The All-Aussie Bunyip Trivia Quiz

Answer: Desert

Indigenous people in many parts of Australia told European settlers about animals found in watery regions which were hard to spot, and which could be fearsome. Contemporary scholars were not sure whether these stories were truly believed by those who told them, or exaggerated to frighten the newcomers. Nevertheless, they were certainly taken seriously by the colonists - in the land of the kangaroo and the platypus, almost nothing was too strange to be credible.

It was a source of frustration that descriptions of the bunyip's appearance were contradictory. Everyone agreed that it was amphibious, and made a loud roaring noise, but the actual body shape and covering (fur, feathers, scales) was widely variable, as was the nature of its head - like a pig with or without tusks, a dog, a cow with or without horns, a duck, and more).

Answer: Diprotodon

Fossils of a number of very large extinct species have been found around Australia, and are often thought to be the possible source of various indigenous dreamtime stories. Diprotodon, also called the giant wombat and the rhinoceros wombat, roamed Australia from roughly 1.6 million years ago until about 46,000 years ago (shortly after the arrival of the first humans), according to the fossil record. They were about the size of a large hippopotamus, with a body that resembled a hornless rhinoceros, and their fossilized bones have often been identified as bunyip bones. Their strong forelegs and powerful claws, along with their size, would indeed have made them a ferocious beast. It is likely that the bunyip bones discovered in Lake Bathurst by Hamilton Hume in 1818, often suggested to have been those of a bunyip, were diprotodon bones. Since he never returned to collect specimens for scientific analysis, this remains uncertain. It is certain that the bones found in Wellington caves during the 1830s by George Rankin and Thomas Mitchell were those of diprotodons and nototheriums, another extinct giant marsupial.

Other speculations as to possible actual animals that could have been the origin of the bunyip stories include large seals that made their way upstream from the coast to inland waters where they are an unfamiliar sight. It has also been suggested that it might be Meiolania prisca, a prehistoric turtle which grew up to two metres in carapace length, with a bony tail a metre long and long curved horns.

Answer: Emu and crocodile

According to the story, an indigenous man identified the bone as belonging to a bunyip, and produced a drawing of one, from which he claimed to have received the scars on his chest. According to the newspaper,

"The Bunyip, then, is represented as uniting the characteristics of a bird and of an alligator. It has a head resembling an emu, with a long bill, at the extremity of which is a transverse projection on each side, with serrated edges like the bone of the stingray. Its body and legs partake of the nature of the alligator. The hind legs are remarkably thick and strong, and the fore legs are much longer, but still of great strength. The extremities are furnished with long claws, but the blacks say its usual method of killing its prey is by hugging it to death. When in the water it swims like a frog, and when on shore it walks on its hind legs with its head erect, in which position it measures twelve or thirteen feet in height."

It must be noted that the journalist who wrote the story was not clear about the difference between an alligator (not found in Australia) and a crocodile (definitely found in Australia, and understood to be the animal being portrayed). In case you were wondering, horses, rabbits and foxes are not native to Australia, but were imported by European settlers.

Answer: Eating an animal of his own totem

According to the story, Biami banished the man who had eaten of his own totem, and the man became a vengeful spirit, Bunyip. (Note that Bunyip is the spirit form, while bunyip refers to an individual physical embodiment.) Bunyip hid in nearby waterholes by day, and roamed the earth by night, seeking to harm those who had exiled him.

Some young women foolishly wandered into his realm, and he made them into water spirits, who then were sent to lure hunters into the swamps where they could be caught and drowned.

The moral of the story, to stay indoors at night and to avoid the treacherous swamps where you might drown, seems applicable even today.

Answer: Koala

According to the story, koalas were loved by humans for their gentle nature (!), and the fact that this koala left her baby behind to spend the nights conversing with the hated Bunyip placed that at risk. A wise old koala painted his body with clay markings in imitation of those used by humans in their Spirit dances.

The magic from these markings gave him the power to make the koala's baby cling to her back, keeping her from going to Bunyip. Ever since, facial markings on all koalas reflect these clay markings, and serve to remind them and us of the incident, and the importance of avoiding Bunyip.

Answer: Trapped them in a cave

Men learned to fear the lagoon, until one night an elder had a dream that the missing young men were hidden in a cave beside the lagoon. As he was about to start swimming, two creatures emerged from the water. They were "about four times the size of the largest dogs, covered with grey hair, with stumpy tails, four legs, hooves like horses, ferocious teeth and the tusks of a wild boar" (as quoted on an Australian government website on which the adapted version of this story appears).

The elder eluded them, found the cave, and made enough noise by banging his yamstick on the ground that the rest of the tribe was able to locate them, dig in from above, and help them escape.

When they then magically caused the lagoon to dry up, no traces of the Bunyee Bunyees were found.

Answer: Black swan

As recounted in 'The Reader', Goondah and his friends were fishing for eels when they caught an animal with the head of a calf and the body of a seal, which they identified as a baby bunyip when its furious mother appeared. Goondah grabbed the baby so that he would have something to show for the day's activity, and the men were inundated by a large tsunami-like wave generated by the mother.

They turned into black swans, and the mother rescued the baby. That was the origin of Australia's black swans. Don't mess with baby bunyips!

Answer: Pantomime

As is often the case with pantomimes, the plot is a bit hard to describe, as the story is overwhelmed by the variety acts (including indigenous actors throwing boomerangs into the audience). Roughly, Fairy Princess Wattle Blossom is transformed into a (for theatrical reasons, toad-like) bunyip by the evil Chief Gnome, but the spell is broken when her lover speaks words of genuine sympathy for the monster.

This bunyip is more to be pitied than feared. As reported in a review in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' on December 23, "the orchestra brought forward a very tricky little tune, 'Bunyip, Bunyip', which was piquantly taken up by Miss Belle Pollard (Overseer's Wife), and a group of children in the darkness to 'Bogieman' effects.

This little melody will be whistled all over Sydney within the next few days." The pantomime was so popular that it was revived annually through 1924.

Answer: Barry Humphries

This next pantomime appearance of the Bunyip on the Australian stage was an entirely different being from its forebears, neither malevolent nor pathetic. Rather, as Humphries himself described it in an interview in the magazine 'Theatre', "I love the part of Bunyip.

He's a sort of a clown, like the fool in Lear. As a matter of fact the Bunyip wore a Learfool's costume painted up. I just stood up and Arthur Boyd painted colours all over me." As is so often the case with pantomimes, the plot is slight.

The Bush Fire Spirit steals a flame from a campfire, and threatens to produce a bush fire. Sam the Swaggie and his animal friends are worried, but Bunyip suggests that the children in the audience can foil the evil Bush Fire Spirit if they all blow together to create a wind that will defeat the plan, and blow the Bush Fire Spirit up into the sky, where it will become a satellite (a very topical idea, mere months after the launch of Sputnik).

Answer: Dot and the Kangaroo

The movie is based on an 1899 book by Ethel C. Pedley, in which a little girl wanders into the bush and gets lost, After a red kangaroo gives her some special berries, she is able to converse with the animals of the bush, who help her find her way home. 'The Bunyip' is sung on the soundtrack as a backing to images of the night, along with ghostly images in a pseudo-indigenous art style, to portray Dot's early fears on finding she is lost. The images are distinctly on the frightening side for young viewers, as are the lyrics, which include a chorus that goes
"So you better come home quickly
And you better hide very soon
Or the Bunyip's going to get you
In the Bunyip moon."