SC EP:1226 Hominid Hunter

I will be welcoming Pete Breidahl to the show. In 2008 Pete was a soldier serving as a "Peacekeeper" on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain, when on a long-range patrol deep into its impenetrable jungles, Pete met a terrified young man that had never met a white man before. But he wasn't scared by the soldiers, he feared the creature he had encountered that morning while hunting. He described a classic "Bigfoot" type creature, and after a quick google search back at base Pete soon realized that Bigfoot and "Giant" sightings on Guadalcanal were very common indeed. Pete never forgot this encounter and returned in search of the creatures as soon as he had left the military.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that, that shocked me. They don't make people that, that big.

• 0:26Speaker 01

  The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw bears.

• 1:01Speaker 02

  911, what are you reporting?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ, you better... Karen? See ya!

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Hello?

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Get somebody out of here!

• 1:18Speaker 02

  What's going on now, sir?

• 1:19Speaker 03

  That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know.

• 1:22Speaker 02

  Do you see him now, sir?

• 1:23Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm looking right at him.

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Uh-oh.

• 1:33Speaker 04

  This is Mr. Rogers from Phoenix, Arizona, and the only podcast we listen to in my neighborhood is Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 2:10Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show. Tonight, we'll be speaking with Pete Bridle. He's the author of Hometed Hunter, The Search for Undescribed South Pacific Comatodes. In 2008, Pete was a soldier, serving a peacekeeping mission on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Island chain. And he was on this long-range patrol, deep in the jungle, when Pete met a terrified man that'd never met a white man before. But he wasn't scared of the soldiers. He feared the creature he had just encountered that morning while hunting. And that kind of started Pete off onto the search of looking for the wild man. And we were chatting the other

• 2:52Wes Germer?

  day, and he was telling me about just different crazy stories in his life. And I really, I wanted to have him on the show. I'm so glad he's here. Again, his book is Hometed Hunter, The Search for Undescribed South Pacific Comatodes. If you've had an encounter, and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Pete Bridle to the show. Pete, thanks for coming on.

• 3:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, no problem.

• 3:35Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I appreciate you being here. If you would, Pete, can I give the audience kind of a background of yourself?

• 3:42Speaker 06

  Yeah, sure. Quite honestly, I grew up in an incredibly loving and supportive environment in rural Melbourne during the 1980s. I had two amazing parents that gave me everything they possibly could in life. Wonderful private school education. Amazing holidays around the Victorian coast. Um, uh, just my mum and dad were highly involved in marine education. Um, my dad's a natural history author and from a young age, I was, I was really inspired to, um, just have adventures. Uh, Indiana Jones was always my hero. And, uh, then when I was 15, we're involved in a, a really horrific car accident. Uh, I managed to walk out of it, but, um, something inside of me broke

• 4:23Speaker 06

  and was just changed for forever. Uh, I later found out that was the beginnings of PTSD and I continued to make that worse and worse and worse of myself with my choices throughout life. Um, done a hell of a lot of things wrong. I've been a very hard man on a, on a, on a woman in my life. Um, not, not because I was violent or anything, but because I was always off on like adventures and you know, crazy stuff. I could never stay home. I, I just never did the nine to five thing. And, uh, yeah, it just, it just sent me down this crazy path. Um, that's taken me all over the world. I don't know. A hundred and something countries. Um, I've been in the army, been a military contractor. I worked as a professional hunting guide and, and I just, I just always felt happier on a horse,

• 5:07Speaker 06

  like on a hillside in Mongolia, getting charged by bears than, than I ever did, you know, doing normal stuff at home like everyone else. And, and it's, it's made relationships really, really difficult for me. And, uh, about seven years ago, I, I gave up on society completely. And, uh, I, I met this amazing German girl in, um, in Mongolia. She was sitting in a, in a park, looking very sad because she couldn't get into China with her little cattle dog. She was trying to head back to Australia to do more, um, cattle mustering. And I suggested she just come on an adventure with me. And, and yes, 780 days later, uh, we'd done 9,000 kilometers on horseback from Mongolia to, um, to Germany and, uh, proposed and we've been together riding around, um, Europe, um, pretty much

• 5:48Speaker 06

  ever since. So, yeah, crazy life, but yeah, I've got to see some cool stuff. So, yeah. And I'm finally happy. I'm finally settled. Uh, I have, I have the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with and, and I really have achieved some degree of normality. But, um, yeah, there's some pretty cool stories to tell along the way.

• 6:06Wes Germer?

  Yeah. Finding happiness is something that, uh, happiness in general is something money can't buy. Your book, The Hominid Hunter, The Search For The Undescribed South Pacific Comenids. I know it's available on Amazon. If someone buys this book, what, what can they kind of expect to read?

• 6:25Speaker 06

  Well, uh, the reason I wrote it is like I've written lots of books. Um, my father was a natural history, as I said, natural history author. Uh, he's got hundreds of published books and it's, it's a process for me. Um, in sort of dealing with, uh, the, the events that I went through. I, I went through a lot of traumatic experiences during my time in the South Pacific. Um, saw a lot of horrible things, um, experienced. Uh, it's, it's very hard to, should do as a disclaimer here that like, I don't consider myself a racist person. But when you're dealing with a culture that 50 years ago was quite literally a Stone Age culture. And they've been thrust into, you know, the 21st century.

• 7:09Speaker 06

  There's so many things that, that you find challenging and you come with this Western mindset. And, you know, you think, um, well, I mean, I grew up in, in rural Victoria in, in privilege. And to see what I saw there and the way poverty has people interact with one another. It's, it is really, really challenging. And I mean, it was, it's, I've always been going through a process with PTSD. And, and this was something that helped me process what I saw and, and take steps away from, from, um, yeah. Those, um, rather challenging memories at times. Um, but I also did really want to share my, my findings. I, I really approached, um, going to the Solomons. Um, well, I mean, it's sort of, I should explain the background.

• 7:51Speaker 06

  I went to the Solomons, uh, firstly, uh, with the military. I was deployed as a peacekeeper. And when I was there, I, I, I saw and experienced things that I really wanted to come back and check out. And I wanted to come back with like a very scientific mindset. Um, I mean, having a dad that's, you know, writes natural history books. I, I wanted to, to have a look at the origins of the myths. Um, I mean, everyone in the Solomons believes in giants and, and wild men in the forest and that. Just like the Aboriginals have all of these stories about Bunyips and, you know, the like, um, Nimbun and like Quilkin. You know, these giant creatures that supposedly still live in Australia and Yowies, of course, as well. You know, your traditional Bigfoot. And I wanted to have a look at.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  Where these myths came from, really see what I could find out. And I think most of all, just have a pretty cool adventure. So yeah, the book was really sort of my way of, you know, justifying all of that crazy time away and and hopefully people will enjoy it. And I think there's also a really big look before you leap warning about it. But you know, these adventures, they they sound great and they look cool on the Discovery Channel, but they do come with a price. And for me, it was it was a pretty big one. So, yeah.

• 9:05Wes Germer?

  Yeah, being a history nerd myself, I know the Solomon Islands is notorious for giants. It even goes back to World War Two. The Japanese soldiers that were on the island talked about these giants. A lot of them wrote about it in their diaries. Along with the American soldiers, the Americans talked about it as well, these giants on the Solomon Islands. And you know, when you went down there, what did you kind of find? And what was kind of the locals' viewpoint as far as giants versus the wild man? What did they tell you?

• 9:41Speaker 06

  Okay, so firstly, when I deployed there, I had, again, a very sheltered, very one dimensional experience because I had a rifle in my hand the whole time and everyone treated us very, very differently. So on my initial deployment to the Solomons, we were based out of Honiara. So next to Henderson Field and Bloody Ridge and Alligator Creek and all of those places where I've been, all of those those big battles took place during World War Two. And I really didn't see much. I really didn't hear anything. I had no idea there were giants there. I mean, I hadn't Googled the Solomons or anything like that. I just turned up to do my job. And yeah, I never would have guessed, never, never even would have thought about it.

• 10:24Speaker 06

  But there was an incident and I was sort of, I guess the only way to say I was, I deployed with the territorial force like your, like your National Guard. And I was sort of a bit overqualified for the position I was in. I spoke the language of the Solomons. I picked that up very quickly. I've always had a knack for languages. Even still, I speak pretty terrible German after three years here. Uh, but back when I was younger, languages came naturally to me. Uh, I've been qualified for recon, medic, all kinds of other stuff. So they kind of stuck me at the front of everything. And I was sent uh onto the weather coast, which is the far side of Guadalcanal, where basically no one goes.

• 11:03Speaker 06

  And we were looking for some um bad dudes that had done something very bad to a New Zealand police officer. So when I was sent into the jungle there, we, we were looking for these guys. We went through some really insane countryside. It was absolutely brutal. It's just straight up and down, sort of forty degrees all day. Uh, water in the bottom, nothing up the top, and the people we were looking for were up the top. Of course, uh, command being command had us carrying all kinds of crap we shouldn't have. We had uh guys falling over with heat stroke. Um, it was a nightmare. And so in the end, we sort of pushed ahead in smaller patrols. And we went into a little village that we were tasked with finding called Dingisada. You can find it on a map. It's tiny.

