Bunyip
Bunyip
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Bunyip: Legendary spirits or creatures from Australian aboriginal folklore, also known as Yaa-loo, Dongu, Kine Pratie, Wowee-wowee and many other localized names. A variedly described monster, Bunyips are known for causing nocturnal terror by uttering horrible roaring cries and jumping out of water holes, rivers and creeks to attack and devour unwary animals and people that came to these places for a drink of water. Even though throughout the years many white settlers have reported to seen Bunyips, today most Australians consider the creature to be just an aboriginal myth. According to folklore, these water creatures were involved in the great deluge. A group of men supposedly caught and imprisoned a small Bunyip, making its mother so angry she flooded the land until it covered everything. The humans that managed to escape were turned into black swans. (L) Bunyip: Australian aboriginal stories describe the bunyip as an evil spirit which dwells in creeks, swamps, and billabongs. The bunyip's loud bellowing cry terrifies the aborigines. They avoid water sources where they believe a bunyip might live. Some stories suggest the bunyip emerges at night principally to prey on women and children as well as animals. Many white settlers also claimed encounters with the bunyip. While descriptions of the bunyip vary, most portray a creature with a hairy horse-like head and large body. Aboriginal stories about the bunyip may reflect oral traditions of the diprotodon, a rhinosceros-sized herbivore. Diprotodon was the largest marsupial ever to have existed. Diprotodon is believed to have become extinct between fifteen and twenty thousand years ago. Memories of encounters between the aborigines and diprotodon might have been passed down through the centuries. Modern encounters with the bunyip require a different explanation. One is that the diprotodon still exists. Another is that a large unknown animal is responsible for the sightings. A prosaic explanation is that sightings of Bunyips represent encounters with stray seals in inland waterholes and rivers. Another is that Bunyips are actually brigands or bums hiding in the outback. The Bunyip features prominently in children's literature in Australia. The word "bunyip" has also taken on the meaning of "imposter" in Australian English. See the Lake Monsters section of my cryptozoology links page for more sites offering information about the Bunyip. (1) | |
Resource List - all entries are taken verbatim from the original source: |
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Bunyips Aboriginal folklore or real creatures? | |
Of course no recounting of Australian ghost stories would be complete without some reference to the Bunyip, a (some say) mythical creature which had its roots in Aboriginal lore. The Bunyip is said to inhabit waterholes, billabongs, swamps and river bends, and reportedly has a rather special taste for women. | |
| Various sightings of the Bunyip have been recorded as having fur, feathers, fishy scales and or a shiny brown coat. It has a long tail or an elongated neck (depending on which end you thought you saw). Half man, half animal, it is tall with a round head, big eyes, long ears and utters a blood curdling cry when approached. Although the natives held the bunyip in great dread, they did manage to kill one by the banks of the lower Murrumbidgee. When a local settler, Atholl T Fletcher, heard about it, he visited the site and discovered a strange skull. No other bones were about, just a skull. All the natives that were shown the skull all agreed that it came from a bunyip. The skull was then sent to Melbourne for examination by a Dr James Grant who apon seeing the skull could not readily identify it.Thus his conclusion was that it had to be from a bunyip. | |
Is this the skull of a bunyip? Found in the later part of the 19th century, by a Mr. William Hovell who in his travels along the Murrumbidgee had heard of the local natives refer to a mysterious and terrifying aquatic animal. The animal went by the name of katenpai, kinepratia or tanatbah all of which are different ways of saying bunyip. It all depended on which tribe the story came from. Whatever the skull was from makes no difference, the fact that it could be a bunyip is all that matters. For can you really beat a good ghost or spooky story around a camp fire, especially on the bank of a river or creek in the back of beyond with only the stars and the native fauna and flora for company. That sound in the distance is it a bird crying out into the night or some marsupial just letting everything around knows that it is his territory. Or could it be some long lost creature rising to the surface looking for its next meal.
