Speaker 1: Good evening, fellow conspiracy realist. We're going to set off
Speaker 1: today's classic episode with a shout out to longtime friend
Speaker 1: of the show Cranketthas, who wrote to us just recently
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you suggested. I suggested an episode a
Speaker 1: while ago on Australian cryptids. Thanks for doing it. Found
Speaker 1: it interesting, learned some things I didn't know and guess what,
Speaker 1: Cranken House, we learned a lot of stuff we didn't
Speaker 1: know either, and we did it with the help of
Speaker 1: our good friend Annie Reecee from stuff moumb never told
Speaker 1: you and savor, so let's do it. From UFOs to
Speaker 1: psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is riddled with unexplained events.
Speaker 1: You can turn back now or learn this stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
Speaker 2: name is no.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We were joined with our super
Speaker 1: producer Paul Decktt. Most importantly, you are you. You are here,
Speaker 1: and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Pardon that momentary pause. I was thinking to myself, should
Speaker 1: we open by saying good day? But that's that's kind
Speaker 1: of lowbrow for us.
Speaker 3: You weren't taken aback by my odd introduction of myself.
Speaker 2: I was not no, really, I'd like to know more
Speaker 2: about what the new me.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's just a little more robotic. Okay, I've
Speaker 3: been assimilated by the borg.
Speaker 2: Oh I knew it. I could tell you have all
Speaker 2: this machinery kind of protruding from your cranium.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the big red one eye. Ben, you did
Speaker 3: a masterful thing just then. You didn't open by saying
Speaker 3: good day, but you also kind of did.
Speaker 1: I know. It's like when you add just saying at
Speaker 1: the end of a sentence.
Speaker 3: It's like having your good day and eating it too.
Speaker 1: There we go, well done. This micro circuitry is doing wonders.
Speaker 3: You really fun to say, Yeah, firing on all microcylinders.
Speaker 1: Right, So we are going We're going to travel a
Speaker 1: bit today. We're going outside of the States. A lot
Speaker 1: of you have written to us and said, well, I
Speaker 1: appreciate all the stuff you guys do on the show,
Speaker 1: but you spend a lot of time in the US.
Speaker 1: We're looking at the US sides of things. And earlier,
Speaker 1: when we were talking off air, Matt, you and Noel
Speaker 1: were telling me a little bit about some of the
Speaker 1: here's where it gets crazy. A male that you found
Speaker 1: right in posts. And one of the things that that
Speaker 1: guys were very excited about was the concept of cryptids,
Speaker 1: but not just all the cryptids we've covered so far
Speaker 1: in the past. Cryptids down on that. Oh yeah, cryptids
Speaker 1: of Australia. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had someone named Leif Allen creed right into
Speaker 2: us and talk to us specifically about drop bears. You
Speaker 2: wanted us to cover that in a couple other things,
Speaker 2: what the bunyip and the yowie. Yeah, a lot lots
Speaker 2: of things like that.
Speaker 1: Interesting conflation too, as we'll find out. So, yes, we
Speaker 1: are diving into the strange and fascinating world of cryptids.
Speaker 1: When we started this show years and years and years
Speaker 1: and years ago, Matt, Nolan and I all started diving
Speaker 1: into these bizarre, unusual things. And the weird thing is
Speaker 1: that more often than not we would find a grain
Speaker 1: of truth in these stories. And cryptozoology candidly is one
Speaker 1: of those fields that I had always personally thought would
Speaker 1: be mainly smoke and mirrors, you know, like a misidentified bear,
Speaker 1: because most people nowadays haven't seen a bear in real life.
Speaker 1: Soon you know, it's a scary thing.
Speaker 2: Or folklore conflated with some animal that's similar enough to
Speaker 2: scare you at the night, like in nighttime.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or like some kind of misinterpretation of a fossil.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good call, good call. Right, that's why we used
Speaker 1: to think dragons were for so long. Wait what or
Speaker 1: were we wrong? You know?
Speaker 3: Sure? Hope? So, man, I need to believe in something.
