“I could never see any part, except the back, which appeared to be covered with feathers of a dusky grey colour. It seemed to be about the size of a full grown calf … I could never learn from any of the natives that they had seen either the head or tail.”
Such was a description of one of the most famous folklore creature of Australia. A creature which lived in rivers, lakes, marshes, swamps and of course billabongs! A creature which captured the imagination of the European settlers through the 19th century recalling accounts either personally witnessed or picked up from the native settlers.
The Bunyip ranged in its appearance. W. Westgarth in his 1848 Australia Felix notes it had a:
“round head, an elongated neck with a tail and body resembling an ox.”
To Once a week (1895) to:
“bigger than an elephant, in shape like a poley bullock, with eyes like live coals and tusks like a walrus.”
Whilst the Wagga Advocate in 1872 states it was:
“was half as long as a retriever dog… its body was jet black.”
Yet a description from the Murray River Moorundi people state it
“ Its most usual form … is said to be that of an enormous starfish.”
This description aside if we considered adding all the main features together it appears to either had a dog face, a crocodile head, dark fur, a horses tail, tusks, horns, duck bill and flippers! The one unifying theme being that it had a loud voice and was big! In The Narrinyeri Rev. George Taplin stated that a Lake Alexandrina ‘booming and explosive’ sounds were bunyips although more rational people claimed they were the more down to earth booming bittern. However to be fair to the native people as Robert Brough Smyth notes in Aborigines of Victoria of 1878 stated:
“in truth little is known among the blacks respecting its form, covering or habits; they appear to have been in such dread of it as to have been unable to take note of its characteristics.”
Of course such unknown creatures they incited fear, native people stating that it meant ‘demon’ and that the devoured humans, creeping up on them and pouncing!
Looking for evidence
Several pieces of evidence have been produced. In 1818, Hamilton Hume and James Meehan found in Lake Bathhurst, NSW, some large bones said to resemble a manatee or hippo. Sadly they were never fully recovered. George Rankin a bushman discovered in the 1830s some large ox like fossils in Wellington Caves which was identified by Sir Richard Owen as a Nototherium and Dirpotodon. Then in 1946 a skull was found on the Murrumbidgee River in NSW which apparently was identified as a Bunyip by natives. Despite reaching some sort of celebrity through its display in the Australian Museum of Sydney it too was debunked by Professor Owen as the deformed foetal foal or calf skull.
What is the Bunyip?
Heavelmans in his On Track of Unknown Animals believes it to be an unknown aquatic marsupial. Gould in Mythical monsters notes:
“The people that have seen this animal in the lake maintain that it is not a platypus, but twice as large and much darker; but as it has never been plainly seen, and considering the difficulty in seeing of any sea animal getting as far as the lake I think undoubtedly be a very large platypus.”
One theory is that the Bunyip were seals. Certainly the flippers and dog face suggest so and seals have found themselves into freshwater bodies, certainly the Murray and Darling rivers. Indeed, R. Brough Smyth reported in the Aboriginals of Victoria in 1878 that the name Bunyip was attached to two species of seals – eared and sea leopard. Supporting this is the sound recorded by Bunyip which resembles that of seals and for landlocked groups unfamiliar with the sea perhaps another name was need.
Although the Tasmanian Bunyip was recorded in the 1870s as having dog like animal with flippers was reported in the high lakes of the central plateau nowhere near the sea. Although if they are the same it seems unlikely that the species would be the same as that which was feared!
A more exciting possibility is the Diprotodon, a prehistoric rhino sized marsupial, long extinct but may have survived into early settlement to create race memory, however the fossil record does not support this view. Alternatively it might be their response to finding fossils of these creatures. Certainly Professor Owen identified the Rankin skeletons as such! Whatever it is one could understand how those dark and mysterious waters could breed a giant monster.
Animalfolklore 