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In 1994 Australia Post issued a highly popular series of four postage stamps which featured different images of the bunyip.

Aboriginal artist Toogarr Morrison depicted his bunyit as part human and part spirit, and it is the guardian of the waterholes in the south-west of Western Australia which is Morrison’s home territory. This bunyit has a flat tail which is used to strike the water and lure passers-by to their doom.

David Lancashire drew on a traditional European depiction of the monster in art. He saw his bunyip as something akin to the medieval gargoyle.

Marg Towt depicted what is perhaps the most plausible-looking creature of all in the series. It is based on the reports of settlers last century whose strange experiences in the Australian bush convinced many that bunyips really existed.

Ron Brooks’ illustration adapted from the 1973 children’s picture book The Bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, is now a classic image known to over two generations of young Australians. His amiable and endearing bunyip peers into a mirror asking: ‘What am I?’

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