Great Australian Stories

by Graham Seal

  This delighted the rest of the party, and they all began to arrange their fishing lines, made from the bark of the yellow mimosa, and to search for bait for their hooks. Most of them used worms, but one, who had put a piece of raw meat for dinner into his skin wallet, cut off a little bit and baited his line with it, unseen by his companions.

  For a long time they cast patiently, without receiving a single bite; the sun had grown low in the sky, and it seemed as if they would have to go home empty-handed, not even with a basket of roots to show; when the youth, who had baited his hook with raw meat, suddenly saw his line disappear under the water. Something, a very heavy fish he supposed, was pulling so hard that he could hardly keep his feet, and for a few minutes it seemed either as if he must let go or be dragged into the pool. He cried to his friends to help him, and at last, trembling with fright at what they were going to see, they managed between them to land on the bank a creature that was neither a calf nor a seal, but something of both, with a long, broad tail. They looked at each other with horror, cold shivers running down their spines; for though they had never beheld it, there was not a man amongst them who did not know what it was—the cub of the awful bunyip!

  All of a sudden the silence was broken by a low wail, answered by another from the other side of the pool, as the mother rose up from her den and came towards them, rage flashing from her horrible yellow eyes. ‘Let it go! Let it go!’ whispered the young men to each other; but the captor declared that he had caught it, and was going to keep it. ‘He had promised his sweetheart,’ he said, ‘that he would bring back enough meat for her father’s house to feast on for three days, and though they could not eat the little bunyip, her brothers and sisters should have it to play with.’ So, flinging his spear at the mother to keep her back, he threw the little bunyip on to his shoulders, and set out for the camp, never heeding the poor mother’s cries of distress.

  By this time it was getting near sunset, and the plain was in shadow, though the tops of the mountains were still quite bright. The youths had all ceased to be afraid, when they were startled by a low rushing sound behind them, and, looking round, saw that the pool was slowly rising, and the spot where they had landed the bunyip was quite covered. ‘What could it be?’ they asked one of another; there was not a cloud in the sky, yet the water had risen higher already than they had ever known it do before. For an instant they stood watching as if they were frozen, then they turned and ran with all their might, the man with the bunyip running faster than all. When he reached a high peak over-looking all the plain he stopped to take breath, and turned to see if he was safe yet. Safe! Why, only the tops of the trees remained above that sea of water, and these were fast disappearing. They must run fast indeed if they were to escape.

  So on they flew, scarcely feeling the ground as they went, till they flung themselves on the ground before the holes scooped out of the earth where they had all been born. The old men were sitting in front, the children were playing, and the women chattering together, when the little bunyip fell into their midst, and there was scarcely a child among them who did not know that something terrible was upon them. ‘The water! The water!’ gasped one of the young men; and there it was, slowly but steadily mounting the ridge itself. Parents and children clung together, as if by that means they could drive back the advancing flood; and the youth who had caused all this terrible catastrophe, seized his sweetheart, and cried: ‘I will climb with you to the top of that tree, and there no waters can reach us.’

  But, as he spoke, something cold touched him, and quickly he glanced down at his feet. Then with a shudder he saw that they were feet no longer, but bird’s claws. He looked at the girl he was clasping, and beheld a great black bird standing at his side; he turned to his friends, but a flock of great awkward flapping creatures stood in their place. He put up his hands to cover his face, but they were no more hands, only the ends of wings; and when he tried to speak, a noise such as he had never heard before seemed to come from his throat, which had suddenly become narrow and slender. Already the water had risen to his waist, and he found himself sitting easily upon it, while its surface reflected back the image of a black swan, one of many.

  Never again did the swans become men; but they are still different from other swans, for in the night-time those who listen can hear them talk in a language that is certainly not swan’s language; and there are even sounds of laughing and talking, unlike any noise made by the swans whom we know.

  The little bunyip was carried home by its mother, and after that the waters sank back to their own channels. The side of the pool where she lives is always shunned by everyone, as nobody knows when she may suddenly put out her head and draw him into her mighty jaws. But people say that underneath the black waters of the pool she has a house filled with beautiful things, such as mortals who dwell on the earth have no idea of. Though how they know I cannot tell you, as nobody has ever seen it.

  Lang’s version of the bunyip story represents the children’s end of the tradition. The other end focuses on the creature as killer. According to a version told to author Roland Robinson by an Aboriginal man named Percy Mumbulla, a ‘clever man’ or sorcerer of his acquaintance who once had a bunyip in his power; the creature was ‘high in the front and low at the back, like a hyena, like a lion. It had a terrible bull head and it was milk white. This bunyip could go down into the ground and take the old man with him. They could travel under the ground. They could come out anywhere.’ But for ordinary men, Mumbulla said, there was no making friends with a bunyip. ‘When he bites you, you die.’

  Yaramas, jarnbahs, jannocks and yowies

  Indigenous mythology is full of spirits, monsters and usually loathsome creatures, some of which, like the bunyip, have also fused with monsters of European legend.