• 11:49Speaker 06

  Eleven people lived in Dingisada. Only one of them had ever left it. And that guy fortunately spoke uh pidgin or top, top pisan or central solomons, whatever you want to call it. Which is just a bastardized version of, of English with a few other languages in there as well. Um, I spoke that and it was through him that I was able to get some really good information on where the guys we were hunting were. And we decided to stay in that, that position for the night. Still hadn't heard anything about giants, still hadn't heard anything about Bigfoot, still had no idea any of that was going on. And then a young boy came into the village and it's very hard to tell how, how young people out there, how old they are. It's sort of very mal, malnourished.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  So what would look like a twelve year old Westerner, he could be seventeen or eighteen. So this young, young boy came in and he was obviously terrified. You know, there's like five guys there with, with guns. And I, I tried to calm him down and his uncle said, oh no, he's not scared of you guys. He's, he's scared of Uma. And I'm like, what's Uma? And I've written it down. I can read exactly what I wrote down in the, in the patrol report. But he said, um. He was hunting on the valley floor and he met Umar by the river. You know, one of the other people that live in the forest. One of the giants with the orange fur, the ones that smell terrible and have a scream that makes your blood run cold.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  It was fishing and when it smelled him, it chased him and tried to catch him. But the boy was too fast and hid between the rocks where Umar couldn't reach him. He wants you to go and kill it. He wants you and the other soldiers to go and kill the monster that hunts in the valley. So when I've got a kid that's never seen a white person before, that's never left a village, that's has no idea of the outside world, who's just seen his face on the back of a digital camera for the very first time, who describes to me a perfect sort of Bigfoot story, translated through his uncle, who's only ever been as far as Honiara, I'm like, okay, all right. This is sounding a lot like those rock ape stories from Da Nang in sixty-six.

• 14:01Speaker 06

  Um, and I need to call it in. So all of the whole section was like laughing at me, but I called it in and I told the boss what's going on. And she said, um, you know, look, well, have you Googled giants in the Solomons before? I'm like, no. And she's like, Google it when you get back to Honiara. So everyone sort of laughed at me because, you know, I had reported it, you know, and most soldiers would just let something like that go. But that's when I, when I got back to Honiara and I started Googling it and it like even the prime minister's seen them. There's all of these stories about them up at the Goldbridge Mine where we go up on patrols all the time. They're like throw the bulldozer blades off the hill and like it's just commonplace.

• 14:44Speaker 06

  Everyone in the Solomons knows there's giants there. So from there I was like,

• 14:53Speaker 06

  maybe there's something to this. But that kid, that kid was absolutely terrified, absolutely terrified. And when you, when you meet someone like that, that has got absolutely no reason to make up a story like that in a place where that's something he sees in the forest and, you know, he knew every animal in the forest, but he'd never seen a white person before. You know, that's kind of pretty different to some of the stories I hear on, on your show. Now you guys have got some amazing people, I absolutely believe, like Todd, the helicopter pilot and Claire, that English lady. I am one hundred percent convinced, you know, they they saw what they saw, just like I was with this kid.

• 15:35Speaker 06

  But sometimes, you know, you get people, it's a bit eh, not sure if I believe you. But that combined with the other experiences I had as a as a young fella and as a hunting guide in New Zealand. I really was pretty open minded to the idea that something could be there. That and we're not too far from the island of Flores. Uh, you might know about Homo ferociensis, you heard of that before?

• 15:59Wes Germer?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 16:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I'm like, we're close to Flores, uh, we're close enough to Borneo, there's orangutans in Borneo. Um, close enough to Flores where, you know, I mean, the the Dutch reported seeing, you know, Homo ferociensis, you know, which is technically our latest surviving hominid relative. I mean, I'm not convinced it was really maybe another species. I think it could be like a thyroid condition. I mean, we've got all the little islands through um the Mediterranean where, you know, little elephants and things got uh got isolated. They all became small. I mean, we we have numerous examples throughout history where something's become very stunted by being isolated. But it did get me thinking, you know, like, maybe there really is something here.

• 16:44Speaker 06

  So anyway, deployment ended, I went back to New Zealand. Um, again, tragedy struck. Um, we had um uh the the loss of of someone very close to us, which resulted in all sorts of complications, which unfortunately ended my marriage. When that sort of wrapped up, I I sold up my farm. And uh, I I mean, another thing you talk about those orbs quite a bit. I've never seen orbs and hominids in the same place at the same time, but uh we had orbs on my farm all the time, all the time. And I I I put it down to ball lightning, to be completely honest. But I saw those things a bunch and I saw them in Australia as well when I was hunting there. They they call them the Min Min Lights. Uh, we'd see them out in the desert, roost shooting all of the time.

• 17:29Speaker 06

  And an even weirder one, I hear you talking about like cloaking and things like this, all of these things you talk about on your show. That's why I love your show, because you've got some stuff that that really hits home with me. My auntie and I, um, it would have been nineteen ninety three, I was fifteen years old. It was twelve oh one. I'm like, right, it's Christmas Day. Technically, I can go and get a present from under the tree. She was up cooking a turkey. She said, you can have one present. I picked the worst present ever. It was like a science kit, like chemical set. I couldn't start mixing chemicals in the middle of the night. So I went back to bed and I heard something outside the window, which was just, it was pretty horrific. It was just like bones crunching, like an animal gnawing and crunching and destroying bones. Now, we're at a place called

• 18:11Speaker 06

  Gula, which is right near the Kurrong. It's like quite a sacred place. There's been a squillion yaoi sightings there. So I went and got my auntie. And to this day, she, we swear, like, we heard something just ripping a carcass apart, pulling it to bits right outside the window. Every time we turned the light on, it'd stop. Every time we turned the light off, it'd start again. And so I've always been very open minded. I've had a lot of weird experiences. Now a kid's seen Bigfoot and I'm like, oof, this could be my Indiana Jones opportunity. So having sold my farm, I decided I'd head back there. I decided I'd go with a very, very open mind. I decided I would write it down. I would document everything

• 18:54Speaker 06

  and I would try and explore the, the origins of the myths. As I said, you know, like the, the Bunyips, you know, for forty thousand to sixty thousand years Aboriginals have been in Australia. And for considerable amount of that time, we had a marsupial wombat, the size of a rhinoceros with a nose like a tapir that lived in the lakes. So they have stories about monsters living in the lakes. And we know these animals are real. We just don't know when they became extinct. Obviously, they're extinct now. And I thought maybe something was here in the Solomons, whether it's there now or not, there definitely was something. So yeah, that, that took me back there.

• 19:34Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I want to talk to you about your farm and everything that you just went into there. Before we do, so you go back to the Solomon Islands. Do the locals kind of separate Uma from the giants?

• 19:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, Umar and the Giants are pretty much the same thing, but I will get to that because that's it's really quite interesting. And again, it's it's one thing that we just have to be careful with. I'm I I may I'm gonna make some cultural statements based on like, you know, years of my life there. They don't think like normal people. They want to tell you a story. They they see you as cigarettes, beer, chocolate, food and cash, and they will do anything they can to keep you on the hook. And I think it's it's one of those things where I don't want to say they're pathological liars. I just I need to be very clear in that that I

• 20:30Speaker 06

  mean, I'm talking to people often that are in grass skirts. You know, these people don't understand that I'm actually looking for for serious information. And and one of the biggest difficulties difficulties I faced is I could never get rid of them. Like, they would always follow me everywhere I went in the bush. And they're very nice people. They're very kind. But it's there is huge cultural misunderstandings. And they don't understand necessarily that I'm genuinely looking for something that I believe to be a real creature. They they see dealing with me as an opportunity to get a couple of days employment, some food, go on a bit of an adventure. So I'm always going to be really, really careful with with what I hear from them.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  And I think one of the worst examples is if you Google it at all, this guy Marius Byron or something, he always pops up. He's an Australian helicopter pilot, married to Solomon Islander, and he just goes straight off the deep end for me, you know, underground UFO bases, you know, underwater UFO bases, giants, all of this craziness. But in my time there, from the what I could source that I felt was really reliable, there's three distinct sort of

• 21:47Speaker 06

  Things I think are possibly the origin of the myths. Uh, one is the wild men. Hundred percent real, um, hundred percent met them, hundred percent face to face. I met people living as primitive humans, hundred percent real, not, no hesitation at all. Literally met them on riverbanks. Um, I believe there is one hundred percent without any hesitation. A living hominid, I believe, most likely homo floresiensis. Um, that is in the Solomon Islands. I one hundred without any hesitation can state that. And on multiple occasions, I have either seen them or been so close to them, it's not funny.

• 22:29Speaker 06

  And as for the big ones, the giants, well, uh, I met Peter Inorga a bunch of times. He's got the biggest feet in the world and he's like huge, like seven foot tall, something. He works at the Solomon Star newspaper, or at least he did when I was there. You can Google him, it'll just pop up. Um, and that dude's big. But actually seeing a giant orange creature, I did not personally. I heard one and had a really horrific experience with something in the bush that that was pretty terrifying. We'll get to that. But, um, yeah, it's look, it's, it's a very, very complicated environment to work in. There's the language consideration and the cultural consideration.