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Getting sidetracked: the pleasurable distractions of research
Edel Wignell
Often when I go to the library to research, I'm diverted. Opening old newspapers and books, I find items which are fascinating, but useless. Headlines grab attention; reports, opinions, verse and advertisements seduce. Soon I'm laughing, intrigued and utterly distracted from my purpose. It's addictive!
Searching for information on bunyips, I scanned the letters of Victoria's first Lieutenant-Governor, Charles Joseph La Trobe (1801-75). I found the bunyip, but I continued reading, for La Trobe's letters are fascinating. Squeezed into each is a great deal of information on a variety of topics, including the fact that, in the 19th century, Australia was regarded as upside down at the end of the world. In a letter, dated 15 December 1840, to John Murray in London, La Trobe wrote:
Mrs Latrobe has not been over strong since her arrival in these regions of the globe, though enjoying good general health. I am not quite sure that standing with the head downwards (as you know we are all obliged to do here) suits the female constitution, though one gets wonderfully used to it after the first month's trial.
[L J Blake (ed.), Letters of Charles Joseph La Trobe, Victoriana Series No. 1, 1975,
The Government of Victoria, Melbourne]
Newspapers covered serious news in 'News of the Day' - long, dense columns of fine print with few paragraphs. The 'News in Brief' column - thirty or forty short items without explanation - must have provided great relief. As an example: 'Victoria, with about the same population as New South Wales, boasts 400 more tinsmiths.' (Narrabri Herald, 3 October 1883)
They were keen on statistics and comparisons in those days, too. Today such an item would be evaluated and explained, but then, all the reader could do was speculate.
'News in Brief' included a fair share of sexism. One can imagine approving nods from both male and female heads for the following: 'Fourteen fathers in Ormskirk have signed a pledge not to allow their daughters to take music lessons until they know how to make good bread.' (Narrabri Herald, 17 July 1886) Perhaps a handsome male music teacher had arrived in town and his young female students had been sighing and neglecting their domestic duties.
An item - not quite as sexist, but hinting - turned up when I was researching the Gog & Magog clock in the Royal Arcade, Melbourne. W H Newnham commented on the wares that were sold there, adding: 'It is the type of attractive arcade found in every city: the delight of wives and the despair of husbands.' (Melbourne: The Biography of a City, 1956, F W Cheshire)
Newspapers provided humour, too. Imagine the laughter, especially from the male readers, basking in anatomical certainty:
Considerable amusement was caused at the meeting of the Education Board by a lady teacher sending in her resignation 'owing to circumstances over which she had no control'. She was about to be married. (Narrabri Herald, 11 September 1886)
No prizes for guessing the gender of the members of the Board!
'Taxes on books' - a headline in 1932 - caught my attention. A deputation, which had waited on Prime Minister Lyons to ask for the removal of the duty on books, was 'well fitted to deal with the subject and went armed with many powerful arguments'. However, Mr Lyons was 'hard-hearted and, in the stand that he took, he told the deputation that he had the support of his colleague Mr Bruce...' 'At the present time the country wanted all the money it could get...', he said, presenting hard facts to back his decision.
The imposition of this tax resulted in the sum of ?130 000 being added to Council revenue, and he didn't hold out hope of easing the burden. Needless to say, the deputation was disappointed and, if the truth be told, not a little disgusted. (Australasian Pharmaceutical Notes and News, 10 March 1932)
Such items generate a feeling of d?j? vu.
Advertisements were a wonderful diversion, especially those for 'cure-alls'. Cures for bad backs, gout, 'women's disabilities' and other ills received much publicity. 'Toothache Permanently Cured' asserted an advertisement in Melbourne's Argus (16 May 1881). You never see a tantalising ad like that now, and you wonder why scientists go on searching when cures for all our ills had been found in the 19th century.