  The yarama (or yaroma) is tall, hairy and has very sharp teeth in a large and hungry mouth, as in this early twentieth-century account:

  On one occasion a blackfellow went under a large fig-tree to pick up ripe figs, which had fallen to the ground, when a Yaroma, who was hidden in a hollow place in the base of a tree, rushed out, and catching hold of the man swallowed him head first. It happened that the man was of unusual length, measuring more than a foot taller than the majority of his countrymen. Owing to this circumstance, the Yaroma was not able to gulp him farther than the calves of his legs, leaving his feet protruding from the monster’s mouth, thus keeping it open and allowing air to descend to the man’s nostrils, which saved him from suffocation. The Yaroma soon began to feel a nausea similar to what occurs when a piece of fishbone or other substance gets stuck in one’s throat. He went to the bank of the river close by, and took a drink of water to moisten his throat, thinking by this means to suck into his stomach the remainder of his prey, and complete his repast. This was all to no purpose, however, for, becoming sick, the Yaroma vomited the man out on the dry land, just as the whale got rid of Jonah. He was still alive, but feigned to be dead, in order that he might perhaps have a chance of escape. The Yaroma then started away to bring his mates to assist him to carry the dead man to their camp. He wished, however, to make quite sure that the man was dead before he left him, and after going but a short distance he jumped back suddenly; but the man lay quite still. The Yaroma got a piece of grass and tickled the man’s feet and then his nose, but he did not move a muscle. The Yaroma, thinking he was certainly dead, again started away for help, and when he got a good distance off, the man, seeing his opportunity, got up and ran with all his speed into the water close by, and swam to the opposite shore, and so escaped.

  In his description of the yarama, under the name Yara ma tha who, the Aboriginal writer David Unaipon suggests that the creatures were common along the east coast and explains: ‘This is one of the stories told to bad children: that if they do not behave themselves the Yara ma tha who will come and take them and make them to become one of their own.’

  In his memoir Wyndham Yella Fella, Reg
Birch tells of his terrifying encounters with the jarnbah, ‘an ugly, hairy, smelly little muscular dark man’ who invaded dreams and sleep to torment and degrade boys and men. He was not the only Aboriginal male in the district to suffer this way.

  The Nyungar of the southwest speak of jannocks, small, evil beings that lurk after dark. Often manifested in puffs of wind, they are especially dangerous to humans—all the more so because they are easily offended. Even referring to them the wrong way can bring trouble.

  More widely known and feared is the yowie, a fierce animal of uncertain shape and features. An army officer in 1832 recorded hearing about a wawee, as it was called by the Eurambone people of the Liverpool Plains, west of Sydney. This was a tortoise-like creature that lived in rivers and fed on unwary humans. The officer, a Captain Forbes of the 39th Regiment of Foot, thought the story might be an indigenous joke at the settlers’ expense. Others thought it and similar tales were concocted by the Aborigines to frighten settlers away. Some colonists used ‘yowie’ interchangeably with ‘Yahoos’, the fantastical savages invented by Jonathan Swift in his 1726 book Gulliver’s Travels. Yahoo also sounds like the term for ‘dream spirit’ in the Yuwaalaraay language of northeastern New South Wales. Whatever its origins, the term has stuck, and yahoo is frequently used as a variation on yowie.

  The earliest documented mention of this creature, referred to as both a ‘Yahoo’ and a ‘Devil-Devil’, seems to have been in 1835. The Australian and New Zealand Monthly Magazine provided this description in 1842:

  The natives of Australia have, properly speaking, no idea of any supernatural being; they believe in the imaginary existence of a class which, in the singular number, they call Yahoo, or, when they wish to be anglified, Devil-Devil. This being they describe as resembling a man, of nearly the same height, but more slender, with long white straight hair hanging down from the head over the features, so as almost entirely to conceal them; the arms are extraordinarily long, furnished at the extremities with great talons, and the ‘feet turned backwards’, so that, on flying from man, the imprint of the foot appears as if the being had travelled in the opposite direction. Altogether, they describe it as a hideous monster, of an unearthly character and ape-like appearance. On the other hand, a contested point has long existed among Australian naturalists whether or not such an animal as the Yahoo existed, one party contending that it does, and that from its scarceness, slyness, and solitary habits, man has not succeeded in obtaining a specimen, and that it is most likely one of the monkey tribe.

  Long before the term yowie came into general use, variants of it were used by indigenous Australians to denote what David Unaipon described as ‘the most dreadful animal in existence’. He was referring to the Riverina whowie, a large reptile or goanna with six legs, a tail and an enormous frog-like head. The whowie would devour whatever creatures it came across, including humans—and in large numbers. It lived in a cave on the river bank and its footprints were said to have formed the sandhills along the river. Unaipon retells a story in which the whowie is eventually killed by the animals, birds and reptiles. As with the yarama and bunyip, fearsome tales of the whowie’s doings were used to caution disobedient children.

  About 1903, William Telfer, a stockman who spent his life around Tamworth, New South Wales, wrote down his memories. These included, from the 1840s, a graphic description of his encounter with a man-like beast on the Liverpool Plains, said in local Aboriginal tradition to have once been a vast lake or inland sea.