• 23:11Speaker 06

  And it's that, that cultural divide that's, it is hard to work around.

• 23:18Wes Germer?

  Yeah. So tell me, what, what was it that you saw down there?

• 23:22Speaker 06

  Okay. So, so it took me, it took me a long while to see something. I went on a hell of a lot of very long walks. Um, and I, I'd really tied myself in, in with the communities, um, along the length of the, the Solomon, well, along the length of Guadalcanal is a road that sort of goes from one end to sort of the other. Um, up Lambie up in the north, uh, I spent a lot of time up there. And I got a lot of anecdotal evidence. I met a lot of people that, you know, had stories from, you know, back in the war and. All sorts of things like that. A lot of people talked about hybrids and, you know, like people would, you know, bring me to see a hybrid. Their mother had been raped by, you know, the, I probably can't say that word on your podcast. You have to delete

• 24:05Speaker 06

  that one. Um, but yeah, um, they, they had, you know, encounters with the, the forest people and things like that. And, and I met quite a few people that they, they claimed were hybrids. Unfortunately, every time I met a hybrid, it was, it was a person with dwarfs. So, I mean, obviously they weren't hybrids and I kept getting all of these weird stories. Uh, but the further I went into the jungle, um, I took a little flip book with me with pictures. I, I had all of these different animals, like animals that I knew to be there, animals I knew weren't there. And I had pictures of, um, all sorts of undescribed hominids. I had Bigfoot, I had Jugantapithecus, I had Homo erectus as well.

• 24:46Speaker 06

  And the Homo erectus is the one picture that they all pointed to the entire time. Now, again, I, I've got to be careful with what I word, how I word things here. Many of the Solomon Islanders are very, very looking, very primitive looking people. And it, the, the photo of Homo erectus does not look unlike many of the people I saw. And we also have the problem of, again, the mountain nutrition there, um, the rampant diseases and things. And there were a lot of people that are really, really tiny. So it was, it was challenging. It was difficult. Um, I believe something was there. And, uh, yeah, on, on one of our drives, uh, up in these old forestry roads. And, and that's another thing that's really,

• 25:28Speaker 06

  really sort of sad about it is, um, I mean, you know, when gorillas were first documented by science?

• 25:34Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I believe it was the early 1900s, 1902, 1903?

• 25:40Speaker 06

  Yep, 1902. And the billy ape, which, you know, it's, it's, it's gone before we've ever been able to document it. And the amount of damage that's going on there, I, I honestly, I, I think these things are going to be potentially gone before, before we're able to document them. But anyway, going up this forestry road. And I get a weird feeling. Um, I I've been hunting or guiding hunters much of my life. I've been a soldier. Um, and yeah, you just, you know, as Claire would say, someone walks over your grave. Yeah, it's an Australian saying as well. You just get that tingle. Um, so we stopped the car and as we stopped the car, I see some footprints up the trail, like right up the the

• 26:25Speaker 06

  middle of the clay road. And it's just a clay logging road. And um, yeah, I I get out of the car and the only thing I could say it sounded like would be a monkey noise. Just it it was nothing special. It was nothing overly terrifying, but a weird monkey noise came came at me from the bushes. Now I had my girlfriend of the time uh in the car and she freaked out. Um, she screamed at me not to go. Um, so I gave her one of our our machetes or bush knife, as we call them uh in the Solomons. I took a big bush knife. Um, I got my camera and I got my GPS and I started to go into the into the bush after it. Now, something was right in front of me. You can't see through

• 27:09Speaker 06

  you. You cannot see through that jungle to save yourself. It is so thick and especially where it's been logged, the regeneration is just so fast. Like I call it Jack in the Beanstalk Land because you could throw beans out the window and the next morning there would be a beanstalk. It's just so dense, but I could literally feel something looking at me. And I I I did smell it. Um, and it's it's just a wet dog, but more for me, it reminds me of goats. Like I obviously shot a lot of goats as a as a hunter in Australia, but like the goats, the billy goats will piss on themselves and it really just smelled like an animal that had pissed all over itself.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  Absolutely awful. And yeah, as I, as I went forward, so I've got my knife, I'm thinking, look, you know, no guts, no glory, Indiana Jones, I've nearly died a million times anyway. Let's see what happens. Um, and it made sure I felt very unwelcome. And when that thing took off, it went through bamboo like it was matchsticks. I just heard it tearing off through the bush, absolutely smashing everything to bits. And yeah, it's, it's, it's enough to make you, you know, question what you're doing in the bush. And I turned around rather smartly. Um, I didn't run, um, but I was well aware I was not welcome there. I felt incredibly uncomfortable

• 28:33Speaker 06

  to say the least. And I went and got back in the car and my missus at the, at the time, she has never spoken about, about it again since. Um, and that was pretty much the end of our relationship. She wanted to go home and yeah, never, ever, ever speak of that again. So that was the first time. So I didn't see anything. And I've got some good photos of the footprints that left up the road. And they were not huge. They were not huge at all, but they were, they were strange.

• 29:02Wes Germer?

  When you were looking at the footprints, what was strange about them? And you mentioned it made you feel unwelcome. What do you mean by that?

• 29:11Speaker 06

  It's hard to describe. Um, just a gut feeling. Uh, like the, I, I got charged by a bear in Mongolia and there was nothing about it that really worried me. It was mock charging. I had a rifle. It stopped. We squared off against each other. I went through the same sort of drills that I go through in a casualty situation or a situation where there's incoming, where I'm cool, calm and collected. I'm just sort of, just going through my robot paces in my brain and. At the end of it, I feel sick and just, you know, I'm gonna go to pieces afterwards. But in a crisis, I'm really good. After the crisis, I'll come apart, normally have a big cry

• 29:56Speaker 06

  or throw up or whatever. And the first time I saw a wolf in the wild, a big wolf in Mongolia, I knew there was no way in hell I could hit that thing. And it was coming straight into the patch of willows I was in. And I was like, right, I'm out of here. But that that feeling I had there in the Solomons, it was very much like that with the wolf. It's just like, this thing has got me. There's nothing I can do. And I am not in the right place. It was it was all.

• 30:26Speaker 06

  It was one of the few times where I really did struggle to keep my composure in a stressful situation. And yeah, I did not see it. I heard something that I could not identify. I'm aware of pretty much all of the animals you find in the Solomons. But this was nothing I've heard of. This was not a noise a human could make. I hear you talk about that, that infrasound or whatever it is with lion roars and stuff like that. I didn't get any of that. It was just a really, really bad gut feeling. And not a pleasant, not a pleasant experience, but not an experience

• 31:06Speaker 06

  that I could definitively call one thing or another, which really sucks, because that's not what I was after. I was after that, you know, smoking gun, that that that clear image on 4K film. And I did not get it. But that was that was only one of one of many.

• 31:26Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'm very curious about the tracks. You know, you being a soldier and a hunter, you would recognize there's something weird about these tracks, probably quicker than just some Joe Smo hiker out there. What was weird about the tracks?

• 31:44Speaker 06

  Well, there's two things. Um, one thing, everyone in the Solomons is barefoot. Everyone in the Solomons has weird feet. And a human being that has been barefoot for its entire life has a very different footprint to someone that wears shoes. Now, as I said, Peter Nora, he has the biggest feet in the entire world. So there's only so much you can tell by the size of someone's feet. I think he's size 24 or something like that. Um, so uh, these, these footprints weren't particularly huge. They, they were, they were about the same size as, as mine. But there was basically no ball of the foot on the ground. No arch and a really, really broad right across the, across the front.

• 32:28Speaker 06

  I've got, still got the photos. I can send them through to you. Um, and they're in the, the, the book I wrote anyway. Um. Yeah. I saw so many strange handprints, so many strange footprints. I think it would be very wrong for me to grasp onto it as being something unique because the variety in the footprints I saw there was outrageous. But it, it did have quite a strange gait. But you see, that's just it. Like, I mean, I want to remain scientific. You know, I, I don't want to say, I definitely saw this. I definitely saw that. There's times when I will tell you definitely what I saw. But um, I really cannot put this down to one thing or another.

• 33:12Speaker 06

  Gut feeling, this was not a human. This, this really had a small ball and no arch and a very broad front. And if it was running, I wouldn't have got that ball at the back. And so this, this is one of the more unique prints that I've seen. And I saw a lot of unique prints, but one of the big things I, I would do there as well is I would, I would take photos of the footprints of the, the actual, the Solomon Islanders. And they had some really weird footprints, really weird.

• 33:40Wes Germer?

  Yeah, if you would, send me the picture. I would love to look at it. I ordered a copy of your book anyway, so I'll see it anyway here shortly when the book arrives. But the reason why I was so curious about the footprint is, you know, I found footprints before and they were very wide, very boxy, almost like Fred Flintstone's foot. And I have a very wide, flat foot. And so for me to be impressed takes a lot. But the tracks that you're talking about, I mean, it does sound like it was running. I can't wait to see the picture. If you would kind of tell me about the next incident.

