Creature Feature Friday: The Bunyip
Have you heard of The Bunyip? This oddly scary creature first came to my (Lindsay) attention as a little kid watching the children’s movie Dot and the Kangaroo.
The film follows Dot and the Kangaroo (spoiler alert!) through an adventure in the Australian outback as they meet all kinds of animals. But the one I remember most is the Bunyip. Who wouldn’t remember it vividly, what with its catchy and oh-so-sunny song number featuring lyrics like: “So you better come home quickly, and you better hide very soon! For the Bunyip’s going to get you, in the Bunyip moon!” …Thirty years later, and the Bunyip from Dot and the Kangaroo is still nightmare fuel.
So just what is the Bunyip?
1) Originating in Aboriginal legend, the Bunyip is a water cryptid native to Australia. It can be found (if it exists, that is) in swamps, creeks, rivers, billabongs, and waterholes, where it bides its time until it can kill anyone who wanders too close to the water’s edge. Livestock, women, and children are its favorite selections to eat in the dark of night.
2) One of the major reasons the existence of the bunyip cannot be confirmed is because no one can agree on what it actually looks like. The descriptions of the bunyip vary so greatly that it may has well be multiple creatures rather than a single one. Some describe the bunyip as a dog-faced creature with tusks and flippers. Others believe it looks like a snake with a beard, and still others claim it appears as a giant starfish. Or, it’s a cross between a large bird and an alligator. Pushing it even more into the fantastic beast category are stories of the bunyip having a single giant eye on its head and a mouth on its stomach. Though it prefers the water, it can walk on land and allegedly reaches heights of 12 to 13 feet tall when standing on its hind legs!
3) Legends also depict the bunyip as a supernatural being, with the ability to cripple victims with its terrifying roar, hypnotize humans to do its biding, and change water levels at will. The name Bunyip itself comes from the Aboriginal Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language, and means “evil spirit” or “devil.” With its many accounts of different appearances, perhaps the bunyip is a shapeshifter as well!
4) The early-to-mid-19th century generated a number of recorded accounts of the bunyip, mostly from Europeans who were settling across the Australian continent. In 1851,The Australasian newspaper published a story claiming that a bunyip had been speared after it killed an Aboriginal man. The creature was described as eleven paces long and four paces in width. In 1852, escaped convict William Buckley published his account of living among the Wathaurong people for 30 years, and included a sighting of a bunyip:
"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 . . . 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."
The extinct marsupial Diprotodon.
5) There have been many theories put forward as to the true identity of the bunyip, which makes this supernatural cryptid a study in misidentification! Throughout the 1800s, the fossils of a diprotodon, a nototherium, an aquatic animal thought to be a hippopotamus or a manatee, and even a deformed calf skull were discovered, and all were suggested as the real identity of the creature the Aboriginal people called the bunyip. Cassowaries and the Australasian bittern have also been theorized to be the legendary bunyip. With so many varying descriptions of its appearance and abilities, and so many potential true identities, we’ll probably never know if the bunyip is a mythical creature or a genuine animal!
If you want to have the Bunyip stuck in your head for the next 30 years too, check out the aforementioned video of ‘The Bunyip Song’ below, which, upon further reflection, may be the reason I have pretty severe thalassophobia. (Thank you, pre-2000s kid movies, for a lifetime of emotional scars. 😆)
True to its indeterminate form, this video Bunyip looks nothing like any of its other descriptions! Enjoy, and get home quickly!
