Bunyip
Encyclopedia
The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical
creature
from Aboriginal mythology
, said to lurk in swamp
s, billabong
s, creeks
, river
beds, and waterholes.
The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba
or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia
. However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. In his 2001 book, writer Robert Holden identified at least nine regional variations for the creature known as the bunyip across Aboriginal Australia. Various written accounts of bunyips were made by Europeans in the early and mid-19th century, as settlement spread across the country.
, "a mythic 'Great Man' who made the mountains and rivers and man and all the animals." The word bunyip may not have appeared in print in English until the mid-1840s.
By the 1850s, bunyip had also become a "synonym for imposter, pretender, humbug and the like" in the broader Australian community. The term bunyip aristocracy
was first coined in 1853 to describe Australians aspiring to be aristocrats. In the early 1990s, it was famously used by Prime Minister Paul Keating
to describe members of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia
opposition.
The word bunyip can still be found in a number of Australian contexts, including place names such as the Bunyip River
(which flows into Westernport Bay in southern Victoria
) and the town of Bunyip
, Victoria.
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Descriptions of bunyips vary widely. George French Angus may have collected a description of a bunyip in his account of a "water spirit" from the Moorundi people of the Murray River
before 1847, stating it is "much dreaded by them… It inhabits the Murray; but…they have some difficulty describing it. Its most usual form…is said to be that of an enormous starfish." Robert Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria of 1878 devoted ten pages to the bunyip, but concluded "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." However, common features in many 19th-century newspaper accounts include a dog-like face, dark fur, a horse
-like tail
, flipper
s, and walrus
-like tusks or horns or a duck-like bill.
The Challicum bunyip, an outline image of a bunyip carved by Aborigines into the bank of Fiery Creek, near Ararat
, Victoria, was first recorded by The Australasian newspaper in 1851. According to the report, the bunyip had been speared after killing an Aboriginal man. Antiquarian Reynell Johns claimed that until the mid-1850s, Aboriginal people made a "habit of visiting the place annually and retracing the outlines of the figure [of the bunyip] which is about 11 paces long and 4 paces in extreme breadth."
Writing in 1933, Charles Fenner suggested that it was likely that the "actual origin of the bunyip myth lies in the fact that from time to time seals have made their way up the ... Murray and Darling (Rivers)". He provided examples of seals found as far inland as Overland Corner
, Loxton
, and Conargo
and reminded readers that "the smooth fur, prominent 'apricot' eyes and the bellowing cry are characteristic of the seal."
Another suggestion is that the bunyip may be a cultural memory of extinct Australian marsupials such as the Diprotodon
or Palorchestes
. This connection was first formally made by Dr George Bennett of the Australian Museum in 1871, but in the early 1990s, palaeontologist Pat Vickers-Rich and geologist Neil Archbold also cautiously suggested that Aboriginal legends "perhaps had stemmed from an acquaintance with prehistoric bones or even living prehistoric animals themselves ... When confronted with the remains of some of the now extinct Australian marsupials, Aborigines would often identify them as the bunyip."
Another connection to the bunyip is the shy Australasian bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus). During the breeding season, the male call of this marsh-dwelling bird is a "low pitched boom"; hence, it is occasionally called the "bunyip bird".
During the early settlement of Australia by Europeans, the notion that the bunyip was an actual unknown animal that awaited discovery became common. Early European settlers, unfamiliar with the sights and sounds of the island continent's peculiar fauna, regarded the bunyip as one more strange Australian animal and sometimes attributed unfamiliar animal calls or cries to it. It has also been suggested that 19th-century bunyip lore was reinforced by imported European memories, such as that of the Irish Púca
.
A large number of bunyip sightings occurred during the 1840s and 1850s, particularly in the southeastern colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, as European settlers extended their reach. The following is not an exhaustive list of accounts:
and James Meehan found some large bones at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales
. They did not call the animal a bunyip, but described the remains indicating the creature as very much like a hippopotamus
or manatee
. The Philosophical Society of Australasia later offered to reimburse Hume for any costs incurred in recovering a specimen of the unknown animal, but for various reasons, Hume did not return to the lake.
in mid-1830 by bushman George Rankin and later by Thomas Mitchell. Sydney's Reverend John Dunmore Lang
announced the find as "convincing proof of the deluge". However, it was British anatomist Sir Richard Owen who identified the fossils as the gigantic marsupials Nototherium
and Diprotodon
. At the same time, some settlers observed "all natives throughout these... districts have a tradition (of) a very large animal having at one time existed in the large creeks and rivers and by many it is said that such animals now exist."
