The bunyip is a being of Australian folklore said to live in swamps, billabongs, creeks and waterholes. In Aboriginal traditions of south-eastern Australia it is a dangerous creature of the water. In colonial Australia it became the country’s great mystery animal, blamed for fossil bones, a strange skull, a headless carcass and booming calls in the night. Today it is better known as a lovable character in children’s books, but its history is a revealing story of encounters between Aboriginal knowledge and colonial science.[1]
| Origin of the word | Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Victoria |
|---|---|
| Type | Being of Aboriginal tradition; colonial-era mystery animal |
| Region | South-eastern Australia, especially Victoria and the Murray–Darling basin |
| First mention in print | 1812, Sydney Gazette (“bahnyip”) |
| First use of “bunyip” | Geelong Advertiser, 2 July 1845 |
| Famous “evidence” | A skull from the Murrumbidgee, shown in Sydney in 1847, identified as a deformed foal or calf |
| Likely contributors | Seals, megafauna fossils, the call of the Australasian bittern |
Aboriginal origins
The word bunyip comes from the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of Aboriginal people in western Victoria. Aboriginal Australians today often translate it as “devil” or “evil spirit.” Descriptions recorded in the nineteenth century vary enormously from place to place, which suggests that settlers used one word for many different regional water beings. The original place of these beings in pre-colonial belief cannot be fully recovered from colonial records.[1]
Wadawurrung (Wathaurong) traditions from the Geelong area are among the best documented. Stories shared by Wadawurrung community members describe bunyips living in the waterways around Djillong (Geelong).[2]
William Buckley’s account
William Buckley was an English convict who escaped from a short-lived settlement on Port Phillip Bay in 1803 and lived with the Wathaurong people for about thirty years. His life story, written down by John Morgan and published in 1852, describes a large amphibious animal living in deep waterholes and lakes, including Lake Modewarre and the Barwon River, which the Wathaurong feared. Buckley said he saw its back several times, covered in dusky grey feathers, but never saw the whole animal.[2][3]
The bunyip in colonial newspapers
- 1812, Sydney. The Sydney Gazette reported a “bahnyip,” described as a large black animal like a seal, with a terrible voice that terrified Aboriginal people.[1]
- 1821, New South Wales. The same paper reported an animal near Lake Bathurst that cast up water with a sound like a porpoise and had a head like a bulldog’s.[3]
- 2 July 1845, Geelong. Under the headline “Wonderful Discovery of a new Animal,” the Geelong Advertiser reported fossil bones found near Geelong. A Wathaurong man shown one of the bones identified it as a bunyip’s and drew the animal, described as a cross between a bird and an alligator, with a head like an emu’s, a long bill with serrated edges and powerful claws that killed by hugging. The article also told of a woman killed by a bunyip and a man named Mumbowran who showed scars from its claws. This is the earliest known printed use of the word “bunyip.”[1][2]
The bunyip skull, 1846–1847
In 1846 a strange skull was found on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River near Balranald, in New South Wales. In 1847 it went on display at the Australian Museum in Sydney as the skull of a bunyip, and crowds came to see it. The naturalist William Sharp Macleay examined it, and he and the British anatomist Richard Owen identified it as the deformed skull of a young domestic animal, a foal or calf.[1][4]
The episode helped turn “bunyip” into a byword for something imaginary. In 1853 the politician Daniel Deniehy mocked a proposal to create hereditary titles for wealthy colonists as a “bunyip aristocracy,” and the phrase entered Australian political language.[1]
The Brungle carcass, 1883
In 1883 a man named Henry Wilkinson reportedly found the headless body of a strange animal on the bank of Brungle Creek near Tumut, covered in short, strong hair, pig-like, with a curled tail. Newspapers presented it as possible proof of the bunyip. The remains were to be sent to the museum in Sydney, but there is no record that they ever arrived.[4]
What lies behind the bunyip?