• 34:18Speaker 06

  Okay, so the next incident was was quite an interesting one. I had a taxi driver. Like, if you want to find out anything in the Solomons, just get in a taxi and ask them. They've always got a guy. They always know something. But the taxi driver had told me about his uncle was having problems with Uma, which is one of their many names for the Giants up at his forestry camp. So anyway, I hired a little Suzuki and only just made it up there because you've got the old monsoon rain on the clay roads. And I started having a chat with the boys up there. And they said, Yeah, they're up the tree. And I'm like, What do you mean they're up the tree? And he's like, Yeah, they hide up the tree every day. And there's this huge like rainforest

• 35:02Speaker 06

  tree. It's just all like twisting roots and all kinds of stuff. And it's got no timber value. And they're saying, Yeah, they hide up that tree. And, you know, I had a look up there and I swear I saw brown fur. But am I right? I'll chuck some trail cameras up and we'll see if anything comes out of that at night. So again, one of the problems I face is my trail cameras either have no batteries in them the next morning, or they've been stolen and swapped for beer, or they've been smashed. So I normally put that down to the locals. And one of the other problems is jealousy. If I've got some people helping me, other people get jealous. Is that what breaks my trail cameras? But in all of the time there, I got nothing. I don't know how

• 35:47Speaker 06

  many trail cameras I must have taken. I made 30 of them with me, lost every single one, lost every single battery dozens of times over, lost all my SIM cards, lost everything, never got a single photo. And that is just one of the many reasons why working there is awful. But um, long story short, um, I stayed up there. And uh, the boys that were in that village, uh, they took me through to meet a kid that had been kidnapped. Um, he was in his thirties now, uh, he was kidnapped when he was a child. Uh, he apparently spent a good week with them. And yeah, he had all sorts of stories and he told me where he stayed. Um, another guy, he'd just passed away unfortunately, but he'd actually been involved in a mass killing of them.

• 36:31Speaker 06

  Uh, his wife had been stolen in the uh, in the eighties. Uh, they went to get his wife back and in an engagement with them, they killed dozens of these um, these people in the forest. Now, whether they were the wild men, which as I've said, really do exist, or they were the smaller ones. Um, these guys said that they were the small ones. Now, everyone kept saying the same thing, about four foot tall, orange hair, red eyes, and really, really strong, horrendously strong, so strong that when they pick fruit, they just break the tree down rather than, you know, climb up it and get it. And that's what they were saying was up this, up this tree. Now, the next morning, um, there'd been considerable damage done to the forestry camp.

• 37:14Speaker 06

  They chucked a lot of timber down the, down the banks, um, all kinds of stuff was trashed. Uh, and the boys all said, look, we can go and have a look at the caves, um, because everything lives in caves there. There's all of these stories about underground cities and how the, the, the giants can travel from one end of the country to the other, just using the caves. So we went down into a little valley and we're heading up towards some limestone caves. Uh, we're one of the two main things that these, what I think a Homo forensics mainly eat. Uh, they love the bats and they love the crayfish in the creek, so they're two favorite things. And as we headed up, up the valley, uh, we, we started hearing creatures vocalizing from either side of the valley.

• 37:55Speaker 06

  Now, the only problem is I've got like six guys following me that all are fascinated, that all never seen, you know, hung out with a white guy, especially a white guy with a camera. And they're just talking and smoking the entire time. And no matter how many times I tell them to shut up and just please, can you just let me go ahead? They'd always be right there, always worried something would happen to me and they're always keep saying, he's gonna steal you. The, the little giants are gonna steal you, they're gonna capture you, you're a white man, they'll be curious, they will grab you. So continued up there towards the caves, keep hearing two creatures vocalizing and it's, it was nothing outside the range of what a human being could make.

• 38:37Speaker 06

  But one big thing I did notice was the clicks and it just sounded like um someone like clicking you like, like with their tongue, like clicking their tongue against the roof of their mouth. And that was weird. So as we get, get towards the caves, I just stopped and I just, you know, I said to the boys, we're just a little listening halt and they're all sitting there muttering away and about, I don't perhaps about thirty meters away from me, I guess, I watched a fern frond just go straight down. There was a hand on it and on the other side of the fern frond was a, a, a face about the size of a child, as dark as skin as the, the natives, uh, just

• 39:19Speaker 06

  messy reddish brown hair, um, just black eyes, but I mean, the natives have very, very dark eyes. You, you can't really distinguish, you know, the white of the eye at that distance. Yeah, very dark eyes, um, and nose that was not a great deal flatter than that of any Solomon Islander, uh, but there was clearly red hair on the hand, uh, red hair on the face, red hair on, on the head and it just made eye contact um with me, looked at me and then let go of the fern frond and just melted into the bush. Now, the kids don't run away. The, the locals don't run away. Like it was something different. What it

• 40:03Speaker 06

  was, again, I, I'm convinced it was Homo floresiensis, but that, that wasn't even, that wasn't even the, the weirdest one. So, so by this time, obviously a, a lot of people are interested in what I'm doing. Friend of mine from Australia, he's a doco filmmaker and he's like, can I come over and film with you and hang out? And I'm like, absolutely. So as if it wasn't bad enough heading into the jungle with a bunch of Solomon Islanders following me, smoking, drinking, talking, making all sorts of noise, I now had two cameramen with me. And it was, yeah, yeah, very difficult. We got way, way, way up towards Mount Pumrasu, up behind Goldridge. Uh, Goldridge is the, the big gold mine there.

• 40:48Speaker 06

  Um, that's where the majority of the sightings are, um, and there's absolutely wild men there. I met wild men on the riverbanks there a lot. These people, uh, there, there's tons of different languages, uh, in the Solomons. I cannot communicate with these people. They don't speak Pidgin, which is what I speak, obviously don't speak English. And it's, it's awkward because they're, they're always naked. It's just basically naked, prehistoric humans on a riverbank. And I'd stalk in on them all the time and just back away because I don't want to intrude. I don't want to harass them and I don't want to get in a fight with people that.

• 41:30Speaker 06

  Well, I have a bush knife and the ability to defend myself. They have a stick. I don't want to end up in a situation where there's a misunderstanding that involves in a, a physical conflict. Um, but they're, they're definitely up there. So anyway, I end up on a riverbank. I have a chat to the boys and I say, look, I'm going for a, a bit of a bush stalk on my own. Fortunately, the, the native guys that were with us were exhausted. So I head up the river and it's, it's just straight razorback ridges dropping into a, a, a river. I, I, I get far enough up that I'm away from everyone. And, uh, I, I cross the creek and as I cross the creek, I find a really strong game trail heading up one of the razorback ridges.

• 42:11Speaker 06

  And one of the, the first things that I found there was at the entry to it, um, I found what I call a preach tree. So I hunt sambar deer a lot. I haven't had a lot of deer, but, uh, sambar deer in Australia and New Zealand, they'll, they'll mark trees like scent mark, just like, uh, like a wolf does it as well. Lots of animals do it, they'll mark a tree. And it stunk, absolutely stunk. And it was, I'm absolutely convinced it was a theremin marker of some description. Like, it, it really made me feel uncomfortable and a bit sick. Um, but I've gone this far. I've got two camera dudes down the, down the river. I've got a little

• 42:52Speaker 06

  handy cam in my, in my hand. I've got a radio in my pocket. I've got a, a, a bush knife resembling a pirate cutlass in my hand and I'm going for it. So I'm going to follow it up. So I start following the, um, following the trail, straight up this Razorback Ridge, because whatever had left it, it only just left it. And as I go up the ridge, um, I spooked something below me and it lets out a god awful scream. And just up above me, I caught movement. So there was something in front of me and something behind me. And as I say, the, it, the jungle is so thick, you can't see a damn thing. But this thing below me just takes off and smashes through the trees. And at this point,

• 43:34Speaker 06

  I really realised, look, my position is completely untenable. I've had, you know, natives telling me for weeks, this guy's going to steal you. He's going to take you to the cave. They might kill you. And it got the better of me and I completely pussied out. And I went down that hill so fast. Um, I completely did not stick the landing. Um, the bit that I come up, there would have been about a two metre drop at the bottom. Somehow I went off that without breaking my camera. I, I, my head stopped my body from getting really hurt when I landed on the rocks, but I was, I was not happy. I, I managed to get myself together and realised that there were two creatures on the same side of the river as me. And that's when I heard a third one on the other side of the river I just

• 44:18Speaker 06

  crossed. So I get the camera going. It's fading light. I haven't got much light left. And I think, right, if these things are going to grab me, um, if I get in the river and at least get up to, you know, my armpits, I've got a chance. So I go straight in the creek and I can hear them talking to one another. Uh, nothing like your Sierra sounds, nothing like any of that I've, I've, I've heard on your show. Everything I feel within the, the vocal range of a human being, uh, but

• 44:52Speaker 06

  Uh. Lots of clicks. And um. Yeah. So I end up uh. Nice little deep hole in the river. It's pretty cold. I mean, it's still thirty degrees at night. And it's at that point of the evening when the jungle. Have you ever been in like a tropical jungle before? Like, do you know what it's like at sunset?

• 45:09Wes Germer?

  I've been to Jamaica and their forests, but I I think it's, I mean, I was a tourist, so I think it's probably different from what you're talking about.

