Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here. When you enter the right wetlands in
Speaker 1: New Caledonia, New Zealand, Tasmania or mainland Australia, you might
Speaker 1: just come across a tan and speckled heron that's got
Speaker 1: the voice of an electric bass. You're more likely to
Speaker 1: hear it before you see it in the flesh or
Speaker 1: in the feathers, as it were. The booming cry, deep
Speaker 1: and resonant of male Australian bittern birds when they're ready
Speaker 1: to breed sounds like it could have been ripped straight
Speaker 1: out of an eighties horror movie. That unsettling sound is
Speaker 1: why the Australian bittern is also called the bunyip bird,
Speaker 1: after a legendary cryptid with a similarly frightening bellow that's
Speaker 1: said to prey on humans and live in the remote
Speaker 1: billabongs and wetlands of Australia. Legends about the bunyip began
Speaker 1: in Aboriginal communities as cautionary stories to warn people against
Speaker 1: things like going in the water alone, taking more fish
Speaker 1: than they needed, or wandering alone at night. Don't do it.
Speaker 1: The bunyip will get you. Lots of people's had similar
Speaker 1: stories about local water spirits, like the Mulawonk of the
Speaker 1: Narringerry people love southeastern Australia. The word bunyip is thought
Speaker 1: to derive from the Wergaya language word anib, the name
Speaker 1: of a fearsome emu like river spirit from neighboring people.
Speaker 1: The legends morphed as they moved amongst different peoples, and
Speaker 1: again as European colonists picked them up. In the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: a novelist by the name of Rosa Campbell Prade, who
Speaker 1: had grown up in Queensland, wrote a short story called
Speaker 1: The Bunyip, now considered a classic work of Gothic horror.
Speaker 1: In it, she wrote, the bunyip is said to be
Speaker 1: an amphibious animal, and is variously described, sometimes as a
Speaker 1: giant snake, sometimes as a species of rhinoceros with a smooth,
Speaker 1: pulpy sk and a head like that of a calf,
Speaker 1: sometimes as a huge pig, its body yellow crossed with
Speaker 1: black stripes. But it is also said to be something
Speaker 1: more than an animal, and among its supernatural attributes is
Speaker 1: the cold, awesome, uncanny feeling which creeps over a company
Speaker 1: at night. When the bunyip becomes the subject of conversation.
Speaker 1: Over time, the bunyip further evolved. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the city of murray Bridge received a somewhat fearsome, mechanical
Speaker 1: bunyip named Bert that, for a charge of twenty cents,
Speaker 1: could be observed emerging from the water and bellowing. It's
Speaker 1: since been rebuilt to look more friendly and renamed Bertha.
Speaker 1: You can now visit her free of charge, and today
Speaker 1: there's a whole subgenre of children's books about the bunyip,
Speaker 1: ranging from classic cautionary myths to tales of friendly, if
Speaker 1: misunderstood monsters. Whatever the difference is in the details, the
Speaker 1: beast is usually said to have a mighty roar, hence
Speaker 1: the Australian bitterns awesome nickname. In nineteen forty six, Australian
Speaker 1: geographer Charles Fenner wrote, the mysterious booming sound made by
Speaker 1: the bittern a very shy bird, has become associated with
Speaker 1: the bunyip, but actual observers have usually described the sound
Speaker 1: of the latter as a roar or bellow. The tales
Speaker 1: of the bunyip flourished during Fenner's lifetime, as Europeans further
Speaker 1: settled Australia, unfamiliar with the sounds of the bush, many
Speaker 1: colonists were convinced of the bunyip's existence as an undiscovered animal.
Speaker 1: To this day, there are those who believe the legendary
Speaker 1: bunyip could be a one hundred percent real, undiscovered species
Speaker 1: lurking in the wetlands of the vast Australian continent. Wildlife
Speaker 1: experts aren't sold, though, especially because no verified corpses or
Speaker 1: other remains have ever come to light. A skull that
Speaker 1: supposedly belonged to a bunyip went on display in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven at the Colonial Museum of Sydney. However, a
Speaker 1: naturalist examined it and revealed it was actually the head
Speaker 1: of a deformed horse. Another famous bunyip head, this one
Speaker 1: complete with fur, found its way to Sydney's Macclay Museum,
Speaker 1: alas it turned out the specimen came from yet another horse.
Speaker 1: Australia has no shortage of genuine animals that seem too
Speaker 1: weird to exist, like the duck billed platypus. Equally amazing,
Speaker 1: if a bit less strange, are the multitudes of seals
Speaker 1: and sea lions that can be encountered on the nation's beaches.
Speaker 1: We should also acknowledge the saltwater crocodile, a semi aquatic
Speaker 1: predator that stocks Australian waterways and coastlines. Capable of weighing
Speaker 1: two thousand, six hundred pounds that's one two hundred kilos
Speaker 1: and reaching lengths of over twenty feet or six meters,
Speaker 1: it's the biggest reptile alive today. Could any of these
Speaker 1: beasts have contributed to bunyip lore? Perhaps also a chance
Speaker 1: that the storytellers of ancient Australia were inspired by the
Speaker 1: now extinct rhino sized herbivore Diprotodon, a marsupial that roamed
Speaker 1: the continent during the last Ice Age. However, paleontologists have
Speaker 1: questioned this idea too, on the grounds that Diprotodon doesn't
Speaker 1: neatly align with most descriptions of the bunyip. Whatever its origins,
Speaker 1: the bunyip, like other cryptids, holds a very real place
Speaker 1: in our collective imagination, especially should you find yourself alone
Speaker 1: by the water on a dark night. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: based on the article does the bunyip really haunt the
Speaker 1: Australian Wetlands on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff was production of by Heart Radio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuffworks dot Com and as produced by Tyler Klang.
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