Speaker 1: I wish the Jurassic Park, I just every rebook they do.
Speaker 1: I wish they would try feathers on the dinosaurs.
Speaker 3: That'd be cool, you know, you know what, I have
Speaker 3: a pitch, go for it, Dragon Park, Dragon Park. How
Speaker 3: has that not happened yet? They probably what happened all
Speaker 3: the dragon movies, that's true, dragon Heart.
Speaker 1: They were slumbering just for a little bit post Lord
Speaker 1: of the Rings, dragon Heart. But they'll be back. They'll
Speaker 1: be back in the after the seat last season of
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones ends, people will have a dragon deficit.
Speaker 3: That's where we get our dragon fixes on Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3: They on the they run the Dragon show.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm not talking about cgi dragons. We got
Speaker 2: to get some real dragons, get them in sag, get
Speaker 2: them really working, you know.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Yeah, let's do it in the case
Speaker 1: of cryptozoology, though, you know, we we are outlining several
Speaker 1: of the common things misidentification of fossils, misinterpretation of actual animals,
Speaker 1: or you know, out and out hoaxes. Since we've been
Speaker 1: doing this show, at least three times, some group of
Speaker 1: people once in Georgia have claimed to find the corpse
Speaker 1: of sasquatch or Bigfoot. Yeah, and those folks had not
Speaker 1: misidentified a corpse. They were out and out con artists.
Speaker 2: Well, some of you maybe just misidentified the suit that
Speaker 2: they made.
Speaker 1: There we go. Yeah, And frankly, we've delved into some
Speaker 1: questions here that don't have clear, definitive answers. Sure, many
Speaker 1: of those photos of the Lockness Monster are genuine, clear hoaxes.
Speaker 1: But then there are things that are real cryptids, like
Speaker 1: the Silicas, which is a tremendously disgusting looking, ugly, ugliest
Speaker 1: sin fish that was thought to be extinct for millions
Speaker 1: of years. It turns out that we just weren't looking
Speaker 1: in the right places. But that's where we get to
Speaker 1: the tough part about cryptids. Because most stories of cryptids,
Speaker 1: these unidentified or unacknowledged animals, come from remote and dangerous
Speaker 1: areas and traveling to those parts of the world can
Speaker 1: be enormously expensive.
Speaker 2: And or dangerous.
Speaker 1: And yeah, certainly like the deserts of Mongolia where the
Speaker 1: Mongolian blood worm is supposed to be hiding, that's millions
Speaker 1: of dollars easily just to get a decent team of
Speaker 1: people there.
Speaker 2: Don't do it well if you got the money, right,
Speaker 2: Musk do it yes.
Speaker 1: Or Buffett if he's going to turn a new leaf
Speaker 1: in his elder statesman age. So the institutions or governments
Speaker 1: that could support these sorts of explorations, they often aren't
Speaker 1: going to waste millions of dollars on what they see
Speaker 1: as a wild goose chase. And we should mention here
Speaker 1: that wild geese are not cryptids. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: That's it feels.
Speaker 3: Very important mention what constitutes a wild goose?
Speaker 1: I know, right? Is it? Is it just not in
Speaker 1: a zoo? Or is it acting out?
Speaker 3: Because I used to work in an office where these
Speaker 3: geese would just just fly in and post up outside
Speaker 3: the door, and as you all know, don't much care
Speaker 3: for birds. Yeah, so I didn't leave the building when
Speaker 3: that happened, but it was a pretty regular occurrence. Were
Speaker 3: those wild geese.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean geese do migrate yea. So okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's probably was there a pond nearby it was that's why. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't for you. It was for the pond, so
Speaker 1: they weren't out for you all.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I imagine, without going too far into the figures speech,
Speaker 1: it's the idea of chasing an animal that doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be caught. Yeah. But in all of our previous episodes,
Speaker 1: let's see, we did. We even did the math, the
Speaker 1: cryptid math on how big a range an animal a
Speaker 1: certain size would need depending on stet We did that
Speaker 1: for local amembe.
