and quickly.
A more dramatic report came from 'M', who was
fishing in Sackville in 2005, when he saw a great pressure wave indicating
something very large was under the water, causing a 10-inch high double wave to
come towards him. "It had rounded up a big
school of mullet, and they were jumping out of the water, dozens of them,
trying to get away," said M.
There
has also been several second-hand reports of plesiosaur-like animals - similar
to common depictions of the Loch Ness 'monster' - being seen at Wisemans Ferry.
Source for recent
sightings:
Most would agree that a plesiosaur could not have
survived all these years but it could be
an evolved creature of some sort. It certainly couldn’t have survived in the same form as it was, as it lived
in times of warm shallow seas and higher oxygen content in the air,not like today’s
polluted waters and air. Any suggestions for what it might be or other
sightings please add a comment.
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