ON AIRTerminal of Terror

🐊 The Bunyip

A bellowing creature of the billabongs and swamps of south-eastern Australia

Also known as Bunyip, Kianpraty

📺 "Tonight's guest lives at the bottom of a billabong, and nobody can agree on what it looks like, which is exactly how it likes it. Listen for the bellow, and stay well back from the water's edge."

💀 Facts

  • The bunyip comes from Aboriginal Australian traditions, especially in the south-east
  • The word bunyip is from the Wemba-Wemba language of Victoria
  • It lives in billabongs, swamps and waterholes and is often heard rather than seen
  • Descriptions vary greatly between nations and tellings
  • The word first appeared in print in the Geelong Advertiser in 1845
  • A supposed bunyip skull was exhibited in Sydney in 1847 and turned out to be a deformed foal or calf
  • Scientists have suggested the stories recall extinct megafauna such as Diprotodon

📜 Legend

The bunyip lives in the billabongs, swamps and waterholes of south-eastern Australia, and the word itself comes from the Wemba-Wemba people of what is now Victoria, though many nations have their own name and their own story. Descriptions vary enormously between peoples and tellings: some give it a dog's face, some tusks, flippers or a long neck, and some describe only a terrible bellowing in the night. What most tellings share is a warning to respect dangerous water, and in Ngarrindjeri tradition the related mulyawonk carries a lesson against taking more fish than you need. British settlers heard the stories and reported their own sightings, and in 1847 a strange skull found on the Murrumbidgee was exhibited in the Australian Museum in Sydney as a bunyip's; experts soon identified it as the deformed skull of a foal or calf. Scientists have since wondered whether the stories carry a memory of Diprotodon and other giant marsupials that lived alongside the first Australians.

🎭 Myth vs Movie

True or false? Make your guess, then click a card (or press r) for the verdict.

  • Everyone agrees what a bunyip looks like.

    ✘ FALSE

    Descriptions differ from nation to nation and even from telling to telling, from a seal-like animal to a long-necked beast with tusks.

  • A museum once exhibited a bunyip skull.

    ✔ TRUE

    The Australian Museum in Sydney showed a supposed bunyip skull in 1847. It was soon identified as a deformed foal or calf skull.

  • The bunyip may be a memory of extinct giant animals.

    ✔ TRUE

    The naturalist George Bennett suggested in 1871 that the stories recall megafauna such as Diprotodon, a wombat-like marsupial the size of a car.

  • The bunyip is a settler invention.

    ✘ FALSE

    Settlers borrowed the word and the fright, but the stories belong to Aboriginal peoples and were old long before 1845.

🃏 Stat Card

Strength
8
Speed
5
Cunning
5
Dread
7

⚡ Powers

  • A bellow that carries across the swamp
  • Dragging the unwary into deep water
  • Lurking unseen beneath the surface
  • Being whatever the last witness said it was

🧄 Weaknesses

  • Leaving the water
  • Daylight and dry seasons
  • Respectful fishing, which gives it no cause
  • Sceptical scientists with a tape measure

Stats power the Monster Mash: terminal-of-terror mash bunyip

🎞️ Legacy

  • Bunyip Bluegum, the koala hero of Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding (1918)
  • The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek (1973) by Jenny Wagner and Ron Brooks, a classic Australian picture book
  • The bunyip of the animated film Dot and the Kangaroo (1977), who frightened a generation of Australian children

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