Speaker 2: And specifically on a big foot type creature.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, like wat danhopithecus or something. Yeah. But in
Speaker 1: all of our episodes, we have never explored Australia, and
Speaker 1: that is why today we are taking your suggestion and
Speaker 1: looking into one of the most interesting continents on this planet. Confession,
Speaker 1: you don't hear the facts, But confession, we use the
Speaker 1: CIA World fact Book for some of the stats about Australia.
Speaker 3: You trader.
Speaker 2: It's when he says we he says Ben Bolan, because
Speaker 2: Ben Boland does all the research.
Speaker 1: I okay, it's not. It's not it's not Nolan Matt's fault, Paul's.
Speaker 1: I'm the one who use the CIA World fact Book.
Speaker 1: But it has good information.
Speaker 2: It really does.
Speaker 1: So Australia as continents go. It looks huge on the map,
Speaker 1: but we all know how they're like Mercader projections versus
Speaker 1: a globe versus other sorts of and it messes with
Speaker 1: the size.
Speaker 3: You know what's funny, our buddy Chuck from Stuff you
Speaker 3: should know. They just got back from a tour of
Speaker 3: the Outback for you know, their mega successful podcast, and
Speaker 3: he mentioned that they took a flight from Sydney to
Speaker 3: Perth and then it was the equivalent of taking a
Speaker 3: flight from like New York to Los Angeles. It was
Speaker 3: like a six hour flight. Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: I'm so bad at geography, I was like, I had
Speaker 3: no idea.
Speaker 1: Josh, Josh and Chuck did just return from an Australia
Speaker 1: tour and they've got some interesting stories about it. Josh
Speaker 1: was catching me up on some stuff. You know who
Speaker 1: else went to Australia, Scott Benjamin Oh and he was
Speaker 1: going to take a road trip and he was also
Speaker 1: startled by the size of the continent. You know, this
Speaker 1: happens a lot to our European friends when they traveled
Speaker 1: to the US. Have you ever met somebody from Europe
Speaker 1: is hanging out and you say, oh, what are you
Speaker 1: going to do while you're here for a week, And
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, I'm you know, well, I'm in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I figured I would just drive on over to la Yeah,
Speaker 1: check out Hollywood, and then just drive back to the
Speaker 1: airport before Thursday. No, no, it's not happening. It's like
Speaker 1: just trying to describe Texas makes us sound like lunatics.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And just to give anyone who doesn't really
Speaker 2: know what Australia looks like or you can't imagine in
Speaker 2: your head, Perth is in the south western side of
Speaker 2: the continent, and then Sydney is in kind of the
Speaker 2: southeastern corner. Not really Melbourne is probably closer to what
Speaker 2: that would.
Speaker 1: Be, but you can kind of stay correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you can you can see how a flight
Speaker 2: you could compare that to a flight.
Speaker 1: From New York to la Ah, there we go, that's
Speaker 1: the comparison. Yeah, it's seven million, six hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: two thousand, three hundred square kilometers in land mass, and
Speaker 1: most of it is a desert. The place we call
Speaker 1: the Outback, not to be confused with a surprisingly popular
Speaker 1: steakhouse chain here in the US. Yes, which if you
Speaker 1: are Australian and you're listening, we want to know your opinion.
Speaker 1: So bad about Outback Steakhouse, Crocodile Dundee, what else fosters
Speaker 1: the beer Steve Irwin of course, Steve Rkele, Steve Rkle
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, I think I would be interested to
Speaker 1: know how what was that? That was Family Matters right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I would be interested to know if Family Matters made
Speaker 1: it to us.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm sure they had a huge We even have
Speaker 3: listeners in Australia. Shirley Family Matters did.
Speaker 1: That's a very good way to put in perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And just so you have an understanding of these deserts,
Speaker 2: if you're looking at like at the top of Australia,
Speaker 2: it is really everywhere. Everything from the Strisblecky Desert, which
Speaker 2: sounds very odd when I say that st r z
Speaker 2: b l e c k I Desert, to the Great
Speaker 2: Sandy Desert, to the Little Sandy Desert, to the Gibson
Speaker 2: Desert and the Great Victoria desert and the Tanami desert.