Shortly after this account appeared, it was repeated in other Australian newspapers. However, it appears to be the first use of the word bunyip in a written publication.
near Balranald
, New South Wales. Initial reports suggested that it was the skull of something unknown to science. The squatter who found it remarked, "all the natives to whom it was shown called [it ] a bunyip".
By July 1847, several experts had identified the skull as the deformed foetal skull of a foal or calf. At the same time, however, the so-called bunyip skull was put on display in the Australian Museum
(Sydney) for two days. Visitors flocked to see it, and The Sydney Morning Herald
said that it prompted many people to speak out about their "bunyip sightings".
in his 1852 biography of thirty years living with the Wathaurong people. His 1852 account records "in... Lake Moodewarri [now Lake Modewarre] as well as in most of the others inland...is a...very extraordinary amphibious animal, which the natives call Bunyip." Buckley's account suggests he saw such a creature on several occasions. He adds, "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." Buckley also claimed the creature was common in the Barwon River
and cites an example he heard of an Aboriginal woman being killed by one. He emphasized the bunyip was believed to have supernatural powers.
's The Brown Fairy Book (1904). The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek is a contemporary Australian children's picture book about a bunyip.
Perhaps the best known bunyip character in Australia is Alexander Bunyip, created by children's author and illustrator Michael Salmon. First appearing in print in The Monster That Ate Canberra in 1972, Alexander Bunyip went on to appear in many other books and even a live-action television series, Alexander Bunyip's Billabong. A statue of Alexander is planned for the Gungahlin
Library.
Another recent depiction of the bunyip appears in the 1989 illustrated children's book A Kangaroo Court.Naomi Novik
includes bunyips as dangerous adversaries in the Australian outback in Tongues of Serpents
, the sixth installment of her novels of alternate Napoleonic-history era, with dragons
.
A bunyip had an important role in the 1930s classic novel Mountain of the Moon (Chander Pahar
in the Bengali
version), written by Bengali
author Bibhutibhushan Banerjee.
The word bunyip has been used in other Australian contexts, including The Bunyip newspaper as the banner of a local weekly newspaper published in the town of Gawler
, South Australia
. First published as a pamphlet by the Gawler Humbug Society in 1863, the name was chosen because "the Bunyip is the true type of Australian Humbug!" The word is also used in numerous other Australian contexts, including the House of the Gentle Bunyip in Clifton Hill
, Victoria. There is also a coin-operated bunyip at Murray Bridge
, South Australia, at Sturt Reserve on the town's riverfront.
Since World War II
, the bunyip has undergone some cultural crossover from Australia to the United States and beyond. It now appears in several role-playing and computer games, including as a character Garou Tribes (Werewolf: The Apocalypse)
, as a boss monster in Chrono Cross
, and as the name of a summoned creature in the popular MMORPG
game RuneScape
. The bunyip is also a monster in AdventureQuest
. This version is a magical, heavily built creature of the night that is part jackrabbit, part wolf, and part giant.
The cultural crossover from Australia to the USA may have some connection to the use of a bunyip (bunyap) as the symbol of the U.S. Air Force's 7th Fighter Squadron
, which was based in Australia in 1942, shortly after its formation.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bertie the Bunyip
was a children's show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
, created by Lee Dexter, an Australian. Bunyips were featured on The Secret Saturdays
, in the episode "Into the Mouth of Darkness", with their vocal effects provided by Dee Bradley Baker
. Here, the bunyips were depicted as small, furry, mischievous cryptids that resemble the Tasmanian Devil
of Looney Tunes
with small antlers. The bunyip was also featured repeatedly on the US WB soap Charmed
, most notably the episode "Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun", and an episode of the Nickelodeon
show The Wild Thornberrys
.
