Rex Gilroy

Who is Rex Gilroy?

I don't remember.

Oh cool. This might be a fun post. Lord Wiki says that  Gilroy studies unexplained phenomena. I like that type of stuff.

It looks like his big thing is cryptids. These are those creatures that might exist, but there's no scientific proof yet....like the Loch Ness Monster.

On my massive screensaver slideshow, there is a photograph of an elephant in the middle of the water. You can see his head and his trunk. I don't remember where I got the photograph, but to me it looks a lot like another photo I have...one supposedly of the Loch Ness Monster. I mean if you look at it directly and carefully, it doesn't. But if you look at it in the corner of your eye, or see it quickly, it does. So maybe the Loch Ness Monster is an elephant living out in the middle of the lake. Although a wild elephant in Scotland may be more far-fetched then there being an elusive breed of animal scientists haven't verified yet.

Lord Wiki's entry on Gilroy is pretty short. I'll have to do most of my research elsewhere. But let's see what Lord Wiki does have....

Gilroy was born in New South Wales, but no date is provided here. I do know that he was born before 1957, because by that time he was at Liverpool Boys High School. Before that, he went to Villawood Infants and Primary School.

I see a Villawood Primary School on Google Maps. It's right near a Liverpool Road, so I'm guessing this would be the area where Gilroy lived. Now I have to zoom out to find where I'm at.

Well, it's in Sydney....way out west. It's about fourteen minutes north-west of Bankstown, and fifteen minutes south of Parramatta.

As a child, Gilroy had a love of museums. He credits those for giving him passion for his work. When he was twenty-one, he opened up his own museum. Wow.

In 1959, Gilroy saw a UFO in the sky, and that prompted his interest in weird stuff. He believes in some far out stuff here. There's something about Phoenicans living in Australia and traveling through rivers that used to be there.

Who are Phoenicans? I have no idea. I need to look this up.

Lord Wiki has a long entry on them....

They were an ancient maritime trading people, centered in ancient Canaan. They did there thing around 2300-65 BCE. Funny. It seems so LONG ago. Yet the Australian Aborigines were already doing their thing in Australia.

Were the Phoenicans in Australia? I suppose it's possible. I'll read more about it later, probably.

In 1986, Gilroy started publishing books about his ideas, findings, and theories. It looks like he co-wrote them with his wife, Heather.

Here's Rex Gilroy's website. The front page says, Mysterious Australia is one of those unique sites on the Internet that deals with the forgotten history of our continent including Anthropology, Archeology, Cryptozoology, and Hominology, with an all Australasian Content!

I've never heard of Hominology before. This cousin of Lord Wiki explains it. It's a branch of Cryptozoology that deals specifically with hominids....such as Bigfoot.

Gilroy says the Australian version of Bigfoot is called the Yowie.

I like what Gilroy says here:

It is a field of research not always guaranteed to win friends. My relatives regard me as 'mad'. The scientific community 'blackballed' me long ago. But have I lost any sleep because of all this? Certainly not! For even if I fail to find physical proof of the yowie or any of our Australian 'unknown' animal species, my wife and I have had the satisfaction of visiting and seeing remote, unknown and spectacular Australian wilderness regions that average Australians have never seen.

I like that attitude. It's nice to have a quest in life, even if it's seen as ridiculous by other people. I think it's fun to imagine there are animals out there that haven't been officially documented yet. In some ways, I think it's better if accepted scientific evidence isn't found for them. No matter what evidence the skeptics provide, people can still believe in the Loch Ness Monster. A forged photograph only proves there's a forged photograph. It doesn't prove the Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist. We can still believe. We can still hope.

But what if it's proven that there's a Loch Ness Monster? What if it becomes a chapter in our seventh grade textbooks rather than our unexplained phenomena books? I think a lot of the magic will be lost.

I guess the positive thing is these researchers and believers might finally feel validated. Their friends can apologize for calling them crazy. But in the scheme of things, it won't matter. The next time someone comes up with a wild idea, he'll be ridiculed and ostracized as well.

Gilroy's website has a transcript of an interview they did on ABC's Australian Story.