One of the pleasures of research is chancing upon familiar words with meanings which have gone out of use. The heading, 'Furious Riding' sprang from the pages of the Argus:
A fine of 20 shillings was imposed by the Mayor at the Police Court on Tuesday, on Christopher Webb, for furious riding; and a similar fine was imposed on John Hore on the complaint of Constable Brown, because Hore had driven his horse at a furious rate and beat it severely. (29 September 1853)
A different kind of horsepower has made such reports obsolete, but surely 'furious driving' would be much more impressive today than 'speeding'!
Another neglected word come to light in my bunyip research. Until the turn of the century, scientists expected to find Australia's water monster, the bunyip, a creature of Aboriginal lore. One of the earliest reports of sightings was made in a letter to the Sydney Gazette (27 March 1823).
One fine morning in November 1821, I was walking by the side of the marsh which runs into Lake Bathurst, when my attention was attracted by a creature casting up the water and making a noise... At the distance I stood (about 100 yards) it had the appearance of a bulldog's head, but perfectly black; the head floated about as though the animal were recreating itself...
These days, recreation is 'in', so why don't we resurrect the verb? 'I'm power-walking to recreate myself.'
Bunyip and Garfield are two small towns in Gippsland, not far from Melbourne, which have long shared a newspaper. I couldn't resist this fascinating and totally useless snippet of trivia from The Bunyip and Garfield Express:
A Frenchman has made a clock twelve feet high, entirely composed of bicycles or their component parts. The framework is a huge bicycle wheel, and twelve ordinary-sized wheels, fitted with pneumatic tyres, serve for the hours. The hands are of steel tubing, which is used for the framework of bicycles. The chimes are ordinary bicycle bells. (24 December 1920)
The item that impressed me most in more than twenty years of research appeared in the early 1980s when I was looking for information on swaggies - both swagmen and sundowners - for a collection. I discovered an anecdote gathered by the folklorist, Bill Beatty, and published in A Treasury of Australian Folk Tales and Traditions (1960, Ure Smith, Sydney).
Beatty wrote that, in the 1880s, a teamster left his family on his selection near Narrabri for a two-months season of wool-carrying in Queensland. They had enough provisions, but floods prevented his return. As the family would soon run out of food, the mother decided to walk with her children - a three-month-old baby, a three-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl - eleven miles to Narrabri. But a quarter of a mile from their home, the children were exhausted from trying to walk in the heavy, black soil, so she carried them one by one. Leaving the baby with the oldest child, she took the second as far as she could while still being able to see them. She returned for the baby and left her with the second child, then made a third trip for the oldest.
When the mother and children were picked up, just out of Narrabri, the mother was unconscious; she did not know how many days and nights the eleven mile trip had taken. In all, she had walked sixty-six miles, carrying children thirty-three miles of the way. Mother and children were cared for in the township, and all recovered.
The anecdote stayed with me, and I researched on and off for many years, hoping to find a primary source - but without success. I looked up the rainfall figures for the area and found that the two wettest years were 1886 and 1888, so I spent many days searching the Narrabri Herald, believing I would find the story. I found many descriptions of floods and 'boggings' in those wet winters, the details, such as sheep being swept into the tops of the trees along a creek, being useful later.
Next I wrote to the historical societies of the northern districts of New South Wales, but none was able to assist, so, eventually I decided to give the legend flesh and blood and a reunion with the father by writing it myself and setting it in 1886. The mother was the hero, of course, but straightforward historical stories of heroic women and men are not printed now, so I imagined the story from the point of view of the five-year-old girl whom I called Emily. I wrote it as a picture-story, but, at a publisher's suggestion, developed it into a junior novel. It is a tribute to the courage and endurance of the first European settler women and children of Australia.
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Historical Bunyip News
"The Bunyip" is in the South Australian,
16 February 1847, page 8b,
23 April 1847, page 4d,
"A Real Bunyip" on
24 November 1848, page 2f.
Information on the sighting of "interstate" bunyips is in the Register,
23 December 1856, page 2d and
SA Gazette & Mining Journal,
12 August 1848, page 4c.
An account of a Mount Gambier bunyip is in the Register,
30 December 1852, page 3a:
The presence of a bunyip in a lagoon near Melrose is reported in the Register, 28 November 1853, page 3f:
I have been repeatedly told by respectable people that they have been seen an animal in the large waterholes of this colony... I have spoken to intelligent blacks respecting it, who confirmed the reports...