In the novelette
"Water Babies" by Simon Brown, a series of drownings investigated by an Australian police officer turn out to be the work of a predatory seal-like creature that may be the inspiration for the bunyip legends.
The novel The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater
features a character named Shlmomos Bunyip, who is controlled by an evil earth spirit that lives in a swamp.
The Australian children's animated movie Dot and the Kangaroo
features the song "Bunyip Moon".
The poetry anthology Antipodes: Poetic Responses, edited by Margaret Bradstock, features a poem titled "The Challicum Bunyip" by Australian poet Benjamin Dodds. The poem presents an interpretation of the Challicum bunyip story.
In the supernatural television series Charmed
, Phoebe Halliwell
, the youngest sister, alludes to the fact that they may have in fact vanquished a bunyip demon in the eighteenth episode of the second season.
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
creature
Animal
Animals are a major group of multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia or Metazoa. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life. Most animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and...
from Aboriginal mythology
Australian Aboriginal mythology
Australian Aboriginal myths are the stories traditionally performed by Aboriginal peoples within each of the language groups across Australia....
, said to lurk in swamp
Swamp
A swamp is a wetland with some flooding of large areas of land by shallow bodies of water. A swamp generally has a large number of hammocks, or dry-land protrusions, covered by aquatic vegetation, or vegetation that tolerates periodical inundation. The two main types of swamp are "true" or swamp...
s, billabong
Billabong
Billabong is an Australian English word meaning a small lake, specifically an oxbow lake, a section of still water adjacent to a river, cut off by a change in the watercourse. Billabongs are usually formed when the path of a creek or river changes, leaving the former branch with a dead end...
s, creeks
Stream
A stream is a body of water with a current, confined within a bed and stream banks. Depending on its locale or certain characteristics, a stream may be referred to as a branch, brook, beck, burn, creek, "crick", gill , kill, lick, rill, river, syke, bayou, rivulet, streamage, wash, run or...
, river
River
A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...
beds, and waterholes.
The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba
Wemba-Wemba
The Wemba-Wemba are an Indigenous Australian group in north-Western Victoria and south-western New South Wales, Australia, including in the Mallee and the Riverina regions. They are also known as the Wamba-wamba....
or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people of South-Eastern Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. However, the bunyip appears to have formed part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories throughout Australia, although its name varied according to tribal nomenclature. In his 2001 book, writer Robert Holden identified at least nine regional variations for the creature known as the bunyip across Aboriginal Australia. Various written accounts of bunyips were made by Europeans in the early and mid-19th century, as settlement spread across the country.
Meaning
The word bunyip is usually translated by Aboriginal Australians today as "devil" or "evil spirit". However, this translation may not accurately represent the role of the bunyip in Aboriginal mythology or its possible origins before written accounts were made. Some modern sources allude to a linguistic connection between the bunyip and BunjilBunjil
In Australian Aboriginal mythology, Bunjil the eagle is a creator deity, culture hero and ancestral being. In the Kulin nation in central Victoria he was regarded as one of two moiety ancestors, the other being the trickster Crow. Bunjil has two wives and a son, Binbeal the rainbow. His brother...
, "a mythic 'Great Man' who made the mountains and rivers and man and all the animals." The word bunyip may not have appeared in print in English until the mid-1840s.
By the 1850s, bunyip had also become a "synonym for imposter, pretender, humbug and the like" in the broader Australian community. The term bunyip aristocracy
Bunyip aristocracy
The term bunyip aristocracy is an Australian term satirising attempts to develop an aristocracy in the colonies now forming that country.It was first coined in 1853 by Daniel Deniehy who made a speech lambasting the attempt by William Wentworth to establish a titled aristocracy in the New South...
was first coined in 1853 to describe Australians aspiring to be aristocrats. In the early 1990s, it was famously used by Prime Minister Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...
to describe members of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
opposition.
The word bunyip can still be found in a number of Australian contexts, including place names such as the Bunyip River
Bunyip River
The Bunyip River is a river in southern Victoria, Australia to the east of Melbourne. It flows into Western Port. The river formerly flowed into the Koo-Wee-Rup Swamp, the largest wetlands in Victoria, covering an area of 40,000 hectares, before flowing into Western Port.The Bunyip River starts...