Gilroy talks about having psychic flashes. This helps him to know when to stop the car, and look for stuff when they're traveling.

He answers the question that many people ask. If the Yowie exists, why don't they let us see them? Why don't more of us know about them? He replies that they're scared of us. He says, Well, we're a pretty dangerous lot. I can't argue with that!

Heather Gilroy (the wife) says, Rex is a...well, I describe him as the absentminded professor, typical. He is eccentric. Some people can't cope with that eccentricity.

Yeah. I find it hard dealing with that degree of eccentricity. I'm open-minded, but some people are way too out there for me. It's not really WHAT they believe, but more HOW they believe it. It's like they'll believe anything without question, and it seems they expect us to believe it too.

It's hard for me to explain. I guess I'd say they're on the way opposite end of skeptical people. I find I'm more comfortable with people in the middle of those two extremes.

Heather Gilroy says her husband was ostracized at school, and unhappy with his treatment there. He didn't learn a lot there, and learned most stuff on his own. I think that's usually the best way to learn.

Gilroy says he was a slow learner, and the teachers didn't do much to help him. He'd ask a teacher for help, and she'd brush him off. They were too busy.

In 1953, Gilroy went to the Australian Museum in Sydney for the first time. Jack and I love that place! Gilroy was really impressed with the insect collection, and wanted one of his own. He says he now has around fifty-thousand insects and spiders. Yet he says he's not a collector. I don't get that. How is fifty-thousand not a collection?

Gilroy lists some of the animals that he believes in. He thinks the extinct (or so we thought) Tasmanian Tiger is still around....and on the mainland.

He believes in an Australian Panther, a Blue Mountain Lion, and a Giant Monitor Lizard.

In the past year or so, I've had recurring dreams about big cats, and a week or so ago, I dreamed about a giant lizard. I thought it was some kind of psychological symbolism, but maybe I was getting some kind of psychic message about big animals in Australia.

No, it's probably psychological. The usual story in the dreams is that a lion or tiger is roaming about freely. I'm terrified, and feel threatened. I worry about Jack; but no one else seems bothered. A few weeks ago, I tried to figure out what it symbolized. What in life do I worry about alone, and no one else seem concerned?

The first thing that came to mind was my eating disorder. I worry about it coming back. I see it as a problem I had in the past, and something that is still a threat. But no one else seems concerned. I get this sense that people...especially my family...think I'm ridiculous. And that's the same feeling I get in the dream, that I'm ridiculous for being afraid.

But the funny thing is, I recently started losing a little weight, and then the dreams changed. Well, at least one of them did. I dreamed I had a lion in a hotel room that I could turn on and off. And this time, it was my mom who was angry/anxious, while I was okay with the lion. I think maybe it was saying I do have the capability to lose five to ten pounds without going nuts and getting back into a two digit weight. Although I guess I still have a little anxiety because on March 3 I dreamed: We have a lion locked in the master bedroom. I accidentally let it out. I can't get it back in. I'm worried it will hurt the baby or the dogs. But not terrified worried.... The lion and dogs start fighting. It doesn't seem to the death or anything.

Speaking of eating disorders....

I'm hungry.

I'm going to eat, and then get back to this interview thing....

All right. I'm back.

Gilroy says the Yowie is based on Aboriginal Folklore. While most of us see it as being a fictional creature of the imagination, Gilroy believes it's based a on a real thing. He says he has seen it before.

I'm done with the interview, and looking at the other parts of the website now.

It looks like each phenomena has it's own page.

Here's one on the Yowie. The Yowie are basically hairy people. Gilroy says the Aborigines believed these Yowie folks lived in the Eastern mountain ranges. I guess that would be in New South Wales...the Snowy Mountains?

This page of the site talks about all the sightings that have occurred between 1900 and 1999. Does that mean no sightings have occurred in the last eleven years?

I'm definitely not reading through all of these. I think I'll just read the page for my birth year.

Well, it was 1972 that Gilroy started the actual research organization for the Yowie. That's cool.

Also in 1972.....

Footprints were found south of the Kimberly Plateau....in the Great Sandy Desert. Gilroy says that in this area, the human-like beings are called Jimbra, and there's a community nearby called Jimberingga. I can't find anything about this Jimberinnga community. Maybe it's top secret, or something?

