According to researchers of Australian Aboriginal folklore, Bunyip is only a character in folk myths, that is, not a real creature. In the legends of the aborigines, the bunyip lives in swamps, streams, river beds and other bodies of water, even small ones.
There are many descriptions of this creature, sometimes very different, but, as a rule, in the stories of the aborigines, a tail like a horse, flippers and fangs like a walrus always appear.
At night, you can allegedly hear his terrifying screams when he eats animals or people who inadvertently came too close to his shelter.
However, cryptozoologists believe that this is a real animal.
The origin of the word bunyip is associated with vemba-vemba (vergaya) - one of the languages of the aborigines of southeastern Australia, from which “bunyip” can be loosely translated as “demon”. Bunyip, however, appears to be part of traditional Aboriginal beliefs and stories across Australia, although its name varies with specific tribes.
The writer Robert Holden lists at least nine species of the creature known as the bunyip among the Australian aborigines.
During the initial period of Australian colonization, the bunyip was believed to be a real but as yet unexplored animal: its description was no more surprising than descriptions of other animals living in Australia, such as the platypus.
Currently, the bunyip is considered a real animal only among cryptozoologists: official zoology recognizes the reports about it as fiction, although some researchers suggest that the stories of the aborigines about this creature may have a real basis and describe the giant representative of marsupials, which became extinct about 50 thousand years ago, diprotodon. which the distant ancestors of the modern indigenous people of the continent could see alive.
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In 1801, the French scientist Charles Baine, a member of the expedition of Nicolas Bodin, decided, together with his companions, to make a voyage deep into the still unexplored Australian continent. But practically
after a few kilometers, the pioneers were stopped by a terrible, almost devilish roar, which came from the reed thickets of the Swan River.
Considering that only a huge monster could howl like this, people in panic fled back to the shore. Later, the Europeans learned from the Australian natives that the bunyip made such a terrible roar.
According to them, the monster was hiding in impassable swamps, attacking any animal passing by, and even people. Indigenous Australians believed that people go crazy and even die from just one cry of this monster.
Scientists tried to get a description of the monster from the aboriginals in order to be able to at least estimate which order of animals it belongs to. Alas, the descriptions of the bunyip turned out to be so contradictory that we could talk either about several different animals, or about a completely fictional creature. Some natives talked about the horns of the monster, others about its fins, others about huge fangs and almost a horse's tail …
Bunyip was remembered when the Englishman Hamilton Hume told about an unusual water monster he had seen in Lake Bathurst. According to Hume, the creature resembled a huge hybrid of a manatee and a hippopotamus. Unfortunately, no one saw this animal again, although a lot of money was offered for its capture.
In the middle of the XIX century. the whole of Australia started talking about bunyip. The reason was a real invasion of monsters, which were observed in various parts of the country. In Lake George, eyewitnesses saw a giant seal, and in the Emeralia River - a creature with a long neck and a small head, resembling a lizard. Moreover, people began to disappear without a trace in this river …
And in 1872. on Lake Burrumbit, some kind of monster with a barrel-shaped body and a monstrous mouth caused a real panic among the passengers of the pleasure boat, which as a result almost capsized. In 1875. a similar case was recorded in Queensland.
The bunyip expressed his dissatisfaction with the activities of the people very unequivocally during the construction of the Greet Lane hydroelectric complex: the monster leaned out of the water, opened its monstrous mouth and roared so that all the workers were scared to death.
In the middle of the last century, cryptozoologist Bernard Evelmans participated in several expeditions organized to search for the bunyip. Although the mysterious monster could not be found, the scientist, after talking with the aborigines, concluded that there are still unknown animals in Australia.