(which flows into Westernport Bay in southern Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
) and the town of Bunyip
Bunyip, Victoria
Bunyip is a town in Gippsland, Victoria, Australia, 77 km east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the Shire of Cardinia...
, Victoria.
Characteristics
Murray River
The Murray River is Australia's longest river. At in length, the Murray rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains and, for most of its length, meanders across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between New South Wales and Victoria as it...
before 1847, stating it is "much dreaded by them… It inhabits the Murray; but…they have some difficulty describing it. Its most usual form…is said to be that of an enormous starfish." Robert Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria of 1878 devoted ten pages to the bunyip, but concluded "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." However, common features in many 19th-century newspaper accounts include a dog-like face, dark fur, a horse
Horse
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...
-like tail
Tail
The tail is the section at the rear end of an animal's body; in general, the term refers to a distinct, flexible appendage to the torso. It is the part of the body that corresponds roughly to the sacrum and coccyx in mammals, reptiles, and birds...
, flipper
Flipper (anatomy)
A flipper is a typically flat limb evolved for movement through water. Various creatures have evolved flippers, for example penguins , cetaceans A flipper is a typically flat limb evolved for movement through water. Various creatures have evolved flippers, for example penguins (also called...
s, and walrus
Walrus
The walrus is a large flippered marine mammal with a discontinuous circumpolar distribution in the Arctic Ocean and sub-Arctic seas of the Northern Hemisphere. The walrus is the only living species in the Odobenidae family and Odobenus genus. It is subdivided into three subspecies: the Atlantic...
-like tusks or horns or a duck-like bill.
The Challicum bunyip, an outline image of a bunyip carved by Aborigines into the bank of Fiery Creek, near Ararat
Ararat, Victoria
Ararat is a city in south-west Victoria, Australia, about west of Melbourne, on the Western Highway on the eastern slopes of the Ararat Hills and Cemetery Creek valley between Victoria's Western District and the Wimmera...
, Victoria, was first recorded by The Australasian newspaper in 1851. According to the report, the bunyip had been speared after killing an Aboriginal man. Antiquarian Reynell Johns claimed that until the mid-1850s, Aboriginal people made a "habit of visiting the place annually and retracing the outlines of the figure [of the bunyip] which is about 11 paces long and 4 paces in extreme breadth."
Debate over origins of the bunyip
Non-Aboriginal Australians have made various attempts to understand and explain the origins of the bunyip as a physical entity over the past 150 years.Writing in 1933, Charles Fenner suggested that it was likely that the "actual origin of the bunyip myth lies in the fact that from time to time seals have made their way up the ... Murray and Darling (Rivers)". He provided examples of seals found as far inland as Overland Corner
Barmera, South Australia
Barmera is a town in the Riverland region of South Australia. It is on the Sturt Highway A20, 220 kilometres north-east of Adelaide, the capital of the state of South Australia. It is primarily an agricultural and viticultural town and is located on Lake Bonney , a freshwater lake...
, Loxton
Loxton, South Australia
Loxton is a town on the south bank of the River Murray in the Riverland region of South Australia. At the 2006 census, Loxton had a population of 3,431....
, and Conargo
Conargo, New South Wales
Conargo is a small rural town located in the Riverina region of New South Wales, Australia and is the seat of Conargo Shire. It is situated on the Billabong Creek, a tributary of the Murrumbidgee River. The nearest towns are Jerilderie and Deniliquin...
and reminded readers that "the smooth fur, prominent 'apricot' eyes and the bellowing cry are characteristic of the seal."
Another suggestion is that the bunyip may be a cultural memory of extinct Australian marsupials such as the Diprotodon
Diprotodon
Diprotodon, meaning "two forward teeth", sometimes known as the Giant Wombat or the Rhinoceros Wombat, was the largest known marsupial that ever lived...
or Palorchestes
Palorchestes
Palorchestes is an extinct genus of terrestrial herbivorous marsupial of the family Palorchestidae. The genus was endemic to Australia, living from the Late Miocene subepoch through the Pleistocene epoch , and thought to be in existence for approximately .-Description:One species, Palorchestes...
