Fabulous Creatures Challicum Bunyip First White Sighting Skull of a Bunyip Popular Culture Folklore of Fear Picture the Bunyip

The bunyip was rarely found in traditional Aboriginal art. Surely this omission is highly significant?

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It is surprising to find that the bunyip has almost no established image in Aboriginal art. Perhaps this is because it was so rarely seen and so terrible to approach? Aboriginal belief in the evocative power of such an image may also have discouraged them from drawing any outline of their fears.

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There is one major exception. At an unknown period in the Dreaming, a creature which the local Aboriginal people believed to be a bunyip died on the banks of Fiery Creek near Ararat in Victoria.

The experience was so remarkable that the Djapwurrong people constructed an outline around the carcass in order to preserve its shape. Spears were dug into the ground around it and the turf was later removed to create a sacred site. The Djapwurrong people returned each year to renew this outline.

It was there in 1840 when white settlers arrived and was first sketched in the mid-nineteenth century. By this time the outline was about nine metres long and its shape had become distorted and rather enigmatic. Viewed from one direction it looked like an emu; from another, it looked like a seal.

It was named the Challicum bunyip after a nearby station. The area finally returned to nature and the outline of the bunyip faded from sight

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