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

Terra Australis and the great Southern Ocean were long believed to be the home of much that was bizarre and frightening.

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Even before the First Fleet landed in 1788, Europeans expected to see fabulous creatures down-under.

They had been conditioned by centuries of superstition and travellers’ tales to believe in the existence of sea serpents, hairy giants, mermaids and other strange creatures. The Southern Hemisphere, in fact, was believed to be the realm where the natural order of things was reversed.

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Before the end of the eighteenth century, the actual creatures of Botany Bay which were being exhibited live in England and Europe proved every bit as fanciful as any fiction. When a platypus was sent to England its novely led scientists to regard it as a ‘monstrous imposture’. It was considered to be comparable to the ‘mermaids’ which were cunnigly fashioned by Chinese fakers by attaching the tail of a large fish to a mummified monkey's body.

A bunyip was perhaps no more extraordinary than a Wild Man from Botany Bay.

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By far the most astounding ‘monster’ was the ‘Large WILD MAN, or monstrous GIANT brought from Botany Bay’ described in an English handbill c.1790. It is most likely that the highly newsworthy voyage of the First Fleet prompted an English showman to exhibit an African gorilla under an inventive title.

Exactly when the European settlers first heard of the bunyip from the Aboriginal people is uncertain. The story of the bunyip remains one of the very few Aboriginal legends which has been embraced by white Australians.

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