A man in the Ooldea Range saw footprints. He didn't make a big fuss about them, but then he saw a big hairy man with a stone club. That scared him because the hairy man looked a bit menacing. He ran back to his car, and the hairy man chased him. Yikes.

Could it not have been a wild and crazy homo sapien with a lot of body hair? How about someone good with make-up effects who wanted to play a practical joke?

I'm looking for the Ooldea Range on Google Maps. I can't find Ooldea RANGE, but I do see an Ooldea. It's in South Australia.

Okay. Honestly, I'm getting bored reading about these encounters.

I'm open-minded. I can accept that there might be hairy men wandering about Australia. But I'm not going to see eyewitness reports as proof of anything. It's too easy to fool people these days, and it's also easy to misinterpret what we see.

Let's move on.

Here we have a page about the lost civilization of Australia. Gilroy believes that white folks may have been in Australia much earlier than we think. To me, it sounds pretty racist. He says, These ‘culture-heroes’ are variously described as being pale or white-skinned; that they shaped many natural geological features, and erected many, often truly monolithic rock formations, and worshipped the Sun, Moon and Stars. They gave the Aborigines laws and passed on elements of their religion, such as Sun, Earth-Mother and Sky-Father worship, and taught the Aboriginal warriors the manufacture of the boomerang and the use of the woomera in spear-throwing. Yeah, because we all know black people couldn't come up with brilliant ideas on their own. It must have been white people who gave them all their knowledge.

Although I could buy the idea that the Aborigines themselves weren't as black when they first came over. Maybe their skin was more light, and through the centuries, they turned darker.

Gilroy talks about how historians and archaeologists thought he was nuts. Then he found an extensive culture centre of crumbling sandstone mounds, altar stones carved in the forms of Serpent and Eagle motifs, and other mystery structures. One, obvious ceremonial structure was a tree-covered 15m tall mound composed of sandstone boulders and rubble. On its western side stone slab steps led to the summit, where I found, upon a flat base, facing east, a large altar stone whose flat top had been carved in the form of a serpent.

Okay....

I don't get it. How does that prove there were white people who came along and taught the black people all their important stuff?

Well, I'm reading further down. Gilroy says he found script on the rock, and he believes this helps prove that there's an a lost civilization called Uruan. Oh, and he thinks it's all connected to Atlantis.

Wow.

I have to admit it. So far, Gilroy does not really have me convinced about a lot of things. I can't say he's turning me into a believer. I'm not wanting to rush over to Tim and say You gotta hear this! It's amazing. Yeah, I do that to Tim a lot. He doesn't really need to read my entries, because if I learn something exciting or interesting, I usually blab on and on about it to him.

Anyway, I feel kind of guilty for being so skeptical. I should try to be more open-minded. Who knows? Maybe Gilroy is right about some stuff. I think he just rubbed me the wrong way with the idea of white people teaching the black people all their stuff....or most of their stuff.

I guess what would make me believe more easily is if I could find other websites with the same information. And several times when I've googled something today, I've ended up back at Gilroy's website. Now that doesn't prove he's wrong. It's just for me...it's harder to believe.

It's kind of like if one person in Texas claims to see a vampire, I'm probably not going to take them seriously. If twenty people in Texas claim to have had vampire sightings, I might start believing.

This page has part of Gilroy's book about the Uruan folks. He talks about the human remains that were found in Lake Mungo. I think I've read about this before, but I don't remember the details. I want to see if other websites agree with what Gilroy says.

According to Gilroy, a female was found there, and is dated to be from sixty-eight thousand years ago. It's usually accepted that Aborigines have been around for forty-thousand years, but I do remember reading that some people believe they've been around longer than that.

Gilroy believes that the skeleton proves that there were two distinct type of humans in Australia during the time of the ice-age. He says, The evidence thus implies that the robust [Kow Swamp] race are descendants of the Java Man [homo erectus] of 500,000 years ago, while the smaller Lake Mungo race entered Australia from China, probable descendants of the modern Aboriginal People.

