Australia's Bigfoot, the Gorillas of Eden, man's search for proof of Yowies

"Not chasing a Tasmanian tiger, it's not a ghost, not UFOs, I just firmly believe there's a half-man half-ape out there," he said unwaveringly.

"Very elusive in the bush, very hard to find, but there's been thousands of recorded reports, eye-witnesses, and plenty of evidence in the bush."

Laying on the table in front of him at Seahorse Inn, south of Eden, was a book compiled of photographs he had captured, pages explaining how overlapping tree branches were structures built for shade, and interwoven trees were seats.

And images of what he said were Yowies, creatures described as being covered in long hair, having extremely heavy and broad builds, ranging in heights up to 12 feet, and that walk standing upright.

"The phone cameras are good for scanning an area, so you look around the bush or whatever, and you see something interesting, then you might focus in on it with the better camera," he said.

Wayne's passion began close to seven years ago while staying in the back of his white iLoad van during a camping trip at Bellthorpe National Park in South-East Queensland.

While he and his wife were setting up the fire as dusk ended and the darkness of night fell, the sounds of branches being stripped off trunks rang forth.

"We heard this tree getting torn apart, 'Crack, crack, crack', it went on for about 10 minutes, initially I thought it was a ranger clearing some bush, but they'd normally use a chainsaw, wouldn't they? or an axe, then I thought it could be a farmer, but it's all national park," he said.

"At the same time, there was a report of a truck driver in the Gold Coast Hinterland, and reported to the newspapers, 'A big Yowie jumped in front of his truck and banged on the hood of the semi,' so I wondered if they were related."

Though Wayne acknowledges people will give him flack for his beliefs, he said he kept researching because he's adamant he's right.

"I've just got a passion for it and there's nothing better than going out and trying to, I don't know, prove things, just trying to be objective and say, 'There's a footprint there, it could be human, it's awfully big, it's deep in the bush, I doubt anyone walks through here,'" Wayne said.

Dean Harrison's Australian Yowie Research (AYR) had been built as a database to share sighting information and log reports so that those interested can do further research into what they deem to be spotted Yowies.

Under the location of Eden, Maria Speer reported seeing a Yowie in 1998 while she was fossicking for crystal quartz and stones, she saw what she said was a big man-like brown figure, six feet tall, very bulky, well conditioned, and almost absent from having a neck.

It is not the only time Eden had recorded a sighting, with the Bega Budget publishing an excerpt in 1906, sharing how Alf Smith from Eden distinctly saw a hairy man who strongly resembled a gorilla, between 5 and 6 feet high, long hair over the main body, with short arms - and his shotgun had no effect.

While in 1930, two boys in Nullica, one of whom was Tommy Bobbin, saw a strange animal, brown in colour resembling a monkey in shape and resting like a gorilla. It disappeared after Tommy tossed a cob of corn towards it.

The "large, hairy man" and spiritual creature had been shared through Aboriginal oral history for millennia, and are known as quinkin and joogabinna in parts of Queensland, and Ghindaring, jurrawarra, myngawin, puttikan, doolaga, gulaga and thoolagal, in parts of New South Wales.

Could these be cases of pareidolia, perceiving a specific, often meaningful image within a random or ambiguous visual pattern, like faces on inanimate objects, or are there actually Yowies in the bushland on the NSW Far South Coast?