• 45:19Speaker 06

  It's borderline deafening. It is so loud. And because I'm in a steep valley, like, you know, the sides are just straight up. You you don't really have a twilight. Now, I've got like a nice river stone, um, like on the upstream side, on the left hand side of the upstream. There's like a nice sort of gray river stony little little bank. And I was really starting to worry. Um, I I I realized that there were three things now. Um, one behind me, two in front of me, and they were basically coming in like a triangle shape around me. And I'm just thinking about like all the boys in Mongolia saying stuff to me like it's never the wolf you see that's the one that's gonna get you. It's the one that comes from the side.

• 46:04Speaker 06

  So I'm starting to get in my own head, but the whole way through, um, I am recording on the camcorder. And I'm talking myself through every single thing that I see. And I'm second guessing every single thing that I'm seeing. Now, I in fading light, I basically can't see anything but shadows moving. Starting to get stressed, I get my little torch out of my pocket. And my torch had broken, um, but I'd borrowed my friend's torch, which he got from one of the little Chinese shops in the Solomon Islands. Just a crappy little torch, double A batteries, but it had a little laser pointer on it. And if you double clicked it, the laser pointer would go on. And if you clicked it once, the torch would go on. So I put the torch on. I absolutely can't see anything with it.

• 46:46Speaker 06

  And uh, it's it's, you know, I'm lights fading rapidly. I'm in the creek. I can hear things moving around. Probably, I don't know, maybe five minutes goes by. The light's really going, and I just start catching eye shine in the bushes. And it was more like a dog eye shine rather than a person. A person's, you don't get a great eye shine on. Um, it was more like a dog, a dog's like a dingo, wolf, um, and very, again, very used to shooting these animals under spotlight. But I started to get eye shine and yeah, it was um pretty unnerving to say the least, but I could not see anything. So at the absolute last of the available light, um one of the things comes out of the forest.

• 47:29Speaker 06

  I can clearly see it absolutely crystal clear set and like, well, you know, it's shadow. Could not see any details whatsoever, but I could absolutely make out the silhouette perfectly. No mistake whatsoever.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  Four and a half, five foot tall, definitely not a human, slightly awkward gait. Hands just hung a little bit longer and it did the weirdest thing. It came straight to the water's edge and it kind of sort of squatted and put both of its fists on the ground. And it was just looking at me and I I can't see it through the camcorder. I've got, I can barely see it in the fading light. I put the torch on and I panic and I'm saying to the camera, you know, um I'll try and get eye shine from this creature. But I was panicking and I double clicked and I put the laser pointer on it. And as soon as that laser pointer went on, they just bolted, gone, absolutely just disappeared into into the into the bush.

• 48:24Speaker 06

  So I I just, at this point, I'm like, right, well, that's over. But there's no way in hell I'm getting out of this river. So I basically just um deliberately lost my foot and put the camera in the in the waterproof bag. Um and I floated the whole way back down the river until I I I found the um found the camp. Um, yeah, I was shaken like a leaf and drunk half a bottle of whiskey and fell asleep. And um yeah, that was an experience that was um, yeah, a little unnerving. But they, I I and and the fact that they were smaller wasn't really that surprising. I mean, one of the girls that was up there as our guide, um she she was only four and a half foot tall.

• 49:06Speaker 06

  But it was those arms and and the way they moved that had me absolutely convinced that that was not a um homo sapiens sapiens. That was something different, hundred percent sure of it.

• 49:20Wes Germer?

  You know, as you tell this account, P, it reminds me of Sasquatch encounters here in the States, or even in your home country of Australia. The only thing that's really different is the size. Do you really think that it is something different? Or do you think that it's kind of what everyone else around the world is seeing, but because it's an island, the size is smaller?

• 49:46Speaker 06

  Nope. I don't believe it. It's the same creature at all. The Aboriginals speak of numerous other people. They speak of the small ones as well, the Nimbans, and they've got numerous different local dialect names for them. They talk of the small ones, and they talk about the big ones. The people up Mount Pomarasu, they were showing us up the mountain. There's this big mountain range, but they won't go on because that's where the giants are. And they say every time it's really stormy, when there's lightning, you'll see them. They come out of the rocks. Aboriginals, I've spoken to have said the same things. I believe that there is, well, it definitely was something that formulated these stories.

• 50:31Speaker 06

  And yeah, I think for me personally, the Homo floresiensis is the best, best example. The Denisovians is another one that I really, really think is actually probably the most likely in this situation when it comes to the big, well, the big giants. The big giants, they say they're on Santa Isabel, they're on Choisel, they're on Malita. I've visited all of those islands. I spent a lot of time up in Bovenville, up in Papua. And the Melanesian people, their DNA is seven to eight percent Denisovian, which is higher than anywhere else in the world. And we don't really know a great deal about Denisovians at all. We

• 51:14Speaker 06

  know them from like a pinky bone that was very large, and very little else. So if I had to, I know you ask everyone what you, what you think Bigfoot is. I, it's a tough one. But my, my opinion, it's absolutely flesh and blood. And yeah, I think Denisovians is something we would. Well, I would love to, I'd love to know a little bit more about, I, I, I just hope that we can have a few more archaeological finds in the future that, that maybe shed some light on that. And, uh, I mean, we're learning more and more and more from DNA. We have Neanderthal DNA in us, uh, we have Denisovian DNA in us.

• 51:54Speaker 06

  Um, I'm really hoping that, that through, you know, maybe some event, I'm not talking Jurassic Park type advances, but if we can isolate a few more things in the DNA, maybe learn a bit more about our, our ancestors, maybe we can, we can, uh, shed some new light on it, but, um, flesh and blood, man, flesh and blood.

• 52:14Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I could understand the way you feel. I want to back up for a second. The, the first one that you saw where it popped its head out of the bushes and then looked at you and then went back into the bushes. When you were looking at that face, did it look human to you?

• 52:33Speaker 06

  See, this is, this is again where I've just got to choose my words very carefully so as not to sound racist or judgmental. Yes, but not in the, the sense that it looked like me or someone else. I, I mean, if you, if you, you have a look at a photo of like a really gnarly Aboriginal dude from, you know, the middle of Australia. Or like, um, you know, compare that to an Eskimo, you know? I mean, it, it, human, the, the spectrum that, that we can call human is, is, is pretty broad. But that would, it was, look, that face was very much on the end of what you would call

• 53:15Speaker 06

  very primitive looking, um, very, very, very primitive looking features. But to say it was completely unlike the more primitive looking folks I met in the Solomons would be, would be incorrect. It was. It was not so far removed that it was wasn't human. Yeah, you know, you know what I mean? Does that make sense?

• 53:35Wes Germer?

  Yes and no. The the orange hair throws me off. Did you run into a lot of people with orange hair there?

• 53:41Speaker 06

  Yep, plenty of them.

• 53:44Wes Germer?

  Do you think what you actually saw was human?

• 53:47Speaker 06

  What I saw was human? No, I don't. I absolutely don't think it was human. It was just it's mannerisms. The way in which it moved was the way it brought the fern down and the way it let the fern go was not the way a person would do it. The the people there are very clumsy. They're very careless. You know, they make a lot of noise. They've got no reason to to hide. They've got no reason to be afraid. You know, they're like every tribe speaks the language of the tribes around them. You know, whatever it was, wasn't interacting with the people that live on that, you know, that particular part of the bush.

• 54:27Speaker 06

  So, yeah, no, I I think it was. I think it was something else. Absolutely.

• 54:34Wes Germer?

  The other thing I wanted to ask you about, Pete, was when you were talking to eyewitnesses, you'd mentioned two in particular that you talked to. Uh, one, his wife had been stolen. Uh, did they ever go into descriptions as far as what they saw?

• 54:52Speaker 06

  He passed away, but um, it's the same same place where that kind of stuff is. The descriptions I got from people there, look, they they're all pretty much the same. They're hairy people. They're incredibly strong and they're a lot smaller. And there's a very famous story in the Solomons about this guy, what's his name? Carney McConda or something like that. I wrote it down, but it's I wrote it down in the book anyway. And he he was one of the blackbirds. Um, so the blackbirds were Solomon Islanders that they basically kidnapped. Took them to Australia, lured them onto boats and got them to work in the sugar cane fields. And this guy was apparently like superhuman strength, very hairy. And yeah, he

• 55:35Speaker 06

  he do as much work in a day as 10 other guys. All he wanted in payment was tobacco and he couldn't speak properly and all that kind of stuff. So he's sort of more like the description of what they say these people like. They're they're very, very strong. It's like chimpanzees. I mean chimpanzees can just pull a person apart, even though they're much smaller. That's sort of the description you get there. They they have language. Their arms are a bit longer than ours. Uh, short. They have an awkward gait. Uh, they sometimes nest in the trees. Uh, they love the crayfish. And yeah, we that apparently they they were all over Guadalcanal. But since the war, they've just been moving further and further and further back. And

• 56:18Speaker 06

  when you talk to the older people, all the older people know all about them. But in saying that, the older people will also tell you stories about thirty meter long snakes with diamonds on their heads that slither across the top of the canopy. They'll tell you about the bush motorbike whereby you tie a string to your toe, hold the other string in the other end of the string in your hand. Uh, you say some magic words and you pull on your toe and you can run for every step you take like a thousand steps and you can run across the treetops. So you can't really take everything they say to be, you know, hundred percent true. So, yeah.