I think he said something wrong there. Aren't descendants future generations? I think he probably should have said ANCESTORS of the modern Aboriginal people.

What Gilroy believes is that the modern Aborigines are not related to the stone-age inhabitants of Australia. If I'm reading this right, he seems to believe Australia may be the mother of civilization...rather than Africa.

I can go along with Australia perhaps being the mother of civilization, but I think it was the
Aborigines or people partly related to them. Maybe the Aborigines are a mix of these ancient civilization people, and people from Asia.

I've probably been brainwashed by my obsession with Australia, but the other day I realize that I BELIEVE in Aborigine mythology. There's a part of me that feels it's all true....the dreaming...all the stories. A part of me sees it as truth and not just fiction. That being said though, when I watch or read The Exorcist, I believe in Catholicism. And sometimes when I read Harry Potter, I start to believe that JK Rowling was only pretending to write fiction because no one would accept it as nonfiction.

I'm gullible that way.

Oh yeah. I forgot. I wanted to find more information about this Mungo person. The University of Melbourne site says the Mungo woman is 40,000 years old....not 68,000. BUT, the University site says some scientists believed he was 62,000.

And tools have been found that are 50,000 years old.

I'm tired of this website. I think I'm going to go elsewhere...maybe.


YouTube has part of one of Gilroy's videos. I don't think I read everything clearly enough, so this is helping me get a better grasp of Gilroy's ideas.

He believes the Yowie is a Homo-erectus. He says that's an ancestor of us...the homo sapien. Lord Wiki believes Homo erectus is extinct, and that it originated in Africa. He says evidence shows that they traveled out to Europe, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China. Would it be far-fetched to imagine they traveled to Australia as well? Although Gilroy doesn't just think they traveled there, but that they originated from there.

So is the Yowie related to the Uruan people....or is it totally different? If I more carefully studied Gilroy's website, I'd probably know the answer to that. I'm cheating by watching the video.

This guy is totally losing me. He talks about evidence that he has found. I guess it's supposed to make us believe. But one of the things he mentions is abandoned Aboriginal styles of campfire, and another is stone tools. So, how does that prove the Yowie exists? Maybe it's Aborigines who made the campfire and tools! Or maybe it's even white people who did it. Maybe it's someone from India who has learned to make Aboriginal style campfires.

I've returned to Gilroy's own website. There's a biography page here. I find it to be slightly ironic. In one part, it talks about Gilroy being ostracized by the scientific community. The site says, Yet, because Rex Gilroy was a mere 'amateur', and because he was beginning to receive a lot of media attention, the Australian Museum scientists for whom he had devoted so much time and effort in the Butterfly Tagging program, as well as donating hundreds of insects for research purposes, dropped him from their list of helpers.

Similarly, over the years certain university academics who frown on any amateur involvement in the sciences, would wage a war of sorts against Rex in his efforts to publish his theories and discoveries, approaching gullible journalists 'advising' them not to interview him or publish his researches.

That sounds really sad....shows the snobbery of the academic world. HOWEVER, later down in the article, it says:

There is another person hogging the media calling himself the "Yowie Man". However, this plagarist has less than 5 years 'experience' and knows next to nothing, like others of his kind who have lately attempted to sideline Rex Gilroy and push him out of the vary research of which he is the FOUNDER. They have attempted to sideline him also from the field of Australian Cryptozoology, which like the Yowie research Rex Gilroy was the founding father long before any of these 'researchers' were every born!

I think that sounds just as snobbish. Instead of being snobbish about lack of epidemic experience, Gilroy sounds snobbish about age and years of experience. Neither guarantees anything. One can be brilliant and make valid contributions without a university degree. And someone can be brilliant and make valid contributions without years of experience under their belt.

I think many people with controversial opinions will flaunt their degree because it makes their opinions seem more trustworthy. And when I have a controversial opinion that's backed up by an "expert" it makes me feel better telling people about it, if the man or woman has a degree from a place like Harvard of Oxford. I feel guilty having this mindset, because I KNOW you can learn and form valid opinions without a degree from a prestigious school.

