What the heck is a bunyip anyway?
What the heck is a bunyip anyway?
A name applied by Aborigines of Victoria
to an alleged water-dwelling monster,
whose existence under various names was widely credited
by Aborigines throughout Eastern Australia.
It was thought to be the cause of loud booming noises
and was believed to devour human prey,
especially women and children.
The name has also been used for water-creatures
which white men claim to have seen in lakes, swamps, pools and rivers.
In 1821 Hamilton Hume (qv) reported the existence in Lake Bathurst, NSW,
of an animal, which was supposed to be a hippopotamus,
and the Philosophical Society decided to reimburse Hume
for any expenses incurred in obtaining a specimen.
In a letter to the Sydney Gazette of 27th March 1823,
E.S Hall of Lake Bathurst stated that
in November 1821
he heard, and saw, a strange monster
which made a noises
suggesting a porpoise and had a head like a bulldog.
The Aborigines called it by a name meaning "devil-devil".
Extracts from "Their Ghosts May Be Heard"
BUNYIP"S & DIPROTODONS
For thousands of years Aboriginals have told stories about
fearsome, booming monsters that lived in swamps.
Today we call these creatures 'bunyips'.
Some scientists believe that the bunyip
was really an ancient animal called the diprotodon.
The diprotodon looked rather like a wombat
but it grew to the size of a rhinocerous and weighed about 2 tonnes.
It was a plant-eater and, because it was a marsupial, carried its young
in a pouch.
The first diprotodon bones were found in 1830, but it was not until 1893
that large numbers of bones were discovered in the dry bed of
Lake Callabonna in South Australia. Other bones have been discovered
in muddy areas and in places where lakes use to be.
Probably the animals got stuck in the mud and could not pull themselves
out:
they were heavy, slow creatures.
Diprotodons lived more than a million years ago.
They died out about 20,000 years ago. This was well after Aboriginals
came to Australia.
Aboriginals most probably hunted these slow-moving animals for food.
Recently, a diprotodon skull with a hole in it was found.
The hole may have been made by an Aboriginal's spear.
After the diprotodon became extinct,
stories about this swamp creature may have been
passed on from one generation to the next.
Perhaps, over many centuries,
these stories became the
bunyip legend.
What do you think??
...........................extracts from "Their Ghosts May Be Heard"
Extract from "DREAMTIME The Aboriginal Heritage".
The Bunyip
When the white man first came to Australia the Aborigines
warned them about the bunyip,
a strange creature which lived in deep waterholes
and destroyed everyone who camped nearby.
Many early settlers believed the story. They never pitched their tents
near a bunyip hole and they took care
not to disturb the waters too much when they were filling their
billy-cans.
As time went by, and the bunyip never appeared,
the settlers forgot these precautions,
but some of them thought that this persistent and widespread Aboriginal
myth
might contain some elements of truth.
They tried to gain more knowledge about the legendary creature
and discovered that it was described differently in various parts of the
country.
The tribes of central Australia claim that the wanambi,
which is another form of the bunyip,
is an immense highly coloured snake, often hundreds of meters long.
It has a mane and a beard, lives in all permanent waterholes,
and attacks any creature that lives near its home.
The Aborigines of the Coorong, in South Australia,
believed the bunyip to be a huge man-eating creature endowed
with a bellowing call that could be heard for miles around.
It had a long neck, a head like a bird,
and an elongated fur-covered body that was part animal and part human.
The bunyip laid enourmous eggs and lived near water.
Perhaps the legendary bunyip is really a kind of racial memory
of the great dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures
whose bones have been found in Australia.
It is certain that a true bunyip has never been seen.
.........extract from "DREAMTIME The Aboriginal Heritage"
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Email: dbunyip@thevision.net