Speaker 2: It they're everywhere and they're huge.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, they're the majority of the continent. Now, that's
Speaker 1: not to say that the whole thing is a desert,
Speaker 1: which I think is a common mistake. A lot of
Speaker 1: Americans make the southeast and southwest corners that you had
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, Matt have temperate climates, yes, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. And the northern area and part of the
Speaker 1: eastern side of the continent are in what again might
Speaker 1: surprise a lot of us in the US, actually tropical
Speaker 1: and subtropical climates. Australia has a rainforest. I know, Aussie listeners,
Speaker 1: I know that we probably sound kind of like nincompoops here,
Speaker 1: but I don't think a lot of Americans know that.
Speaker 3: No. I think we've been corrected before. And it's it's
Speaker 3: ausy ausy.
Speaker 1: In terms of human population of Azzi's, the first Azzi's
Speaker 1: may have arrived on the continent as far back as
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: That's a long time.
Speaker 3: Are we going to talk about it? It's a history
Speaker 3: as a prison colony at all, because that's always fascinated me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is I mean, this is before it was a prison.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, no, no, I know, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe that's two in the weeds. We should probably get
Speaker 3: to the cryptids. That's what the game here for.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, So continue with the facts. This ancient migration
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand years ago makes the ancestors of Aboriginal
Speaker 1: Australians the first human beings ever to migrate out of
Speaker 1: what's called the Afro Asia sphere. That's according to a
Speaker 1: historian you've all, Noah Harari, who wrote who writes excellent
Speaker 1: books Homodeus Sapiens, Nole's Roommate, and I go back and
Speaker 1: forth for hours about this stuff. But as of July
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, Australia was the fifty sixth most populous country,
Speaker 1: the population of twenty three million, two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: two thousand, four hundred and thirteen people, many of whom,
Speaker 1: to your point, nol Yes, were descended from prisoners. Because
Speaker 1: for a time Australia was treated as a dumping ground
Speaker 1: for undesirables.
Speaker 3: The whole continent.
Speaker 1: They started a prison colony, but they weren't bothering to
Speaker 1: protect the native people.
Speaker 3: So then it just kind of the folks that were
Speaker 3: there just spread and put down their roots, Like you
Speaker 3: do have a lot of room to put down roots there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, but here's the thing. There are only certain
Speaker 2: little kind of spaces, they're really fairly small spaces within
Speaker 2: this huge continent where you can put down roots at
Speaker 2: least safely.
Speaker 3: In other words, habitable areas, right.
Speaker 2: Areas, Yeah, where you're going to have enough enough other
Speaker 2: humans to have a large enough civilization to you know,
Speaker 2: have enough commerce and things like that.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, so in those places that we talked about, what
Speaker 2: is it, eighty percent or eighty six eighty six percent
Speaker 2: of the humans live in these largely populated areas.
Speaker 3: And the rest is what just the bush.
Speaker 1: The rest is wilderness. Even it's the bush, right yeah,
Speaker 1: out back. But then also you know the forest, the jungles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the crowded places are very crowded. But then like the
Speaker 1: largest city is Sydney and the population there is only
Speaker 1: four point seventy nine two million.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, I see what you're getting at, Ben
Speaker 3: and discussing cryptids. Our whole thing has always been but
Speaker 3: how come like there's not just an infinite amount of
Speaker 3: space for these things to hide? Right, But in Australia
Speaker 3: there kind of is.
Speaker 2: We got lots of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and not infinite, but there's a lot a.
Speaker 1: Lot because in addition to that, it's not just geographically isolated,
Speaker 1: it's what we would call ecologically isolated. That makes it
Speaker 1: unique amongst all the other human occupied continents. And sorry,
Speaker 1: listeners in Antarctica were not counting you for this part. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but just from the fact that it is an
Speaker 2: isolated continent into itself, there's no land connecting it to
Speaker 2: anything else. If anything gets to Australia, that's not by
Speaker 2: a ship or a plane, at least as since those
Speaker 2: technologies have been available. It's been by flying there or
Speaker 2: swimming there and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or floating there. Yeah, and then just some through
Speaker 1: some miraculous event not dying. That's what happened to the
Speaker 1: ancestors of a lot of Australian animals.