Anyway, what I was getting at is that Gilroy doesn't have a fancy degree to flaunt. He's self-educated. But he does flaunt the fact that he's been doing this for SO many years. I do think that adds a small bit of credibility, but I don't think it adds much. Time-length isn't everything. And if information is wrong, it doesn't matter how long you've studied it....it's still wrong.

I can spend fifty years researching the story of Jesus. That doesn't mean that Jesus exists. Nor does it mean my opinions are more valid than someone who's studied Jesus for only five years.

When I first came to Fort Worth, I worked at a preschool that was totally at odds with my beliefs about teaching. I felt I knew the right way to teach children because I had a Master's Degree from a prestigious New York school. The director and some of the teachers at the school thought they knew the best way to teach because they had been teaching for over twenty-years. But my feeling was just because you've taught for many years doesn't necessarily mean you're a good teacher. And I now also understand that getting a degree doesn't guarantee you'll be a good teacher either.

I'm going to quit reading. I personally find Gilroy to be too out there for me. I worry that it's because I'm a snob myself. I worry that I'd take him more seriously if he had a degree from some fancy university in Australia. I'm hoping that it's more than that though. And I do think it probably is. His arguments and evidence just isn't convincing enough to me. However, I'm not sure it's my full right to say this because I haven't read all his information. I might be misunderstanding stuff, and/or missing important details.

Okay, never mind. I just lost ALL respect for Gilroy. Truly.

I decided to see if anyone else thinks he's a bit racist. So I googled Rex Gilroy racist. I ended up back on his own website.

He says, Our politicians appear to be under the thumb of minority political groups and fearful of losing votes at elections unless they do the bidding of these largely left-wing activists. Ever since the government gave Aboriginal activists the right to re-claim their ‘sacred’ fossil skeletal remains from government museums and universities for the purpose of re-burial, the nation has been deprived of priceless fossil material vital to the study of human evolution in Australia.

I HATE how he puts sacred in quotes.

That makes my skin crawl....really. I'm starting to sweat. If something upsets me, I either shiver or I sweat. Is that normal? Probably. Right. HappyOrganist will tell me it's normal. She does that for me. I go on and on about how I'm a total freak, and she assures me I'm normal. It's nice to have a friend like that.

When I was going to college in the Bible Belt, there was an old synagogue across the street from my living quarters. At one point, I think they were tearing it down...or doing something like that. It was kind of sad for me as a Jew...especially because I was all into my Judaism at that point. Anyway, the school newspaper had an article about it, and they talked about religious artifacts. The word religious was in quotes. It was as if they were saying it wasn't REALLY religious since it wasn't Christianity. At least, that's the idea I got.

I hate when people are closed-minded like that.

Yeah. You know those Aborigines are horrible people. The nerve of them...wanting to keep the remains of their ancestors. How selfish!

Maybe Gilroy should dig up the bones of his Grandparents and give them to the Aborigines to poke and prod.

Anyway, Gilroy talks about how evil leftist politically correct people are preventing us from hearing the truth. The thing is....you can't really use that argument these days. Almost anything can go up on a website or a YouTube video.

You can say you're alienated from society and the academic world. You can talk about feeling rejected. You can talk about how the media and the school system present only one side of the story. But you can't say you're being silenced. There's still a platform for unpopular ideas.

Gilroy says, Make no mistake reader, free speech is not only openly under attack, it is being gradually, silently eroded, and being replaced by “political correctness”!

I have seen plenty of websites that are FAR from being politically correct.

This blogger has information about Gilroy, and a commenter on the blog pretty much sums up how I view Gilroy.

Things-in-the-woods says, Mr gilroy has spun a career out of making up ludicrous stories based on absolutely no credible evidence (i.e., that there was a hominid race in australia predating the aborigines based on a few vaguely skull shaped rocks which clearly are just rocks), often with a very dubious racist undertone (e.g., this race is supposed to have taught the aborigines everything they know, because, by fairly explicit implication, aborigines could not possibly have come up with such inventions themselves), and with a fair dose of paranoia thrown in (the reason that no-one takes him seriously in ‘mainstream science’ is due- of course- to the fact that there is a major conspiracy to hide the truth)

Yeah. That pretty much sums it up for me.

Read my novel: The Dead are Online