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

Were skulls physical proof that bunyips existed?

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In 1846 an unusual skull was retrieved from the banks of the Murrumbidgee River in New South Wales. In the first flush of excitement several experts declared that it was the skull of something unknown to science. In July 1847 the so-called ‘bunyip skull’ was put on exhibition in the Australian Museum (then located at the Supreme Court House, Sydney) for two days.

Visitors flocked to see it and the Sydney Morning Herald, 1847 reported that it prompted a spate of bunyip stories:

… almost everyone became immediately aware that he had heard ‘strange sounds’ from the lagoons at night, or had seen ‘something black’ in the water.

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Sydney’s leading naturalist, William Macleay, examined the skull and compared it with an even stranger one: a skull with only one eye-socket—a veritable cyclops!

Scientific knowledge and common sense prevailed, however, when Macleay concluded that both skulls were freaks of nature and did not represent a new species. The Australian Medical Journal warned that claims of ‘bunyip skulls’ could only be seen as an ‘ostentatious display of our ignorance and credulity’.

Gradually the debate calmed down although one final mystery remains—what became of the so-called bunyip skull. It disappeared and has never been sighted since!

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