. This connection was first formally made by Dr George Bennett of the Australian Museum in 1871, but in the early 1990s, palaeontologist Pat Vickers-Rich and geologist Neil Archbold also cautiously suggested that Aboriginal legends "perhaps had stemmed from an acquaintance with prehistoric bones or even living prehistoric animals themselves ... When confronted with the remains of some of the now extinct Australian marsupials, Aborigines would often identify them as the bunyip."
Another connection to the bunyip is the shy Australasian bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus). During the breeding season, the male call of this marsh-dwelling bird is a "low pitched boom"; hence, it is occasionally called the "bunyip bird".
Early accounts of settlers
Púca
The Púca is a creature of Celtic folklore, notably in Ireland, the West of Scotland, and Wales. It is one of the myriad fairy folk, and, like many fairy folk, is both respected and feared by those who believe in it....
.
A large number of bunyip sightings occurred during the 1840s and 1850s, particularly in the southeastern colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, as European settlers extended their reach. The following is not an exhaustive list of accounts:
Hume find of 1818
One of the earliest accounts relating to a large unknown freshwater animal was in 1818, when Hamilton HumeHamilton Hume
Hamilton Hume was the first Australian born explorer. Along with Hovell in 1824, Hume was part of an expedition that first took an overland route from Sydney to Port Phillip near the site of present day Melbourne...
and James Meehan found some large bones at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
. They did not call the animal a bunyip, but described the remains indicating the creature as very much like a hippopotamus
Hippopotamus
The hippopotamus , or hippo, from the ancient Greek for "river horse" , is a large, mostly herbivorous mammal in sub-Saharan Africa, and one of only two extant species in the family Hippopotamidae After the elephant and rhinoceros, the hippopotamus is the third largest land mammal and the heaviest...
or manatee
Manatee
Manatees are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows...
. The Philosophical Society of Australasia later offered to reimburse Hume for any costs incurred in recovering a specimen of the unknown animal, but for various reasons, Hume did not return to the lake.
Wellington Caves fossils, 1830
More significant was the discovery of fossilised bones of "some quadruped much larger than the ox or buffalo" in the Wellington CavesWellington Caves
The Wellington Caves are a group of limestone caves located 8 kilometres south of Wellington, New South Wales, Australia.- History :The Wellington region was long inhabited by the 'Binjang mob' of the Wiradjuri people. While there is no direct evidence that they entered any of the caves at...
in mid-1830 by bushman George Rankin and later by Thomas Mitchell. Sydney's Reverend John Dunmore Lang
John Dunmore Lang
John Dunmore Lang , Australian Presbyterian clergyman, writer, politician and activist, was the first prominent advocate of an independent Australian nation and of Australian republicanism.-Background and Family:...
announced the find as "convincing proof of the deluge". However, it was British anatomist Sir Richard Owen who identified the fossils as the gigantic marsupials Nototherium
Nototherium
Nototherium is an extinct genus of marsupial. This mammal had hypsodont molars. It was a relative of the larger Diprotodon and a distant kin to modern wombats too...
and Diprotodon
Diprotodon
Diprotodon, meaning "two forward teeth", sometimes known as the Giant Wombat or the Rhinoceros Wombat, was the largest known marsupial that ever lived...
. At the same time, some settlers observed "all natives throughout these... districts have a tradition (of) a very large animal having at one time existed in the large creeks and rivers and by many it is said that such animals now exist."
First written use of the word bunyip, 1845
In July 1845, The Geelong Advertiser announced the discovery of fossils found near Geelong, under the headline "Wonderful Discovery of a new Animal". The newspaper continued, "On the bone being shown to an intelligent black (sic), he at once recognised it as belonging to the bunyip, which he declared he had seen. On being requested to make a drawing of it, he did so without hesitation." The account noted a story of an Aboriginal woman being killed by a bunyip and the "most direct evidence of all" – that of a man named Mumbowran "who showed several deep wounds on his breast made by the claws of the animal". The account provided this description of the creature:Shortly after this account appeared, it was repeated in other Australian newspapers. However, it appears to be the first use of the word bunyip in a written publication.