• 56:56Wes Germer?

  You know, the other thing, P, is when you were talking about the vocalizations that you heard, it was a lot of tongue pops and tongue clicks. And I remember Ron Moorhead told me that back when he actually got the Sierra sounds, that they use a lot of tongue pops and tongue clicks. And at the time, I didn't really pay attention to it because I was so fascinated by the actual Sierra sounds. But even today, you'll hear a lot of eyewitnesses say that. They will report that tongue pop or tongue click. What other vocalizations did you hear?

• 57:31Speaker 06

  Ah, I mean, it just, it just sounds any human could make. Um, like your little whoops and, and, and who's and hars and things like that. Uh, I heard at one point they were imitating bird sounds. And it was, it was crystal clear that it was not the birds because it was coming from the same place the sound was coming from. Um, but nothing that really sounded anything like the, the classical sort of, I mean, you guys always have your tree knocks and your, you know, your big long howls and all that. I've never really heard anything like that at all, to be completely honest.

• 58:12Speaker 06

  Just, just little whoops and, you know, that, yeah, lots of clicks, lots of clicks and pops. And, um, yeah, but nothing, nothing, nothing overly crazy, nothing that I, I, I can honestly say, didn't sound outside the range of a human. Um, but the, the, the, the big thing that we encountered, whatever that was, that, that was not human. They had, they had lungs beyond the capability of anything a human could produce. That thing was a lot, a lot, absolutely a lot.

• 58:46Wes Germer?

  And so did that kind of wrap up your trip to the Solomons?

• 58:50Speaker 06

  Well, I was there for a long time. Um, and look, I, I was, I was working very hard there. I was, I was doing, um, gold recovery. So basically I would, I would buy gold from the natives, um, because no one was dumb enough to go into the places I was going into. And I'd buy it direct from the, the natives and, and send it, send it back to New Zealand. But, I mean, the issues with the corruption in the country were just horrendous. Um, the domestic violence was something that I, I, I really struggled with. Uh, there's a lot of unexploded ordinance left from the war. I actually used to live at Alligator Creek. I was right next to one of the machine gun positions and when I'd do my gardening, I'd find grenades and things in the, in the backyard. It was a tough place to live, a really tough place to live.

• 59:33Speaker 06

  And then the big cyclone came and smashed everything. And then there was like a big refugee camp in town. And, you know, everyone was wanting compensation. It's a big thing in the Solomons. They like compensation for everything. And I was, I was pushing up to Boganville a lot, getting a lot more gold up there and bouncing backwards and forwards between a choisel and, you know, going through the pigeon islands. But there's no pigeons left because they killed them all during the war in Boganville. That's where all the rebels were hiding out. Yeah, and up in Boganville, I saw a lot of really bad stuff, bought a lot of gold, had a lot of time looking for, um, looking for Bigfoot up there, but apparently they, they all, the last of them there died during the war.

• 1:00:14Speaker 06

  Um, that's the war in Panguna Mine where basically, um, they, the big copper company that had the mine there used the Papua and military as mercenaries to knock off all the Boganvillians. You've seen the movie Mr. Pip? Yeah, that's, that's on that. But it's, it's, it's a war torn place. It's, it's hard work and it just got harder and harder for me to, to stay there. And I keep my humanity. Um, it, it really got to the point where I'd just seen so many horrific things that it was, it was, it was time to go or lose my mind. Um, you can only pull kids out of crocodiles so many times before it, it has a lasting impact.

• 1:00:54Speaker 06

  And, uh, yeah, it's just, human life there was, was not valued in the same way I valued human life. It'd be, I'd watch the, um, you know, the, the Japanese fishing fleet, you know, come and park up in Honiara and try and abduct young girls. And, uh, there was mainly the Malaysian dudes there that were doing that, not the Japanese. They just owned the fleets and, you know, you'd see the, that they bought a whaling vote. So all of the, the government officials had new cars so that they'd vote for whaling. And all of the timbers just getting clear felled and sent to Malaysia to make cheap patio furniture for Australians. And, yeah, it's.

• 1:01:33Speaker 06

  Man, does it take a take a toll on your humanity. It's it was just too much for me. And there was a an incident that's probably not suitable for your your show that involved a young child losing his life in an attempt to make fishing bombs out of old hundred and five millimeter artillery shells. But yeah, that was that was the point for me where I was just like, no, I just I just can't do this anymore. I just can't be here. I can't see what we're doing to these people any longer. I can't see what they're doing to themselves. And it just breaks my heart to see that that this is another place where we're going to lose something before we find it. And a weird side note is, in 2015, some guy was watching

• 1:02:18Speaker 06

  it, an environmentalist was seeing a tree get cut down, and a large rat fell out of it, basically hit the ground and died. That's this giant rat. And I'd been seeing them all the time, seeing millions of them, like, all the time I saw them. Turns out it was a new species, completely unknown to science, and first described in 2015. And I'd been walking past these things the whole bloody time. So I could have got famous finding that, but instead, I just got very sad, worsened my PTSD, and went back home to New Zealand with my tail between my legs. So and I'd like to think that the whole time we've been talking, I'm quite jaded from my experiences, to be completely honest. And I like to consider

• 1:02:59Speaker 06

  myself that I've always remained skeptical. I've gone through everything in a very scientific scientific way, as far as I'm concerned. And and I really don't have a normal brain. I really do tend to do outrageously dangerous things without a second thought about it. And yeah, it was yeah, it was one hell of an adventure, but I'm I'm very glad to be happily married, tucked away in the Bavarian forest, my beautiful wife and my dog and my ponies. So, yeah.

• 1:03:33Wes Germer?

  I would imagine in that environment, in a completely different culture, that it would be very difficult not to step in when something bad is happening. I probably would have got killed there because I would have stepped in and, you know, not today, that's not happening today. But I would imagine that attitude would get you killed pretty quick in a place like that.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  You've got no idea how many times I nearly got killed stepping in the middle of something. It was ridiculous. So I had, I've got two different strains of malaria. I had dengue fever, another one called yours, which is pretty bad. Yellow fever, dysentery, more times than I can count. Nothing but blue powerade for seven days, coming out both ends as fast as I could put it in. I've been taken from the, from the flights when I got home, taken home in an ambulance a bunch of times. I've had a lot of, a lot of serious injuries. Had our compound attacked by multiple people at the same time. Had, yeah, it was a rough place. It was a rough place. And I'm

• 1:04:38Speaker 06

  glad I left with my life and, and yeah, my humanity intact. But look, the Solomons is a really beautiful place. You catch it on a good day and it's incredible. You go to the white people places, you're gonna have a great time. You're gonna have a great time. But if you do go to the darker corners of that country, you will experience the darker corners of that country. And that's where you're gonna find things. You know, I mean, you'll get exactly the trip you pay for when you go to a place like that. It's the same as like, it's no worse than South America. I mean, there's, there's multiple Venezuelas. You know, there's a Venezuela where you can be safe in a, in a big hotel. There's a Venezuela with nice forest walks and so on and so forth,

• 1:05:21Speaker 06

  but there's places you don't go because of the narco-terrorism. Same with Mexico, same with anywhere. And unfortunately for me, I was constantly pushing myself towards those riskier, dodgier places in the search for, search for stuff. And it's funny because we have a saying with the expats over there. There's only three types of people that come to a place like the Solomons, and that's misfits, mercenaries, and missionaries. And they come looking for three things: glory, gold, or God. And I was definitely two of those things going to try and find another two of those things. And I'm most definitely not religious. So, yeah.

• 1:06:02Wes Germer?

  Earlier you'd mentioned seeing the lights all the time on your farm. Give me an example of a time when you saw them. What did it look like? And if you would kind of go into what you saw.

• 1:06:14Speaker 06

  Okay, so the orcs, I used to call them the little white lights. I'd always see them like, and this is, and I was a weird thing to say, but like, my brain is programmed to look for things the entire time. I've spent my entire adult life on mountainsides looking for deer or pigs or goats or wolves or bears or anything like that and or enemy. And I'm always looking up. I'm always looking down. I'm always looking left. I'm always looking right. And when I drive up the road, I lived out the back of a place called Wanganui. It was about 45 Ks into the bush and we drive like a ridge. It's like a watershed road. It's high up on a ridge.

• 1:06:58Speaker 06

  And we'd often see little white lights down in the forestry. And, you know, for a while you'd always be like, ah, it's just someone poaching or things like that. But we'd stop and have some beers sometimes and you'd be sitting there and you're watching them. And they'd be going places where you know, no person could go at speeds. You know, a person could not walk through there. And it was that, that's when I sort of really started to think, oh, you know, hey, these really are those little, little orbs and stuff that, that, you know, people talk about. And I'd never heard of your podcast back then. This is like, what, 2010, that sort of thing. I had a talk to the neighbor about it and he's like, yeah, it's bull lightning. It's bull lightning. It's definitely bull lightning. And, you know, he showed me an internet article about bull lightning. And I was like, oh, maybe that's it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 06

  But when, when a storm would start rolling in, that's when we'd start seeing them. And they were really, really strange because they would, they would go normally through the trees. But it was low manuka scrub. So the scrub wasn't much, much above five meters. But they'd be in the scrub going through and they would follow like a contour. They would follow the land around. And then at times they would come up and they would cross a little gorge and then they'd go back to following the land around. Weirdest looking things ever. Absolutely weirdest, variant size from. Size of your fist up to maybe big basketballs, that sort of thing. And the closest one ever came to me, it it come down the ridge towards me and all the hair on my arms stood up.