- Seals in the rivers. Seals occasionally swim hundreds of kilometers up the Murray and Darling rivers, where they would be unfamiliar and frightening. The geologist Charles Fenner suggested this in 1933, and it fits the 1812 “seal-like” description well.[1]
- Megafauna fossils. In 1871 the naturalist George Bennett proposed that the bunyip might be a folk memory of extinct giant marsupials such as Diprotodon. Their bones turn up in swamps and waterholes, as in the 1845 Geelong discovery.[1]
- The “bunyip bird.” The Australasian bittern, a secretive wetland bird, makes a deep, booming call in the breeding season. It is still nicknamed the “bunyip bird.”[1]
- Other animals. Cassowaries and even escaped livestock have been suggested for particular descriptions.[1]
Three real animals, up close
The bittern’s boom
The Australasian bittern is a stocky, streaky brown heron that hides among dense reeds and rushes. In the breeding season the male gives a deep, resonant booming call that can carry up to about 4 kilometers across a swamp at night, which is exactly the sort of sound a frightened listener would attribute to something huge in the water. The bird is also in serious trouble. Australia’s population, estimated at about 2,500 mature birds before 2010, crashed during a severe drought and may now be below 1,000. The species is listed as endangered under Australian law. Rice fields in the Riverina have become one of its most important refuges, and its return to restored wetlands is celebrated as the return of the “bunyip bird.”[5]
Diprotodon and the megafauna
Diprotodon, the largest marsupial that ever lived, stood about 1.8 meters at the shoulder, was more than 4 meters long and may have weighed between about 2 and 3.5 tonnes. Its fossils have been found in every Australian state. At Lake Callabonna in South Australia, up to 360 individuals were found together, apparently trapped in mud as they crossed drying water. The youngest known remains are about 40,000 years old, so the first Aboriginal Australians almost certainly lived alongside it for thousands of years. Bones of such animals turning up in swamps and creek beds, as at Geelong in 1845, would naturally be explained as the remains of water monsters.[6]
Seals far from the sea
Fenner’s seal theory has kept its appeal because the animals really do turn up in odd places. New Zealand fur seals sometimes enter the lower Murray and its lakes, and occasional individuals have been reported far upstream. To people who had never seen a seal, a dark, whiskered head surfacing in a billabong, and a barking or roaring call at night, would be startling and hard to explain.[1]
Bertha of Murray Bridge
The bunyip’s transformation from terror to mascot is nowhere clearer than at Murray Bridge, South Australia. In late 1971 a local plastics manufacturer, Dennis Newell, built a mechanical bunyip that rises roaring from a pool beside the Murray River at Sturt Reserve. It was opened by Premier Don Dunstan on 29 January 1972. Visitors once dropped in a 20-cent coin to make it appear; today they press a button. Nicknamed Bertha, it gained a baby in 1981, survived vandalism and a major facelift, and celebrated its fiftieth birthday in 2022.[7]
The bunyip today
Over the twentieth century the bunyip changed from a terror of the waterhole into a gentle or comic character, especially in children’s books such as Colin Thiele’s Gloop the Gloomy Bunyip (1962) and Jenny Wagner’s The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek (1973).[1] For Aboriginal communities, water beings remain part of a living relationship with country.
For another water being whose name means “beaver” in its own language, see the Afanc of Wales.
References
- “Bunyip,” Wikipedia, citing the Sydney Gazette (1812), the Geelong Advertiser (1845), Sydney newspapers (1846–47), C. Fenner (1933), G. Bennett (1871) and others.
- “The Bunyip,” Djilang, Wadawurrung stories of Geelong, provided by Uncle David Tournier.
- John Morgan, The Life and Adventures of William Buckley (Hobart, 1852); see also “Bunyip: Australia’s mysterious man-eating swamp beast,” Folklore Thursday.
- “Riverina Rewind: The mysterious Brungle bunyip of 1883,” Region Riverina (2025).
- “Australasian bittern,” Wikipedia; see also BirdLife Australia.
- “Diprotodon,” Wikipedia; see also “Meet Darren the Diprotodon,” Australian Museum.
- “Murray Bridge bunyip at 50: How Dennis Newell’s monster became an icon,” Murray Bridge News (2022); “The Bunyip,” Rural City of Murray Bridge.
Correction note (October 2026): This entry was rewritten from documented sources, replacing an earlier general description. The illustration above is an artistic impression.