Speaker 2: But in nor since the land bridge was there at
Speaker 2: a certain.
Speaker 1: Time, or since it broke off of the super continent. So,
Speaker 1: according to professors like Rick Shine, Australia has a unique
Speaker 1: fauna because it was isolated from the rest of the
Speaker 1: world for very long periods, Like you said, Matt, surrounded
Speaker 1: by the ocean, for millions of years, and he calls
Speaker 1: it a life raft of sorts more than the continent.
Speaker 1: So these plants and animals were very different ecological pressures
Speaker 1: of all in different ways. So if we imagine ourselves
Speaker 1: as the very first people to go into Australia, the
Speaker 1: stuff we see is insane giant wombats who have no
Speaker 1: fear of humans because they have never seen us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't know that we can make spears and they
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 2: I don't want that, I know.
Speaker 3: Chuck cuddled with a tiny cute Koala baby.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: He made a joke today when we record Mini Crush
Speaker 3: that they present you one as soon as you get
Speaker 3: off the plane, And I asked if you had to
Speaker 3: return it when you get on a plane back home.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I hope it was a nice Koala bear,
Speaker 2: because this is this is what an upset Kuala bear
Speaker 2: sounds like.
Speaker 1: Sh Matt, I can't believe you played that.
Speaker 2: There's just so adorable.
Speaker 3: That did not sound adorable. That sounded horrific.
Speaker 1: It's disturbing. It reminds me of a more sinister version
Speaker 1: of that moment in Dumb and Dumber where they say yeah,
Speaker 1: where they say what's the most annoyance. So okay, I
Speaker 1: thought you were going to do the bit where you
Speaker 1: continue to interrupt this with it. Thank you for not
Speaker 1: doing that.
Speaker 3: That was the guy to get on on the fine.
Speaker 2: Yah, well we appreciate you still listening, Yes.
Speaker 1: Both of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's strange though, because there's a really good question.
Speaker 1: Could a koala bear have evolved anywhere else? The answer
Speaker 1: is probably no, or it's much less likely that it would.
Speaker 1: And the isolation historically of Australia carries over to the
Speaker 1: modern day. That's why it's home to so many animals.
Speaker 1: They're found nowhere else in the world. Kuala bears, kangaroos, dingoes, wombats, coals,
Speaker 1: Tasmanian devils, which in person are way less cool than
Speaker 1: their name would imply. Yeah, and so on. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we have several things here that add up to create
Speaker 1: a unique situation, a perfect storm of cryptozoology. It's, as
Speaker 1: we said, sparsely populated, enormous stretch of desert, as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: and home to unique animals found nowhere else in the world.
Speaker 1: Could it be possible that there are even stranger animals
Speaker 1: in the Australian outback?
Speaker 2: Yes, it could definitely be possible. Is it true though,
Speaker 2: and what will we find? We'll talk about it right
Speaker 2: after a quick word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. It's true. Australia is home
Speaker 1: to a ton of alleged cryptids, maybe even more than
Speaker 1: the US on balance. When these often fall into a
Speaker 1: few types of categories. They might be urban legends, right, sure,
Speaker 1: things that came about in modern folklore. You can make
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting argument that maybe slender Man itself is
Speaker 1: a form of a cryptid, absolutely humanoid but not human. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You're also going to find some that are basically the
Speaker 2: Australian version of a cryptid that exists pretty much every
Speaker 2: elt everywhere else in the world, like a certain type
Speaker 2: of sasquatch.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And then there are unique versions of cryptids
Speaker 1: creatures that are solely believed to exist or have existed
Speaker 1: in Australia and possibly some nearby islands like Tasmania, New
Speaker 1: Zealand and so on. There's a very important aspect of
Speaker 1: Australian culture that influences the idea of cryptid here, and
Speaker 1: that is the fascinating I would call it cognitive technology
Speaker 1: known as the dream time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, see this is the part that I couldn't quite
Speaker 3: wrap my head around. And we talked about this on
Speaker 3: the Here's Where It's a crazy episode, So I am
Speaker 3: looking forward to this discussion.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, none of us have participated in the culture, right,
Speaker 1: we have to be clear about that for sure. But
Speaker 1: our colleague Annie Reese has oh holy smokes, oh was
Speaker 1: that a digrado?