• 1:08:27Speaker 06

  And I was sitting there doing my normal thing. I had my rifle with me at the time and I was like, right, this is aliens. I'm either gonna get a photo or get killed by it. And yeah, put around in the chamber, got my phone out, my phone went off, my arms went all tingly, had like my hair stood up on my end. Went straight past me, just a little white ball, maybe ten, fifteen meters away, about the size of a basketball. Um, saw them a bunch of times, saw them out hunting all the time. Um, the Maoris uh say it's like their dead ancestors and ghosts and things like that. Uh, in Australia, they call them the Min Min Lights and they say never, ever, ever follow them. If you follow them into the bush, you will never come out.

• 1:09:07Speaker 06

  But yeah, that that's just, I I put it down to a natural phenomenon. I think ball lightning is a good enough explanation for me. I always try and go to the most logical explanation. I don't, I don't wanna go to anything fantastic. I don't wanna be a crazy guy that's labeled nuts, but um, yeah, saw those things regularly. But I have seen one thing that was absolutely mental and that was in Kazakhstan. So, yeah, that was actually a UFO. Didn't, didn't see Bigfoot or orbs or anything like that.

• 1:09:41Wes Germer?

  Let me ask you this before you go on to the UFO incident. You know, about ten years ago or so, might be eleven now or twelve. I used to get reports of these ball of light. I mean, people would see them all the time. And they would report them all the time and I've seen them. And I kinda went with the ball of lightning explanation as well. But you know, from a scientific point of view, a ball of lightning is pretty rare to see. You have a better chance of actually winning the lottery than seeing a ball of lightning. I think something like four or five percent of the population has actually seen a ball of lightning.

• 1:10:22Wes Germer?

  And if that's the case, the numbers are way off because I've had a hell of a lot of people who've seen balls of lightning on their property. Do you really think it was a ball of lightning that you were seeing all the time?

• 1:10:34Speaker 06

  Well, I don't know what it was, but um that's that's as good as I can do. Was it a ghost? I don't know. Was it aliens? I I don't know. But I do know that ball lightning exists. Um, I do know that there's documented cases of it moving as though it is controlled. Um, I mean, what what were all of those UFOs and orbs and things that they saw off um New Jersey like last year? You know? I don't know. I don't know. Was it Russian technology? Was it Chinese technology? You know, I mean, the Indians are pretty good at making stuff these days. They're doing the iPhones there. Was it India testing technology? I don't know. Does it have something to do with HARP?

• 1:11:12Speaker 06

  They've got that big electrical thing up in Alaska or whatever it is. It's, you know, apparently moving the North Pole and giving us weather control and and all that. I don't know. And I I if if I don't know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with the most logical explanation I can think of until I I can think of something better or you know, more more evidence comes to light. I have absolutely no idea. But uh we were in an area of sort of quite unique geology. Um, it's where all the all the weather coming over from Australia. That's that's the first point on the West Coast where all of that weather has to climb up a hill. And for me, that's the perfect place for static electricity to build up. So for me, electrical phenomena, not unrealistic.

• 1:11:57Wes Germer?

  You know, even in your home country, the Aboriginals, as you mentioned, they'll say, don't follow the lights. Uh, they'll lead you to your death, basically. And I highly doubt they've been talking to the Native Americans over in the States. Because the Native Americans have the exact same saying, don't follow the lights, they'll lead you to your death. I have a hard time buying into the fact that it's a ball of lightning, but I want you to be right. I I really want to be wrong. Tell me about the UFO you saw in Kazakhstan.

• 1:12:30Speaker 06

  We started off in Pavlodar in Kazakhstan and we got three horses. And we really didn't have a great idea what we're doing at that stage. And we promptly lost our pack horse that decided to just run home with most of our gear. Made an absolute mess of things. And about two or three weeks into the ride through Kazakhstan, we had it flying really nicely. I had a beautiful little buckskin stallion and my wife, well, my girlfriend then, but my wife now, had this great little stock horse. And we'd done about probably forty, forty-five Ks without seeing anyone or anything. And we found this beautiful little shallow lake amongst sort of low, sort of rolling sand dunes and scrub. Middle of absolute nowhere in Kazakhstan.

• 1:13:14Speaker 06

  Like Kazakhstan is huge. It is just amazing, endless rolling step. And we tucked ourselves into this nice little valley and cracked a beer, made a little fire. And I was just walking over to tether the horses because it was hobbles on them and spiked a spike in the ground and rope that they can graze on. And I looked back towards the missus and about thirty-five metres above her, a mercury silver craft sort of, well, it couldn't have been much more than twenty metres long, maybe three metres high. It went straight over the top of her, straight over both horses, none of them looked up, and straight across and off the horizon. Now, it was absolutely supersonic.

• 1:13:57Speaker 06

  And it made a noise no bigger than a big bird of prey just sort of swooping down. It was just, just a whoosh noise. Lou looks up, it's already gone. I just make a stupid face and she's like, what was that? And I'm like, um, I think Russia's testing some new kind of aeroplane. And we had a bit of a laugh about it. I confessed what it was, went to bed, had, you know, a few more beers, went to bed. Middle of that night, I wake up because the horses are making some sort of crazy noises. And I'm like, great. Aliens. So I grabbed the bow, grabbed the torch, I head outside and I'm like, am I gonna try and shoot an alien with a bow and arrow? Uh, cause we just had a Mongol horse bow for, for hunting with.

• 1:14:43Speaker 06

  And uh, yeah, I caught three wolves in, in, in my headlamp and they were circling, circling the camp. But as soon as they saw, saw me, they disappeared. But yeah, I didn't get to see any aliens. I saw something shiny and silver, just zoomed straight over the top of us in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan. But um, look, this stuff had just happens to me a lot because I'm out in these crazy places. But if you actually spend time in these crazy places, you absolutely cannot help but have encounters like this. It's just how it goes.

• 1:15:17Wes Germer?

  Was that the only time you saw a craft in the sky?

• 1:15:20Speaker 06

  Uh, that's the only time I've seen what I could 100% identify as a craft. Um, two days after that, we heard it and we missed it. We heard the same sound and Lewis like, that was that thing again. And I'm like, I'm just looking up everywhere. It went straight over us. Same time, same time in the evening, uh, but we didn't see it at that time. Um, we have seen like, just out on the step and that. We have seen lights, little lights. I'm talking like star sized that you could see doing crazy things and absolutely leave Earth's atmosphere or whatever, you know, like you would see them disappear into space.

• 1:16:01Wes Germer?

  And Pete, you had mentioned the sound it made. What, what was the sound it made? Like you said, like a bird?

• 1:16:07Speaker 06

  The noise that that made, oh, it just sounded like a, a bird, like it, just a big bird, just it like it was, it was nothing impressive at all, like a swan landing. Like that's how much noise it made, but it was supersonic. And that's what, like you, I know what supersonic looks like. That thing was supersonic and it was silent. Uh, yeah, is what it is.

• 1:16:28Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it's hard to know what box to put that in besides alien. I mean, I guess it could be the government, but that is a weird sighting. You know, outside of anything we've talked about, what's kind of the strangest thing that you've seen?

• 1:16:44Speaker 06

  Strangest experience. Uh, okay. Uh, all right. Here's a good one for you. So, um, I was out kangaroo hunting in South Australia and we'd shoot all night. And I didn't really like sleeping during the day because it was like forty degrees. So anyway, I um, had a couple of beers and um, checked a couple of chocolate bars in my pocket. And I wandered off to shoot cats because I hate cats. And I I would just find whenever I find cats, they're normally sitting on the rabbit lines, waiting for the rabbits to come out. But I I followed these really big tomcat footprints through the through the sand. And he'd gone up a big gum tree. So I walked up underneath and I was having a look around and and this big tomcat.

• 1:17:28Speaker 06

  It weighed thirteen kilos when I put it on scales. Um, it it looked down and you know how cats just look at you with utter contempt. So um, so I shot him, fell straight out of the tree. And as I walked over to it, I'm standing over it and just, you know, I was a young fella and I just spat beer on it with utter contempt. Because I destroy the bush in Australia, they kill everything. And you're gonna hear this, you're gonna eat that brother? And I'm like, I just jump out of my skin. I'm in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We got a youth about five Ks away, but that's it. And um, yeah, I'll turn around, there's this um, Aboriginal standing there. He's got one uh, jandalon or flip flop or whatever you Americans call them. He's in a pair of old footy shorts and a singlet and he's got like a blanket with a string tied around him.

