Thirty-one witnesses, one very wrong sheep, and a government hotline that goes absolutely nowhere

NULLARBOR PLAIN, AUSTRALIA — Something large, white, and deeply incorrect was spotted moving across the Nullarbor Plain late Tuesday evening, and thirty-one witnesses are now sitting in the Australian desert holding zip-lock bags of unknown biological material, waiting on hold with a government hotline that has not yet connected a single one of them to an actual human being. The Environmental Protection Authority has confirmed the sighting is under active investigation and has asked all individuals present to retain, quote, ‘all shed material, impressions, or ambient residue of any consistency’ in sealed containers until further notice. At press time, the hold music is a pan flute arrangement of ‘Down Under.’

A Long Way From West Virginia

For context: the Sheepsquatch is not an Australian animal. The creature — a massive, pale, vaguely ovine biped with a reputation for aggression and a smell that witnesses typically describe as ‘wrong’ — has its documented origins in the Appalachian region of the United States, specifically the forests of West Virginia, where sightings have been logged since the 1990s. What the Sheepsquatch is doing on the Nullarbor Plain, a flat limestone expanse spanning roughly 200,000 square kilometres with almost nothing on it, is a question that the EPA has not yet answered, possibly because nobody at the EPA has picked up the phone.

Community Notice

It came out of the dark moving fast on two legs. White. Huge. It had a head like a ram but it was walking like a man and it smelled like a wool fire. I’ve lived out here thirty years. That was not a kangaroo.

— Terrence Bulk, Roadhouse Operator, Nullarbor Roadhouse

Witnesses report the entity emerged from the treeline — and I want to be very clear, there is almost no treeline on the Nullarbor Plain, which is one of several details that nobody is adequately explaining — at approximately 11:40 PM local time. It moved in a bipedal gait across the edge of the Eyre Highway rest area, paused near a parked caravan, and departed into the dark toward the south. Several witnesses described a vocalization. The word ‘shriek’ appears in multiple independent accounts. One witness described it as ‘a sheep discovering philosophy.’ I’m including that because I think it’s accurate and also because this is WTC and that’s exactly the kind of thing we’re here for.

What the Samples Might Tell Us

The EPA’s insistence on sample retention is, frankly, the most scientifically interesting part of this story. Field notices of this specificity — particularly the phrase ‘ambient residue of any consistency,’ which I have been repeating to myself since Tuesday because I genuinely cannot stop — suggest that someone in a government building somewhere has a theory about what this thing leaves behind. Whether that means biological material, chemical trace, electromagnetic signature, or something entirely outside existing frameworks is unclear. What is clear is that the EPA wants it in a bag, sealed, and reported, and that they have set up a holding queue to receive that report and then apparently walked away from it.

I’ve got three sandwich bags, one Tupperware container, and a protein shaker full of what I can only describe as ‘white fluff and dread.’ I’ve called the number eleven times. I am on hold right now. I am speaking to you while on hold.

— Sandra Crewe, Campervan Tourist and Current EPA Hold Queue Participant

WTC News will continue to monitor this situation, which is an easy promise to make given that thirty-one people are collecting cryptid residue in a roadhouse parking lot on one of the most featureless stretches of land on Earth while collectively on hold with a government agency. We have reached out to the EPA, the Australian Border Force, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, and three separate academic cryptozoologists. The West Virginia DNR called back, said ‘not our jurisdiction,’ and hung up. We respect that. For now, if you are on the Nullarbor Plain and you have a bag of something: keep holding. Someone will answer eventually. Probably.