Speaker 2: I don't know?
Speaker 3: And then a puff of smoke Annie Reese has has
Speaker 3: appeared before a very aye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're spoiling the lead here. There was a portal
Speaker 2: that just opened up.
Speaker 4: That's how I always get to work. I guess you
Speaker 4: guys have never noticed. No, no, we way to travel.
Speaker 1: We spend a lot of time bunkered up in the
Speaker 1: studio here. But we appreciate you joining us for a
Speaker 1: little bit, because, first off, that portal thing's very cool.
Speaker 1: As people know or may or may not know, the
Speaker 1: five of us counting Paul, have worked together closely for
Speaker 1: a number of years, and you are somewhat of a
Speaker 1: legend in our office. Not just for hosting Savior, not
Speaker 1: just for hosting stuff Mom never told you, but for
Speaker 1: going on adventures in different areas of the world, some
Speaker 1: very remote places.
Speaker 4: Yes, I do like to travel. And thank you for
Speaker 4: saying that. Thank you for having me. You all are
Speaker 4: legends as well.
Speaker 2: Oh shaw, go ahead and just go ahead.
Speaker 4: Now I knew that was all you wanted. That's what
Speaker 4: I suspected. Yeah, I from what I understand, I certainly hope.
Speaker 4: So you guys are talking about Australia today.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, that's true. Specifically, a concept that we've run
Speaker 1: into in this episode is the idea of something called
Speaker 1: the dream time. Yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, I spent about four months in what Air, which
Speaker 4: is in the northern called the Top End Northern Territory.
Speaker 5: It's really hard to get to.
Speaker 4: You have to take a plane because it's usually flooded,
Speaker 4: and if if it's the dry season, you can drive
Speaker 4: out there. But it's really rough. It's like three miles
Speaker 4: per hour rough. They don't get any visitors, so it's
Speaker 4: pretty remote, is what I'm trying to say. Yes, and
Speaker 4: I was there specifically to try to save their language,
Speaker 4: save their language, to document one of their languages, because
Speaker 4: a lot of the dialects of Murunpaza or other Aboriginal
Speaker 4: dialects are dying out very very quickly.
Speaker 5: And part of that was.
Speaker 4: Learning about the dream time and the dreaming. And one
Speaker 4: of the big things I tried to do when I
Speaker 4: was there was just listen, just listen to people when
Speaker 4: they when they spoke. And one of the first pieces
Speaker 4: of advice someone gave me was to just sit in
Speaker 4: a place for a long time and someone will come
Speaker 4: up to you and tell you, tell you their stories,
Speaker 4: because they are a society that depends a lot on
Speaker 4: oral tradition and passing things down orally. So I did
Speaker 4: get to learn about the dreaming. It's it's the pretty
Speaker 4: much their creation story. And it all started where they
Speaker 4: have these ancestors wait wait wait wait, wait, way way
Speaker 4: back that sleep underground, but they came above ground and
Speaker 4: pretty much created everything, the everywhere and every when, as
Speaker 4: they say, and it's not a flat timeline, it's like
Speaker 4: a cycle. Everyone in the Aboriginal society can recall the dreaming,
Speaker 4: the dream time. They can remember this, and they go
Speaker 4: through these these reenactments, these rituals that are very repetitive
Speaker 4: to to sort of put yourself in the in the
Speaker 4: state of mind where you can remember.
Speaker 3: It and all capture it almost right, yeah.
Speaker 4: And to pass it, to pass it along. And so
Speaker 4: I got to see. I got to see some of these.