The Australian Museum's bunyip of 1847
In January 1846, a peculiar skull was taken from the banks of Murrumbidgee RiverMurrumbidgee River
The Murrumbidgee River is a major river in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory . A major tributary of the Murray River, the Murrumbidgee flows in a west-northwesterly direction from the foot of Peppercorn Hill in the Fiery Range of the Snowy Mountains,...
near Balranald
Balranald, New South Wales
Balranald is a town and local government area in the Riverina district of New South Wales, Australia. At the 2006 census the population was 1,216....
, New South Wales. Initial reports suggested that it was the skull of something unknown to science. The squatter who found it remarked, "all the natives to whom it was shown called [it ] a bunyip".
By July 1847, several experts had identified the skull as the deformed foetal skull of a foal or calf. At the same time, however, the so-called bunyip skull was put on display in the Australian Museum
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology, and anthropology...
(Sydney) for two days. Visitors flocked to see it, and The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald
The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily broadsheet newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia. The newspaper is published six days a week. The newspaper's Sunday counterpart, The...
said that it prompted many people to speak out about their "bunyip sightings".
William Buckley's account of bunyips, 1852
Another early written account is attributed to escaped convict William BuckleyWilliam Buckley (convict)
William Buckley was an English convict who was transported to Australia, escaped, was given up for dead and lived in an Aboriginal community for many years....
in his 1852 biography of thirty years living with the Wathaurong people. His 1852 account records "in... Lake Moodewarri [now Lake Modewarre] as well as in most of the others inland...is a...very extraordinary amphibious animal, which the natives call Bunyip." Buckley's account suggests he saw such a creature on several occasions. He adds, "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." Buckley also claimed the creature was common in the Barwon River
Barwon River (Victoria)
The Barwon River rises in the Otway Ranges of Victoria, Australia, runs through Winchelsea and the city of Geelong, where it is joined by the Moorabool River, and enters the sea at Barwon Heads after passing through Lake Connewarre on the Bellarine Peninsula...
and cites an example he heard of an Aboriginal woman being killed by one. He emphasized the bunyip was believed to have supernatural powers.
In popular culture and fiction
Numerous tales of the bunyip in written literature appeared in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These included a story in Andrew LangAndrew Lang
Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...
's The Brown Fairy Book (1904). The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek is a contemporary Australian children's picture book about a bunyip.
Perhaps the best known bunyip character in Australia is Alexander Bunyip, created by children's author and illustrator Michael Salmon. First appearing in print in The Monster That Ate Canberra in 1972, Alexander Bunyip went on to appear in many other books and even a live-action television series, Alexander Bunyip's Billabong. A statue of Alexander is planned for the Gungahlin
Gungahlin
Gungahlin is a name of a district and the northernmost town centre of Canberra, Australia. Gungahlin is situated 10 km north of Canberra's city centre and is one of five satellites of Canberra including Woden, Tuggeranong, Weston Creek and Belconnen. Currently Gungahlin comprises 11 suburbs,...
Library.
Another recent depiction of the bunyip appears in the 1989 illustrated children's book A Kangaroo Court.Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik
Naomi Novik is an American novelist. She is a first-generation American; her father is of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, and her mother is an ethnic Pole. She studied English Literature at Brown University, and holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Columbia University...
includes bunyips as dangerous adversaries in the Australian outback in Tongues of Serpents
Tongues of Serpents
Tongues of Serpents is the sixth novel in the Temeraire alternate history/fantasy series by American author Naomi Novik. This installment follows William Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire's adventures in Australia....
, the sixth installment of her novels of alternate Napoleonic-history era, with dragons
Temeraire (series)
The Temeraire series of novels by Naomi Novik is composed of His Majesty's Dragon , Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, Victory of Eagles, and Tongues of Serpents...
.
A bunyip had an important role in the 1930s classic novel Mountain of the Moon (Chander Pahar
Chander Pahar
Chander Pahar is a famous novel by Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay. Chronicling the adventures of a Bengali boy in the forests of Africa...
in the Bengali
Bengali language
Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
version), written by Bengali
Bengali people
The Bengali people are an ethnic community native to the historic region of Bengal in South Asia. They speak Bengali , which is an Indo-Aryan language of the eastern Indian subcontinent, evolved from the Magadhi Prakrit and Sanskrit languages. In their native language, they are referred to as বাঙালী...
author Bibhutibhushan Banerjee.
