Erlick Norfolk wended his way slowly through the forest as he headed up the side of Mount Abergowrie, on the Northern side of Glen Hartwell, in early February 1992.   A big man — nearly 150 kilograms — Erlick found walking even on level ground fatiguing.   So, the steep slope of the mount soon had him gasping, sweat pouring like hot rain down across his face and body, until his shirt and trousers were plastered to his flesh like a soggy body-stocking.

As he walked, Erlick clutched the wooden stock of the .32 revolver in his sweaty fist.   He carefully kept one eye on the dingo spoors that he followed, the other eye on the bushes for fear of what might be lurking there.

A hot breeze blew down the mount, bringing with it the smell of charcoal, from where most of the original foliage had been lost in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of February 1983.   The hot breeze also brought with it the smell of new growth — wattles, pines, red-, blue-, and eerie, grey-white ghost-gums — plus the pungent body odour of kangaroos, wallabies, and the unmistakable wet-dog smell of the dingo that the fat man was following.

Erlick had climbed nearly two-thirds of the way up the mountain, and had started to fear that he would follow the prints all the way to the top, when suddenly the spoors veered to the left and started round the side of the mount.   After a few hundred metres, the foliage began to thin out and Erlick looked out over a small grassless clearing.   At the back of which was a wide cave leading into the side of the mount.

Erlick hesitated to approach too close to the cave for fear of being attacked by dingoes.   When he tentatively peered into the cave, he saw something white and formless hiding a few metres back in the darkness.   As he leant forward, his huge body blocked the cave mouth, and the white shape seemed to come to life, moving toward him with a strange, almost knitting-needle-like clickety-clickety-click.

Fighting the urge to scream aloud, Erlick backed away from the cave, careful not to allow the “dingo” to approach too close.   But when the white shape emerged from the cave, it was not a dingo after all.   It was unlike anything Erlick had ever seen or heard of.