Speaker 4: It is really powerful chanting and dancing did redoo and
Speaker 4: they draw shapes in the sand, they paint on their
Speaker 4: faces and their bodies, and it's really cool because in
Speaker 4: Australia you can see the Milky Way, especially out there
Speaker 4: because there's nothing out there. There's nothing, so you can
Speaker 4: see that kind of milky whiteness in the sky and
Speaker 4: then all these shooting stars go across. And it did
Speaker 4: feel I felt something like that I hadn't felt before.
Speaker 4: And that probably sounds really cliche and cheesy, but it
Speaker 4: is true.
Speaker 2: Imagine I can totally imagine.
Speaker 1: That so much in a different version of time, almost right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you just you feel as though you were a
Speaker 4: part of something. Honestly, it really felt powerful. And I
Speaker 4: was really fortunate because they were open and happy to share.
Speaker 4: They wanted to and I appreciated that they were. They
Speaker 4: opened up to me in that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you said, do it there for four months?
Speaker 1: How what level of interaction did you get in terms
Speaker 1: of the communities, like group rituals.
Speaker 4: I got a lot, mostly because I was like, I
Speaker 4: took that advice and I sat in the spot and
Speaker 4: people would come up to me, and they really did
Speaker 4: want to include me in those things, I think because
Speaker 4: I suppose if they had encountered foreigners before, they had
Speaker 4: been much more like you're doing things this way. And
Speaker 4: I just wanted to learn, and they did honorarily accept
Speaker 4: me into their tribe. They gave me a spirit name,
Speaker 4: a spirit animal, which was starfish means lost treasures.
Speaker 5: It's cooler than that.
Speaker 3: It was fantastic.
Speaker 1: I think that's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was nice.
Speaker 4: And they they made me this did redoo, which is
Speaker 4: great for audio because no one.
Speaker 5: Can see it.
Speaker 1: Annie gestures to her right handpaigned, didude, that's quite colorful.
Speaker 2: That's the thing that was making so much noise when
Speaker 2: she portaled in.
Speaker 4: That's yeah, the only way to open the portal through
Speaker 4: circular breathing. Oh yeah, I wanted to bring it because
Speaker 4: it illustrates just their art, which I assume you'll probably
Speaker 4: talk about, but this is x ray art. It shows
Speaker 4: their insides, the insides of animals and humans, and also
Speaker 4: how they tell stories. When they tell stories, the journey
Speaker 4: is the most important part, so they always show the stop.
Speaker 5: So this is my journey. I flew there. This is
Speaker 5: the town, the village, this is.
Speaker 4: I then went on land to Sydney, AH and this is.
Speaker 5: This means journey's end. It's like a cool circle thing.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Would you be okay with us posting some
Speaker 1: photos of the digit do uh and some of the
Speaker 1: other stuff you brought on our Facebook page?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, that would be more helpful than me.
Speaker 4: Kind of vaguely no.
Speaker 1: I think it's great, watch rewind and watch along any
Speaker 1: You have also brought a boomerang.
Speaker 4: I have bought a boomerang. This was more just for fun.
Speaker 4: They are kind of dangerous. I always assumed they were
Speaker 4: just silly, to be honest, but they're used for hunting,
Speaker 4: and they are seen as weapons and you can't have
Speaker 4: them on planes and you carry on wally, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: how would you use.
Speaker 5: A We did have our training today about like office awareness.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was just wondering if I could disarm someone. We didn't.
Speaker 3: We didn't get taught how to disarm someone.
Speaker 2: That's going to come back to.
Speaker 3: Come back.
Speaker 1: Well, Annie, thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 1: to explain the dream time. It's a fascinating concept and
Speaker 1: it's something that I think the three of us heard
Speaker 1: about but hadn't done much investigation into beforehand, so hopefully
Speaker 1: we can talk you into coming back in the future
Speaker 1: as a guest on a full episode More Adventures. What
Speaker 1: do you think, guys?
Speaker 2: Please?
Speaker 1: I love it all right, Well, we're I guess we're
Speaker 1: gonna sit here and watch you did you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay through a portal. I'm ready. Let's see.
