Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Beware the bunyip in the Land Down Under

In the Land Down Under, people there sometimes speak of a weird creature that was said to lurk in Australia's swamps, lakes and rivers. Many dismiss the tales of the bunyip as just a myth handed down from the Aborigines, the continent's indigenous people. But others insist the legendary creature is more than just a native folk tale.
In a land known for its unusual animals, the bunyip might have been the strangest of them all.
The monster's name is usually translated as "devil" or "spirit." Based on the reports that have emerged since Australia's colonial era, those sound like pretty good descriptions. However, no two physical descriptions of the bunyip are exactly the same. It has been described as having a dog-like face, dark fur, a horse-like tail and walrus-like tusks. Others say it has flippers and a duck-like bill similar to the duck-billed platypus.
Pretty much everyone who reported seeing the bunyip agreed that it lived in the lakes, rivers, streams and wetlands of Australia. They also said that it was a creature to be feared and respected, according to a Web site.
When Europeans settled in Australia, they first heard about the creature from the Aborigines. If they heard a strange cry or sound in the wilderness, they likely assumed that it was the call of the bunyip.
The Aborigines were so scared of the bunyip that they would not approach any water source where one might be waiting. It was believed that the creature enjoyed feasting on the flesh of humans.
One of the earliest reports of the bunyip dates back to 1821. Hamilton Hume, the first Australian-born explorer, found some large unexplained bones from Lake Bathurst in New South Wales. He wrote that the creature that was very much like a hippopotamus. Both Hume and the Philosophical Society of Australasia believed these bones proved the existance of the bunyip.
As the European settlers moved further into the outback, they came back with more and more bunyip sightings. A large number of these sightings occurred between the 1840s and 1850s, particularly in the southeastern colonies of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.
For example, a number of bunyip sightings emerged from one area in Australia in 1845. An unfossilized bone of a large animal was recovered from the banks of a small river in the Geelong area. A story about the big bone appeared in the Geelong Advertiser and that resulted in numerous people coming forward with their bunyip sightings. A local Aboriginal person looked at the bone and immediately identified it as a bunyip bone. Another person claimed that a bunyip had killed his mother in the Barwon River.
In no time, the legend of the bunyip grew and grew. It became Australia's version of the boogey man.
In the Greta area, local people often heard a loud booming sound which came mysteriously from the nearby swamps. Search parties were frequently sent out to the swamps to find out what was causing the loud booming. However, they could not find the source for the sound. Many locals assumed that the noise was being made by the bunyip.
When the swamps were drained, the sound went away. Some Greta locals believed that the bunyip moved on to another area. Others said it probably died when its habitat was destroyed.
As Australia became more settled and civilized, the sightings of the bunyip began to fade away. Many assumed that it never existed in the first place and regarded it as old folk tale.
But today, some cryptozoologists believe that the bunyip was really an ancient animal that should have become extinct about 10,000 years ago. Diprotodons were large rhinoceros-sized marsupials from the prehistoric era. Some researchers believe that the diprotodon did not become extinct after all but instead evolved into the animal the Aborigines called the bunyip.
While writing this column, I couldn't help but think about the late great Steve Irwin. I wonder if Steve ever encountered something like the bunyip in his explorations of Australia's wilderness and what he would have had to say about the legend.