(Register, 25 January 1854, page 3f.)
"The Bunyip" is in the Observer,
27 December 1856, page 6h.
A report and description of a bunyip sighted in a small salt water lake between Robe and Beachport are in the Register,
20 August 1881, page 5d.
The "Koolunga Bunyip" was the cause for concern in the early 1880s and the Register of 21 February 1883 at page 6c carries a lengthy report on the monster:
Our friend described the bunyip as much like a seal... The farmer's daughter, who saw it... about a week ago, describes it as being like a dog minus a tail. The farmer himself... says the animal is like a sheep dog.
(Advertiser, 20 February 1883, page 4g.)
The capture of a "bunyip" near Dublin by Mr W.H. Cornish and subsequent events is reported in the Register,
19 August 1884, page 5b.
A report of a bunyip in Warra Warra Waterhole near Crystal Brook is in the Register, 31 January 1889, page 5b:
(Also see Register, 6 February 1889, page 7g.)
"The Bunyip of the South-East" is in the Register,
6 October 1893, page 5c,
Observer,
7 October 1893, page 31e.
The Register of 27 August 1895, page 5b makes mention of a bunyip lurking in Umpherston Cave, near Mount Gambier.
"Berri's Mystery Creature" is in The News,
19 December 1932, page 8a.
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Koolunga is a quiet mid-north town where the pace of life is slow and easy. Out the front of the local you're likely to bump into one of the locals like "Pedro" Fenwick, He's a world weary kind of guy who's seen almost everything - everything that is except the famous local Koolunga Bunyip!
"I can't tell you too much about him because I wasn't here in 1883," laughed Pedro. "That's when they sighted him and I don't think he's really been sighted since."
"He tends to come out after the pub shuts. If you go past the river it's been reported to me that the bunyip has jumped out in front of cars and run em into trees and done funny things like that."
"His hours are very closely connected to the pub's hours - I think he sleeps while the pub is open and when the pub's shut, that's when he comes out."
The pub was shut when we first arrived in Koolunga, a little town tucked away between Redhill and Yacka. So we went in search of the beast first mentioned in dispatches by the early settlers in the 1880s. There's the occasional sign pointing to its alleged presence. There are also early depictions of bunyips as seen in publications like Robert Holden's book, 'Bunyips - Australia's Folklore of Fear'. They point to a fearsome mix of scales, teeth and snarling menace.
At Koolunga they say something similar lived in the murky waterholes of the Broughton River.
That's where we found local farmers Shane Weckert and Fred Whitehorn. They are bunyip devotees who also enjoy a spot of trout fishing. The trout were a bit scarce when we arrived but Shane, who's been fishing here since he was 10, reckons Fritters Forest is a great place to get away from it all ? even if occasionally you get the feeling that something is out there!
In our continuing search for the Koolunga Bunyip we move from Fritters Forest to Peddlers waterhole - the scene of mass chaos when the townsfolk gathered here more than a century ago.
In January 1883 a report in the Northern Argus newspaper said a bunyip and two young were sighted here. The creature was described as being the size of sheep and scaly and it was usually seen on a moonlit night. After that, the Koolunga locals came prepared.
"After the sightings of the bunyip with several young they developed a plan to dynamite the river," said Fred. "Unfortunately, after some twenty odd charges nothing come to the surface so the theory was the bunyip was hiding in one of the caves or holes deep in the banks of the river."
It's a peaceful spot now and a favourite for campers who venture along the town's River Walk. Perhaps the ripples in Peddler's waterhole point to a more peaceful time for the Koolunga Bunyip's descendants. But according to Pedro, the locals are still looking in all the wrong places.
"The description sounds a bit like some of the locals around here," he laughed. "They might be related to bunyip!"