• 1:18:13Speaker 06

  And he's standing there with a smoldering stick. And I was just like, mate, where the hell did you come from? He's like, I sleep under that tree, brother. Damn, you shit myself when you shot that that cat there? Are you gonna eat it? And I'm like, no, I'm absolutely not gonna eat that cat, mate. So he he he starts up a fire. He cooks the cat. And I give him a beer, which he was bloody happy about. And he he started telling me all about black magic and all sorts of things and um, how um, white men have got it all wrong. And and he he said one thing that really stuck with me. It's like, you know, white men have this idea that they can own the land. Look at them mountains over there. They've been there for millions of years. They'll be there for millions of years after you're gone. And yet a white man thinks he can own it. And then he's like, shh, you hear that, brother?

• 1:18:58Speaker 06

  And I'm like, hear what? And he's like, budgies. So he starts climbing up this tree and he's had one beer, so he's a bit dizzy from it. And he, he makes a mess of it, but he manages to fish a handful of little budgerigars out of, um, out of a, a knot in a tree. And he, um, he throws them straight in the fires and he's like, oh mate, they're delicious. Let's bush popcorn, bush popcorn brother. So, um, I ate some budgies out of the fire with an Aboriginal fella who explained to me that you can't own land. And a whole lot of, um, Aboriginal concepts that were very close to my heart to this, this day. And, uh, yeah, I would say that's up there for, for random experiences. But the, the coolest part was why he was there.

• 1:19:41Speaker 06

  He, he, he said he'd gone on a walk about a couple of years ago because he was in trouble. And he was in trouble with the police in West Australia, which is thousands of kilometers away. And in his words, he said, I'm in trouble because I done gone spear a fella. So in a dispute, he'd speared someone and had been wandering through the outback for the last two years. Um, and he was in the same clothes he left with. So, yeah. I've met some characters. I think that's up there.

• 1:20:11Wes Germer?

  You know, Pete, I was muted out when you were telling that story and I was busting up laughing. I have a lot of friends who are in the military and this is probably like two years ago. I was at, and they were working with the Aussies and I asked him, you know, what, what's the Aussies like? What, what are they like to work with? And, and he said, you know, the Australians, when the world dies, the Australians will survive. He's like, you put those people in the middle of nowhere with nothing and they'll survive. You know, through all your travels, I wanted to ask you, have you ever had anything paranormal? Like, have you ever seen a ghost?

• 1:20:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, I have actually had a few. Um, honestly though, it's, it's not what you're going to expect. Um, but I will tell you, cause it's pretty funny. So, um, in one of my many lives, I was working in Auckland, New Zealand. And I was selling these crappy little pens for three bucks that, you know, if you wrote five words with them, they were, they were a good one. And basically I was doing doorded or sales. I was, I'd been 20 at the time. I'd just chased a girl to New Zealand. I was still finding my feet. I was doing the first job that, that I could find. So I'm going door to door selling these pens and um yeah, you know, three bucks each, two for five or four for ten bucks helps out the blind foundation, so on and so forth.

• 1:21:32Speaker 06

  And I'm in one of the more wealthy to do sort of suburbs and a really, really lovely lady, you know, just a hot soccer mum types, um, you know, ten bucks in a tin, give her some pens, that sort of thing. And I go next door and I knock on the door and um, no answer. And then knock on the door again and I see an old lady with a walking frame cross the hall. And oh, okay, someone's home. And and then the lovely soccer mum from next door, she sticks her head out. She's like, oh, don't, don't worry about it. The old lady that lived there just died the other day. And I'm like, what do you mean, the old lady that died the other day? Was she an old lady with like a walking frame and a little shawl over her neck?

• 1:22:15Speaker 06

  And as soon as I said that, she just runs straight out, jumps off the porch, jumps over the fence, runs straight to the front door, looks down the corridor and says, oh, you saw her too? I'm like, okay, what do you mean? She's, yeah, she's been walking around ever since. Well, what if it's just one of her friends that's come to pick some stuff up or so on and so forth? She's like, no, that's a ghost. And so what do we do? She's like, oh, we could give her a call and we'll leave her a nice message on her phone. So we gave her a call and left a nice message on our answering machine. And um, yeah, but um, that's my ghost story. Again, like I said, it's not what you expect, but a hundred percent convinced, man, that was a ghost. Hundred percent.

• 1:23:01Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that's a crazy account, P. I mean, when you saw her, obviously she looked solid. It didn't look like a ghost to you?

• 1:23:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, absolutely. But I didn't realize, but she walked across the corridor and there was like no doors there. So, yeah, I don't look, I don't know what what it was, but like, if you're asking me, was that a ghost? Yes, that was a ghost. That's my ghost story. I am convinced that was a ghost. Oh, and speaking of which, about eight houses later, Lucy Lawless knocked on her door. She bought twenty bucks worth of pens for the blind foundation. So if you're listening, Lucy Lawless, good on you. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. You know, Xena Warrior Princess, that Lucy Lawless.

• 1:23:44Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I know who Lucy Law is. That's really cool. Man, you've had a lot of experiences throughout your life. I think you've lived probably two lifetimes compared to a normal person. You know, the, the, one of the questions I want to ask you, and you don't have to go into it if you don't want to, you had referenced this car accident that happened to you. And it kind of seems like that was a point in your life where everything changed. Do you mind talking about that?

• 1:24:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, I'm, I'm fine. It's, it's something I've, I've dealt with well and truly.

• 1:24:16Speaker 06

  A, um, is what the coroner's report says, and then there's what I say after many, many, many years of reflection. Uh, we were coming home from a weekend, uh, fishing and diving, uh, down on the Victorian coast, uh, when an off duty police officer crashed head on into our car at 100 k's an hour with his fiance in the car. Uh, he was killed. Um, my father was horrifically injured. My brother was horrifically injured. Uh, my mom broke her neck and I walked out of it. Um, I walked out of it with a leg that was not possible to be walked on and a back that was torn up badly enough that I shouldn't have been able

• 1:24:56Speaker 06

  to walk with that as well. Um, and my first thought was, uh, I needed to go and kill the person that's just destroyed my family. Um, I then started, uh, you know, I couldn't smell petrol. I was looking for ignition sources and someone and so forth. Um, I just turned into a robot. I, I just went through the motions. Um, I made it halfway to the other car or what was left of it. And I could see that that guy was dead and his fiance was not in a good way. And after a great deal of reflection and in particular reflection on the behavior of the, the guy's brothers at the, the coroner's inquest, um, I believe

• 1:25:37Speaker 06

  he actually committed suicide during a, a sort of an end of the relationship type argument. And, you know, it's, it's one of those things where it just, it happened at such. An interesting junction in my life that it really just flicked a switch in my head. And I've never been the same since. And yeah, I mean, I've dealt with PTSD my entire life. And I've continued to make new things to destroy my brain in my life with again and again and again, as a result of that one incident. But that absolutely was the turning point in my life that that turned me into this

• 1:26:17Speaker 06

  very difficult person to get along with, that that has adventures that are unbelievable and and very hard to understand for a lot of people. But it was it was going through that that instant where I just thought, you know, my whole life's been destroyed and yeah, I'll never be the same. So, but I'm happy I've got here, you know?

• 1:26:42Wes Germer?

  I'm so sorry you went through that, Pete. It breaks my heart to hear that you went through that. And on the other side of it, you know, it's who we become. And I'm proud of you that you became, you know, because you could have easily become a monster and you chose not to. And even though there's rough patches, I admire the way you've turned out. And I know it's getting late there in Germany. I wanted to ask you, you kind of alluded to it earlier. I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? And you kind of brought up the Denisovans. Do you think that's what Sasquatch is?

• 1:27:19Speaker 06

  I think it's about as good as what I can do. It's as good as what I can like. I mean, Gigantopithecus would be a really good candidate, but it's just too long out of the fossil record. But then again, is it? It's really, really hard to say. And for me, it's got to be the most logical is the most likely. And seven to eight percent shared DNA with Denisovans in the Papua region. We have three different distinct variations, Denisovans. It could be. I look, I, I, I think DNA is going to answer this once and for all, and we're not there yet.

• 1:28:01Speaker 06

  I, I really don't know, but I absolutely am convinced that the, the little guys on the Solomons are homo florescensus or a cousin of homo florescensus. And I, I sadly, I truly believe that will be gone before we ever find them. I really do.

• 1:28:19Wes Germer?

  I need to really research the Denisovans more than I have. I actually thought about doing a show on them. And Pete, you've lived a life that most people won't live in three lifetimes. And I've really enjoyed chatting with you. It's been a real honor to have you on. The book, again, I know you're not trying to sell books, but I'll promote it. Hominid Hunter, The Search For The Undescribed South Pacific Hominids. And I ordered a copy. I can't wait to read it. I hope people go out there and order a copy of it. Pete, it's been a real honor having you on. Thank you so much for taking the time.

• 1:28:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, no worries, man. Oh, anytime you want to catch up, we can, um, we can talk hominids all night long, buddy. Um, I'm, I'm very passionate about it. And I mean, we haven't even started on, on going into depths on Aboriginal myths and so on and so forth. So, um, yeah, you know how to get ahold of me. And if I'm ever over in the US again, um, I'll give you a, give you a message. We'll go have a look for some Bigfoot together if you want, mate. Be keen, S.

• 1:29:19Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'll have to have you back for sure. Thanks again, Pete.

• 1:29:23Speaker 06

  No worries, buddy. Anytime.

• 1:29:25Wes Germer?

  And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.