bunyip - Characteristics, Explanations, Bunyips in popular culture

In the mythology of the Australian aborigines, the source of evil. He is not to be thought of as a spirit or as a human. The Rainbow Serpent, the mother of life, confined bunyip to a waterhole: he haunts dark and gloomy places.

Characteristics

Descriptions of bunyips vary wildly.

During the early settlement of Australia, 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 calls or cries to it. At one point, the discovery of a strange skull in an isolated area associated with these 'bunyip calls' seemed to provide physical evidence of the bunyip's existence. In 1847 the so-called bunyip skull was put on exhibition 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' "Almost everyone became immediately aware that he had heard 'strange sounds' from the lagoons at night, or had seen 'something black' in the water." The 'bunyip skull' disappeared from the museum soon afterwards, and its present location is unknown.

As European exploration of Australia proceeded, the bunyip increasingly began to be regarded as not existing. The idiom 'why search for the bunyip?' emerged from repeated attempts by Australian adventurers to capture or sight the bunyip, the phrase indicating that a proposed course of action is fruitless or impossible.

Explanations

Although no documented physical evidence of bunyips has been found, it has been suggested by cryptozoologists that tales of bunyips could be Aboriginal memories of the diprotodon, or other extinct Australian megafauna which became extinct some 50,000 years ago. The cries of the possum or koala could likely be mistaken for the bunyip, as most people are surprised to find koalas or possums are capable of such loud roars. The Barking Owl, a nocturnal bird that lives around swamps and billabongs in the Australian bush is sometimes credited for making the sounds of the bunyip.

Bunyips in popular culture

The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek by Jenny Wagner (ISBN 0-14-050126-6) is a popular Australian childrens picture book about a bunyip seeking to learn who he is by asking everyone he meets "What do bunyips look like?". The House of the Gentle Bunyip, in Hodgkinson St, Clifton Hill, Victoria (next to the Baptist Church) was a community house established in the 1970's. The campaign and VCAT hearings set many precedents for planning in Victoria. Andrew Lang included a tale of a bunyip in The Brown Fairy Book(1904). Barry Humphries played a bunyip early in his career, in about 1955 in Melbourne, in a children's play called The Bunyip and the Satellite, produced by Peter O'Shaughnessy, which was seen in rehearsals by a young Olivia Newton-John. "Dot and the Kangaroo" animated musical feature from Australia (1977) showed an aboriginal painting representation of the feared bunyip during the song about the bunyip, and ten years later in the movie "Dot and the Smugglers" (1987), Dot tries to rescue not only the native animals, but, ironically enough, the bunyip itself. During the 1980s, Australian children's television and literature featured a more friendly version of the bunyip - "Alexander Bunyip" created by Michael Salmon. During the 1950s and 1960s, "Bertie the Bunyip" was a children's show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, created by Lee Dexter, an Australian. In the videogame Ty The Tasmanian Tiger, Bunyips are important characters along with a cast of other Australian creatures. In the Playstation2 game Final Fantasy X, the bunyip is a creature encountered frequently in random fights. In the Playstation2 game Culdcept, the bunyip is a formidable water element creature that can be played on a territory. Bunyips in the Australian Classroom - The Bunyip Collaborative Web project is a learning sequence. The focus is the creation of a bunyip in parts and sharing the bunyip parts using web based tools. Visit http://www.education.tas.gov.au/ictpl/n-touch/Bunyip/default.htm to learn about the bunyips as a framework for inquiring and being information literate in a teaching and learning sequences. In the Nintendo GameCube game Animal Crossing, and the Nintendo DS follow-up Animal Crossing: Wild World, a rabbit character known as Snake uses the word "bunyip" as his default catchphrase. On Charmed, the Bunyip is one of the many demonic creatures the charmed ones must battle, and one of the few non-humanoid. There's a bunyip in the 1989 illustrated children's book A Kangaroo Court (ISBN 0-333-45032-9), written by Mary O'Toole, illustrated by Keith McEwan. First published as a pamphlet by the Humbug Society in 1863, the name was chosen because, "the Bunyip is the true type of Australian Humbug!"