Geelong — the bunyip in print, July 1845

OVERVIEW

The bunyip is a creature of Aboriginal Australian lore, said to haunt swamps, creeks and waterholes. Its first appearance in a publication under that name was in The Geelong Advertiser in July 1845.

HISTORY

Under the headline 'Wonderful Discovery of a new Animal', the Geelong Advertiser reported fossils found near Geelong: shown the bone, 'an intelligent black' recognised it as a bunyip's, which he said he had seen, and drew it. The account added a woman killed by a bunyip and the 'most direct evidence of all', a man named Mumbowran with deep wounds on his breast from its claws. Other papers repeated it. (The word 'bahnyip' had appeared once before, in the Sydney Gazette in 1812.)

REPORTED ACTIVITY

LEGEND. Explanations include folk memory of extinct marsupials such as Diprotodon (first proposed in 1871), the cassowary — the 1845 description's eggs, claws and emu-like head fit it — and seals. By the 1850s 'bunyip' also meant an impostor or humbug.

VISITING

A city; the 1845 find was 'near Geelong', not a marked site.