  The Aborigines have a tradition that it is three hundred miles long, a large lot of islands in the middle of it. One Aboriginal told me his grandfather told him big fellow water all about the plains. He said they used to have canoes and go fishing from one island to the other making a stay at each place as they went across from one side to the other. His story must have some truth in it as Mr Oxley, Surveyor General, when he came over Liverpool Plains had to cross large marshes or swamps . . . I said [to the Aboriginal man] at the time there was the river. He said no river, all water and ridges and mountains all round the outside . . . There came a very wet season and his people shifted away to the mountains. He said they heard great noise at different times, like thunder. He said they were very frightened. When they came back all the big water was gone. Nothing but mud and swamps where the Plains are now, plenty of fish in different waterholes . . . he said the ridges about Gunnedah were swept away by the great rush of water in its course down the Namoi . . .

  Then they have a tradition about the yahoo. They say he is a hairy man like a monkey. Plenty at one time, not many now. But the best opinion of the kind I heard from old Bungaree, a Gunnedah Aboriginal. He said at one time there were tribes of them and they were the original inhabitants of the country. He said they were the old race of blacks. He was of Darwin’s theory that the original race had a tail on them like a monkey. He said the Aboriginals would camp in one place and those people in a place of their own, telling about how them and the blacks used to fight and the blacks always beat them but the yahoo always made away from the blacks, being a faster runner, mostly escaped. The blacks were frightened of them. When a lot of those were together the blacks would not go near them as the yahoo would make a great noise and frighten them with sticks. He said very strong fellow, very stupid. The blacks were more cunning, getting behind trees, spearing any chance one that came near them. This was his story about those people.

  I have seen several stockmen in the old times said they had seen this hairy man. His feet [were] reversed—when you thought he was coming towards you he was going away. I had an experience myself of this gorilla or hairy man. In the year 1883 I was making a short cut across the bush from Keera to Cobedah via Top Bingera. It was a very hot day. I was on foot when, after crossing those steep hills, being tired, camped for about two hours. This left me late. The sun was only an hour high. Having to go about ten miles [I] went about five miles. Getting dark, [I] came on a creek of running water. Had to camp for the night. Made a camp on a high bank of the creek, lit a fire and made myself comfortable, my dog laying down at the fire alongside me. I sat smoking my pipe. The moon rose about an hour after, when you could discern objects two hundred yards away from the camp. I heard a curious noise coming up the creek opposite the camp. Over the creek I went to see what it was about one hundred yards away. He seemed the same as a man only larger. The animal was something like the gorilla in the Sydney Museum, of a darkish colour and made a roaring noise going away towards Top Bingera, the noise getting fainter as he went along in the distance.

  I started at daylight, getting to Bell’s Mountain about 9 o’clock. Mr Bridger lived there; stopped and had breakfast. I was telling them about the night before. They said several people has seen the gorilla about there. He was often seen in the mountains towards the Gwyder and about Mt Lyndsay. I was thinking how easily this animal could elude pursuit, travelling by night, camping in rocks or caves in the daytime. After those blacks, the Governors [brothers, who murdered five white people in July 1900], so many out after them I do not think it wonderful those wild animals should escape being caught, as they are faster than the Aboriginal by his own account. Some people think they are only a myth, but how is it they were seen by so many people in the old times fifty years ago?

  In referring to the search for the Governor brothers, Telfer was making the point that a yahoo could hide away in the bush as easily as they could.

  The doolagarl, or hairy man, was also well known and feared in southeastern New South Wales. Percy Mumbulla, who told Roland Robinson about the bunyip and the ‘clever man’, described this creature as ‘a man like a gorilla. He has long spindly legs. He has a big chest and long swinging arms. His forehead goes back from his eyebrows. His head goes into his shoulders. He has no neck.’

  In 1989, folklore collectors in Queensland recorded fading rumours of a ‘wowey-wowey’, a creature ‘that is supposed to run around the bushes’. Nor was that the end of the yowie
legend’s career. In September 2000, a bushwalker claimed to have filmed a large creature he believed could be a yowie in the Brindabella ranges near Canberra. The Brindabellas have long been a favourite yowie lair, with reported sightings dating back to pioneer days (one claimed an eyewitness spoke of ‘a man-like thing whose coat was as hairy as that of a gorilla’). News reports quoted the bushwalker as saying, ‘I was filming what I thought was a large kangaroo in a gully, when I realised it was far too big for a roo.’ People who viewed the film, including ‘hominid researcher’ Tim the Yowie Man, said it seemed to show a large, hairy creature walking upright through the bush but that the footage was too dark to draw any conclusions.

  Alien cats

  The study and pursuit of mythical animals, including yaramas and bunyips, is known as cryptozoology. Australian folklore is rich in what cryptozoologists call ‘Alien Big Cats’ or ‘ABCs’. One of the best-known of these is the Tantanoola Tiger, said to have been attacking stock in that region of South Australia since the early 1890s. Scant though the evidence is, many people genuinely believe in ABCs and spend a great deal of time and money looking for them.