The word bunyip has been used in other Australian contexts, including The Bunyip newspaper as the banner of a local weekly newspaper published in the town of Gawler
Gawler, South Australia
Gawler is the first country town in the state of South Australia, and is named after the second Governor of the colony of South Australia, George Gawler. It is located north of the centre of the state capital, Adelaide, and is close to the major wine producing district of the Barossa Valley...
, South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
. First published as a pamphlet by the Gawler Humbug Society in 1863, the name was chosen because "the Bunyip is the true type of Australian Humbug!" The word is also used in numerous other Australian contexts, including the House of the Gentle Bunyip in Clifton Hill
Clifton Hill, Victoria
Clifton Hill is a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 4 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. The border between Clifton Hill and Fitzroy North is Queens Parade and Smith Street. Merri Creek defines the eastern border of Clifton Hill. Its Local Government Area is...
, Victoria. There is also a coin-operated bunyip at Murray Bridge
Murray Bridge, South Australia
Murray Bridge is the fourth most populous city in South Australia after Adelaide, Mount Gambier and Whyalla. It is located east-southeast of Adelaide and north of Meningie....
, South Australia, at Sturt Reserve on the town's riverfront.
Since World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the bunyip has undergone some cultural crossover from Australia to the United States and beyond. It now appears in several role-playing and computer games, including as a character Garou Tribes (Werewolf: The Apocalypse)
Garou Tribes (Werewolf: The Apocalypse)
In the role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse there are different fictional tribes of werewolves. These tribes and their influence on the game are described below.- Description of the term Tribe in the game :...
, as a boss monster in Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
is a role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the PlayStation video game console. It is the sequel to Chrono Trigger, which was released in 1995 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System...
, and as the name of a summoned creature in the popular MMORPG
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
game RuneScape
RuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...
. The bunyip is also a monster in AdventureQuest
AdventureQuest
AdventureQuest is an online flash based single-player RPG developed by Artix Entertainment in 2002. As of June 14, 2010, aq.battleon.com, the game's hosting website, and www.battleon.com, the game's homepage, have an Alexa rating of 3,041...
. This version is a magical, heavily built creature of the night that is part jackrabbit, part wolf, and part giant.
The cultural crossover from Australia to the USA may have some connection to the use of a bunyip (bunyap) as the symbol of the U.S. Air Force's 7th Fighter Squadron
7th Fighter Squadron
The 7th Fighter Squadron is part of the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.-Mission:The 7th Fighter Squadron as a part of the 49th Operations Group supports national security objectives, as directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by utilizing the F-22A Raptor aircraft.The 7 FS...
, which was based in Australia in 1942, shortly after its formation.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bertie the Bunyip
Bertie the Bunyip
along with other puppettes like Sir Guy Deguy Fussy and Gussy it was often called one of the "noiseyest show on sunday morning\Bertie the Bunyip was a puppet character on a popular American children's television show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, during the 1950s and 60s.Created by Australian...
was a children's show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, created by Lee Dexter, an Australian. Bunyips were featured on The Secret Saturdays
The Secret Saturdays
The Secret Saturdays is an American animated television series created by Canadian cartoonist Jay Stephens for Cartoon Network. It debuted on October 3, 2008, in the United States...
, in the episode "Into the Mouth of Darkness", with their vocal effects provided by Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker
Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor. He is noted as his long-running-role as Klaus Heissler in American Dad! and other various characters including Squilliam Fancyson in the hit TV series SpongeBob SquarePants, Nightcrawler in X-Men: Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance...
. Here, the bunyips were depicted as small, furry, mischievous cryptids that resemble the Tasmanian Devil
Tasmanian Devil (Looney Tunes)
The Tasmanian Devil, often referred to as Taz, is an animated cartoon character featured in the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes series of cartoons. The character appeared in only five shorts before Warner Bros...
of Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes
Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros. animated cartoon series. It preceded the Merrie Melodies series and was Warner Bros.'s first animated theatrical series. Since its first official release, 1930's Sinkin' in the Bathtub, the series has become a worldwide media franchise, spawning several television...
with small antlers. The bunyip was also featured repeatedly on the US WB soap Charmed
Charmed
Charmed is an American television series that originally aired from October 7, 1998, until May 21, 2006, on the now defunct The WB Television Network. The series was created in 1998 by writer Constance M...
