The bunyip
A being in the stories of several Aboriginal peoples, named in an Aboriginal language of Victoria. It entered settler print in 1845, when the Geelong Advertiser reported a bone said to be a bunyip's.
In Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Stradbroke Dreamtime, as adapted by the National Library of Australia, Bunyip was once a tribesman. He broke the Rainbow Serpent's law by eating his own totem animal. While the Rainbow Serpent slept under the earth, Biami punished the man himself and banished him. The man took on a spirit form and became an evil spirit, and Biami told the tribes to stay away from him.
ABC News reported in 2021 that the Ngarrindjeri know a being called the Mulyawonk, which some call the bunyip. The Ngarrindjeri say it could take anyone who caught more fish than they needed.
Wikipedia says the word bunyip comes from Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia, a language of Aboriginal people in Victoria. On 2 July 1845 the Geelong Advertiser reported a bone under the headline Wonderful Discovery of a New Animal. The paper said an Aboriginal man shown the bone named it as the bunyip, said he had seen one and drew it on request. Other Aboriginal people, shown the bone and the drawing separately, gave the same name.
- Origin
- Aboriginal tradition. Wikipedia says the word comes from Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia, a Victorian Aboriginal language. Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Stradbroke Dreamtime story of Biami and Bunyip and the Ngarrindjeri Mulyawonk, which some call the bunyip, are told here only as their published sources tell them. The first written record in these sources is a settler newspaper, the Geelong Advertiser of 2 July 1845, which reports Aboriginal informants through a colonial writer.
- How we treat it
- The folklore label covers the bunyip as a widely told story and as the new animal settlers reported in 1845. It does not cover the Dreaming beings of Aboriginal nations, which are living tradition; nothing beyond their openly published versions is described.
- Routes out
- Community voice first: Oodgeroo Noonuccal's story via the National Library of Australia, then Ngarrindjeri knowledge as reported by ABC News, then the 1845 settler newspaper, then Wikipedia.
"The origin of the word bunyip has been traced to the Wemba-Wemba or Wergaia language of the Aboriginal people of Victoria, in South-Eastern Australia.[1][2][3][4]"
- Bunyips: Aboriginal Stories — Biami and Bunyip (adapted from Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Stradbroke Dreamtime), National Library of Australia, Bunyips exhibition (archived 2012)
- Wonderful Discovery of a New Animal, Geelong Advertiser and Squatters' Advocate (2 July 1845), via Trove (Wayback capture)
- Indigenous knowledge values relearnt from elders and scientists, ABC News (2021)