Former Queensland senator Bill O'Chee was one of more than a dozen people, including fellow high school students and teachers, who claimed to have seen such a creature at a Springbrook camp site in 1977.

It was, Mr O'Chee said "an immensely powerful creature" and he later told a documentary interviewer: "Basically we saw a yowie, but we didn't know what they were at the time.

"We saw a sort of hairy, ape-like thing that probably would have stood about eight feet tall," he said.

Mr Duffy says he was camped in the bush, north-east of Gympie late one night, when "a very large male approached me".

For more go to Gympie Times.