, most notably the episode "Nymphs Just Wanna Have Fun", and an episode of the Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
show The Wild Thornberrys
The Wild Thornberrys
The Wild Thornberrys is an American animated television series that aired on Nickelodeon. It was rerun in the USA on Nickelodeon and occasionally The N until 2009 and Nicktoons until 2007...
.
In the novelette
Novelette
A novelette is a piece of short prose fiction. The distinction between a novelette and other literary forms is usually based upon word count, with a novelette being longer than a short story, but shorter than a novella...
"Water Babies" by Simon Brown, a series of drownings investigated by an Australian police officer turn out to be the work of a predatory seal-like creature that may be the inspiration for the bunyip legends.
The novel The Neddiad by Daniel Pinkwater
Daniel Pinkwater
Daniel Manus Pinkwater is an author of mostly children's books and is an occasional commentator on National Public Radio. He attended Bard College. Well-known books include Lizard Music, The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death, Fat Men from Space, Borgel, and the picture book The Big Orange...
features a character named Shlmomos Bunyip, who is controlled by an evil earth spirit that lives in a swamp.
The Australian children's animated movie Dot and the Kangaroo
Dot and the Kangaroo
-Film adaptations:The book was adapted into a film in 1977 which featured a combination of animation and live-action. The main character, Dot, was voiced by Barbara Frawley. The film also featured Spike Milligan as the voice of Platypus. The movie featured an original soundtrack including several...
features the song "Bunyip Moon".
The poetry anthology Antipodes: Poetic Responses, edited by Margaret Bradstock, features a poem titled "The Challicum Bunyip" by Australian poet Benjamin Dodds. The poem presents an interpretation of the Challicum bunyip story.
In the supernatural television series Charmed
Charmed
Charmed is an American television series that originally aired from October 7, 1998, until May 21, 2006, on the now defunct The WB Television Network. The series was created in 1998 by writer Constance M...
, Phoebe Halliwell
Phoebe Halliwell
Phoebe Halliwell is a fictional character from the television series Charmed. One of the featured leads, Phoebe is introduced in the series as a witch and, more specifically, a Charmed One one of the most powerful witches of all time. The character was portrayed by Lori Rom in the unaired pilot,...
, the youngest sister, alludes to the fact that they may have in fact vanquished a bunyip demon in the eighteenth episode of the second season.
See also
- Yara-ma-yha-whoYara-ma-yha-whoThe Yara-ma-yha-who is a creature from Australian Aboriginal folklore. This creature resembles a little red man with a very big head and large mouth with no teeth. On the ends of its hands and feet are suckers...
, a creature from Australian Aboriginal mythology - Min Min lightMin Min lightMin Min Light is the name given to an unusual light formation that has been reported numerous times in eastern Australia. The lights have been reported from as far south as Brewarrina in western New South Wales, to as far north as Boulia in northern Queensland...
, an unexplained phenomenon that may have influenced Australian Aboriginal mythology - YowieYowieThe Yowie is a creature from Australian folklore.Yowie may also refer to:*Cadbury Yowie, a confectionery from the Cadbury-Schweppes company*Yowie Bay, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney, Australia...
, or Wowee, a creature that has its origins in Australian Aboriginal mythology - Australian Aboriginal mythology#Rainbow Serpent
- P. A. YeomansP. A. YeomansPercival Alfred Yeomans was an Australian inventor known for the Keyline system for the development of land and increasing the fertility of that land. As a mining engineer and gold assayer, Yeomans had developed a keen sense of hydrology and equipment design...
, inventor of the Bunyip Slipper Imp, a plough for developing watersheds - Marsupial LionMarsupial LionThe Marsupial Lion is an extinct species of carnivorous marsupial mammal that lived in Australia from the early to the late Pleistocene...
External links
- Bunyips ... enter the lair of the bunyip if you dare—interactive for kids / National Library of Australia