So says Rex Gilroy, aka the yowie man, who has spent 57 years in the field searching for physical evidence of these mysterious creatures.

Mr Gilroy will present his research called The Yowie Mystery - Solved at Last at the annual Paracon Australia Conference at Maitland Gaol on May 10 and 11.

He continues his search of the Australian bush for the yowie, or relict hominin, and has no doubt the ­creatures still exist in all remote areas of Australia, including Mount Royal Range in the Hunter Valley.

“Stories about hairy men came out of the mountain country stretching from Maitland to Singleton,” he said.

“Early timber getters and settlers believed in the hairy men and they ­carried guns because of what they had seen on the Mount Royal Range.

“It is a very eerie place.”

Mr Gilroy said the yowie would only be found in the most remote regions today because he had been forced to retreat with the arrival of ­modern humans and clearing of bushland.

“The yowie[s] are four to five metres tall, keep to themselves, they live off native animal life – they are omnivorous – eating marsupials, kangaroos, berries and witchetty grubs.

“They are skilled at bush craft, they have fire, tools and implements and live in rock shelters.

“They are called hairy ­people because they wear ­marsupial hide garments.”

Aboriginals living in the area from Maitland to the Hawkesbury called them ­datrumenas – giant fellow, taller than the tallest gum tree.

“That is how I first came across the mystery of the yowie. I read a book of Aboriginal myths and legends and one of them was the story of the hairy man.”

Mr Gilroy is determined to prove that the ancestors of the yowie, or hairy people, ­inhabited Australia in pre-Aboriginal times and that Australia, not Africa, was the birthplace of modern humans.

“I have been called crazy since 1970 when I saw a yowie at Mount Solitary [in the Blue Mountains], but I know what I saw,” he said.

“With my scientific approach I seek to restore ­credibility to Australian relic hominology.

“I ask that everyone keep an open mind about the yowie’s existence.”