*      *      *

After being abducted by the yowie, although fully conscious while being carried through the night forest, Bear Ross quickly realised that there was nothing he could do but lie across the creature’s shoulders.   Although a powerhouse of a man himself — used to being able to break up barroom brawls by cowering down the brawlers without ever having to throw a punch himself — Bear realised that compared to the ape-man he was a fifty kilo weakling.   ‘No point-in struggling when I haven’t got a snowball’s of getting away!’ he thought.

They travelled many kilometres through the forest (although it was difficult to estimate exactly how far, since the ape-man’s giant strides meant they were travelling at great speed).   Finally the yowie started up the side of a mountain.   ‘But which mountain?’ thought Bear, realising that they had travelled a long way from Mount Thompson, although he had no idea in which direction they had travelled, toward Daley to the south, or Glen Hartwell to the north.

They travelled about halfway up the mountainside before reaching a large boulder that stood upon the mount.   The yowie stared hard at the boulder for a moment, then to Bear’s astonishment it began to swing slowly aside to reveal the entrance to a deep tunnel.   The yowie carried Bear into the tunnel then the boulder swung closed behind them, leaving them in complete darkness.

The yowie carried Bear for what seemed like an hour or more through the Stygian darkness of the underground tunnel, before finally Bear noticed that it was gradually lightening although he figured that they had to be a great distance underground.

Eventually it had become almost as light as day within the tunnel.   Bear was still pondering where the light was coming from, when they turned a bend and entered a great underground cavern many kilometres across.   But even more astonishing than the vast size of the underground cavern, was the fact that it contained a large village.   Seemingly hundreds of one-, two-, and three-storey huts made of large stones.

Around the village strolled hundreds of large, hairy yowie adults doing a variety of chores — cooking, weaving straw baskets, cleaning, et cetera — while naked preteens and young children ran around playing.   (Too young to have developed the all-over body hair of their parents, the young yowies were hardly distinguishable from human children at play.)