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Stories
of bunyips stopped colonial children wandering off into the bush.
Nineteenth-century
parents in Australia used the story of the bunyip to good effect.
Its presence in cautionary tales warned children about an alien
environment.
The average bush
youngster has a horror of darkness, and talks in awe-struck whispers
of hairy men, ghosts, and bunyips. This fear is inculcated from
babyhood. The mother cant always be watching in a
playground
that is boundless ... so she tells them there is a bunyip in the
lagoon.
Life
in the Australian Back-Blocks, 1911
Traditional figures
from European folklore did not settle readily into this new land.
Goblins, fairies, banshees, brownies, elves and their kin seem not
to have survived the long sea voyage. It was Aboriginal folklore
which best suited the strange new land.
The
bunyip soon became a potent character in the imagination of the
white Australian.
Everyone who has
lived in Australia has heard of the bunyip. It is the one respectable
flesh-curdling horror of which Australia can boast. The old world
has her tales of ghoul and vampire, of Lorelei, spook and pixie,
but Australia has ... her Bunyip ... the bushman will warm to his
subject as readily as an Irishman to his banshee.
The
Bunyip, Mrs Campbell Praed, 1891
Ethel Pedleys
classic childrens book was first published in London in 1899.
It introduced an international audience of children to the bunyip.
Dot,
panted the kangaroo, make a noise! Dot screamed
Then what seemed to Dot a very terrifying thing happened
from the gully in darkness below came the sound of a bellowing
The Bunyip! The Bunyip!
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