IN SEARCH OF AN ORIGIN

Records indicate that the bunyip, like well-received popstars and some other unidentified mystery beasts, thrived on the popularity of revival - that is, frequent spectacular reappearances interspersed with long years of silence following the initial, sensational debut. It seems the bunyip enjoyed most consideration and publicity over the 130 year time-span between 1801 and 1930, the majority of recorded sightings being in the 1840s and 1850s, and then again in the 1870s and 1880s. These were the bunyip-fever years. However, there were a few isolated sightings in the intervening years, and up until the 1930s when people presumably found other things to think about. Documented sightings in more recent years bear uncanny resemblance to creatures found in formal zoological classification.

One could hardly be expected to formulate some well-constructed theory on the bunyip's origin and existence from the evidence on hand; since, having dismissed all accumulated bunyip knowledge fact by fact as either improbable or impossible, the remaining possibilities prove as diverse as they are confusing. for example, Barrett (1946, p10) informs his reader that: "... no two aboriginal portraits of the dreaded monster are quite alike. Nor were verbal descriptions uniform as regards details". Indeed, one could then be forgiven for supposing that the bunyip was, in fact, a freshwater seal and not some fabulous conglomerate creature of the imagination.

An animal with a seal's head, with the characteristics of a seal or dugong; with otter-like head and whiskers; which was porpoise-like and splashed water into th4e air, which was of heavy build and moved about clumsily on the shore; an amphibious beast with flippers; one which basked on the banks of lakes and rivers, roared terribly and swam fast using a double fin. Such descriptions of the bunyip were commonplace during times of frequent sightings. Time after time bunyip observers echoed one another's sentiments concerning the beast's appearance and character traits. Colourful word portraits enable us to suppose the bunyhip a seal-like creature, since by deleting features which occur only once or twice, and using others reported often, we can put together a sort of identikit pictue of the mystery beast in question.

Take the first official report of Australia's great water-beast. Research material prepared in 1940 by Gilbert Whitley of the Australian Museum notes the presence of some unseen water-creature amount the reeds of the Swan River in south Western Australia. (Elsewhere, one is taken by Whitley's much-quoted opinion that the bunyip was "thought to have been an extinct marsupial otter-like animal, rumours of whose existence have been banded down in aboriginal legends, the latter corrupted and confused with crocodiles in the north and seals in the south").

It was Whitley who thought to record the experiences of French crewmen from the Geographe who went ashore in June 18091, but ran for their lives when they hard roars "louder than a bull's bellow" coming from the nearby waterway. This report of the bunyip's sound effects has been echoed again and again, with little or no variation since that time. Whether "a voice like rumble of a distant cannon" or "similar to a bullock with a dreadful cough", whether a groan, a moan or a roar, the bunyip invariably was to blame - even though some thought the brown bittern's call responsible for these disturbing nocturnal noises. The fact that it is instinctive for male seals to protect their territorial rights by means of a few fierce warning barks and growls must not be overlooked at the stage of our investigation; for by the mid-1800s rumour was already affort that the Tasmanian bunyip was a fake and in reality no more than a freshwater seal.

It did not take long for this idea to spread to mainland Australia where as early as 1857 the naturalist Strocqueler discovered and sketched freshwater seals while on a sailing excursion down the Murray River. On showing these to the aborigines, he was reputedly told that this animal was "Bunyip's brother". Add to this the drawing, 'sixteen paces long', inscribed in the ground at Chillicum in Victoria's Western District. Aldo Massola's account in 1968 of this generous aboriginal representation speculates on its origin as an outline tracing of an actual animal carcass, the probability of its use in ceremonial rituals and also its likeness to both an emu or seal "depending upon which end one accepted as the head!".

Further evidence of the bunyip's similarity to a seal was provided in the writings of Charles Gould, son of the eminent ornithologist John Gould. While geologist for the Tasmanian government, Gould was supplied with descriptions of bunyips seen in the neighbouring Swan Bay and Great Lakes districts. From those he regarded as reliable sources he was able to determine the presence of "a large seal-like water-animal unknown to Science". In short, Gould's report of 1872 affirmed the existence of some dark-coloured animal featuring a round head like a bulldog's, two front flippers and the ability to swim very fast. However, it was decided that whereas this creature answered in general description to a seal, it did not correspond with any particular known species.

Although "... by no mans certain that the legend of the water-bunyip is based on stray seals and sea-lions since many reports came from places that these animals could not reach", (Heuvelmans, 1958, page205), Tro0ughton (1941, p196) advances the argument one step further when he advises: "Amongst seals, the nearest approach to the bunyip conception is the elephant and which is the largest of the group and so named because of the trunk-like extension of the nose of males. Early explorers found the huge creature plentiful about Tasmania and the islands of Bass Strait but settlement soon banished them from such haunts where today they would provide a great tourist attraction....

"Indeed, but for the close protection of recent years, which has enabled them to increase until some rookeries are now fully occupied, local seals might have become as much a myth to future generations as the bunyip legend they helped to inspire".

It is a fact that Captain Matthew Flinders sighted seals on and around Kangaroo Island when he landed there in 1802, and that some remain today despite extensive slaughtering campaigns of the past. Charles Sriber may have unearthed one more clue to the bunyip's whereabouts when he wrote of the strong aboriginal abhorrence of this island and its surrounding waters in The Australian newspaper, 28th march, 1981: "Mainland Aborigines never crossed the often turbulent stretch of water that separates kangaroo Island from what is known as Backstairs Passage. to them the island was a place of mystery associated with death and disaster".

On the other hand, it may be entirely coincidental that the strip of coastline south of Port Pirie should abound in both seals and bunyips! Troughton (1`941, p197) gives a most thorough appraisal of the bunyip's origin as a seal, and for that reason quote him at length: "There are numerous records of stray seals being found at considerable distances inland up freshwater streams. such occurrences in earlier times no doubt inspiored the aborigines' traditional accounts of the mythical 'bunyip'. In the Geelong Naturalist of 1896 is a report of an 'animal like a bigh retriever dog, with a round head and hardly any ears' (evidently a fur seal) being seen in Lake Corangamite, Victoria, in 1872. Many people had seen one in Lake Burumbeet near Ballarat.

"The distance stray seals will ascend streams was indicated by the capture of a four-foot fur-seal some thirty miles up the Shoalhawn at its junction with the Kangaroo River, about eight miles from Bundanoon (N.S.W.) ..... An even more surprising occurrence was the capture of a ten-foot Leopard Seal in the Shoalhaven River in 1859 with a fullgrown platypus in its stomach, proving that the ocean-going seal had travelled some distance up-river into fresh-water.

".....The most northern stranding so far recorded was of the hawkesbury River near Sydney".

Later, Bernard Heuvelmans (1958) echoes these facts, but theorises further (p209): "The sight of a sea-lion for inland would be very unusual, and it is therefore hardly surprising that these animals should be described as bunyips. It is worth recalling that when the aborigines' tales of specially formidable bunyips were investigated they turned out to be merely Indian cattle (genus Bibos), which white settlers had imported, and which had occasionally escaped and returned to a state of nature. The right of these huge and utterly unknown horned beasts terrified the blackfellows. They were quite unlike any indigenous animal and thus well deserved to be called bunyips. 

A - D

E

{Aboriginal Mythology Part 1 } =>

COUNTRIES	LINKS	MYTHOLOGY	RESOURCES	POSTCARDS	RADIO	HOME
MELANESIA	MICRONESIA	POLYNESIA	JANE	TRIBAL ART	TATTOOS	CHATROOM