Speaker 1: It's weird because there's a door in the studio. I
Speaker 1: mean whatever.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's definitely cooler than a door. That's true.
Speaker 1: That's goes here, it goes fascinating stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you can catch any right now. On Savor.
Speaker 2: It's a podcast about food and why we like the
Speaker 2: things we like. It's got a lot of science and
Speaker 2: history to it. It's super cool.
Speaker 3: She's also on Stuff Mom Never Told You, Yes, so.
Speaker 1: Do check it out. A friend of the show. We're
Speaker 1: also we're also big fans of food, stuff, Stuff Mom
Speaker 1: Never Told You, and Anni Reese in general. So let's
Speaker 1: let's look at some of the cryptids that occur in
Speaker 1: Australia and we can we can stop along the way
Speaker 1: if we want to see what types of cryptids these
Speaker 1: are where categories will fall in. By far the most famous,
Speaker 1: the breakout single the real banger off of the Cryptozoology
Speaker 1: Mixtape of Australia is something called the bun yip.
Speaker 2: The bun yip, it is a strange looking thing. If
Speaker 2: you've ever seen a picture of it online, I would
Speaker 2: encourage you to search for images of it. It's funky.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a snake, kind of like a plant,
Speaker 2: kind of like an aquatic creature.
Speaker 1: When I just read the descriptions in the text years ago,
Speaker 1: my first question was, is this a platypus?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: You just are you describing a platypus? Because it sounds
Speaker 1: like they just threw all the leftover stuff in there,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, but it's interesting you bring up the
Speaker 1: the idea of the appearance, right. The only really consistent
Speaker 1: stuff about the bunya, which is mentioned in dream Time
Speaker 1: is that it is a creature that lives in or
Speaker 1: near bodies of water like creeks, pools, swamps, and it's
Speaker 1: so ubiquitous that there are nine regional variations of this
Speaker 1: that are presented and described differently in different traditions and
Speaker 1: different threads of folklore. And at this point there's no
Speaker 1: real consensus about what this thing looks like. We it
Speaker 1: has some common characteristics.
Speaker 3: Yes, indeed there are, and these include things like tusks flippers.
Speaker 3: Always want a flipper only it's sort of like a
Speaker 3: either either you get feet or you get a flipper.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wait, you really want to classics?
Speaker 3: Oh that's true. I guess I'm thinking of like a fin.
Speaker 1: It could be cool.
Speaker 3: Well, no, what does a mermaid have? Is that a
Speaker 3: flipper or a fin?
Speaker 2: Oh? Now that is a question for the ages.
Speaker 3: That really that's just the tail, Okay, all right, Ben,
Speaker 3: also speaking of which a horse like tail, and of
Speaker 3: course you know, possibly a mermaid like tail. And then
Speaker 3: there's also this belief that they come out at night
Speaker 3: to feast on animals and of course young children, you know,
Speaker 3: because they're savory and delicious, weakest in the herd. And women.
Speaker 2: Yeah and here, well we'll get into it a little later.
Speaker 2: Let's keep going on with it. But I have some
Speaker 2: ideas about this creature with regards to storytelling and safeguarding
Speaker 2: of the the young. But let's let's keep going.
Speaker 1: So. They also have a characteristic noise that they're notorious
Speaker 1: for making when they approach. I just found it described
Speaker 1: as a loud bellow.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and it can be heard from miles away
Speaker 2: from very very far away. You'll always know the bunyip yell.
Speaker 2: When you hear it for the first time, you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: that was a bun yup ah.
Speaker 3: The yell of the bunyip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, I mean, I like that. That's a
Speaker 1: good catchphrase for a T shirt. That really is ye.
Speaker 3: Oh, I like it as one string ah, the yell
Speaker 3: of the bunyip.
Speaker 2: Okay, tea public, here's looking at you. Hopefully hopefully you're listening.
Speaker 1: You guys, look at it.
Speaker 3: You t But I think we have to fill out
Speaker 3: a form or something, all right.
Speaker 1: Or no, you're right, we have to fill out a form.
Speaker 1: We have to ask nicely. But let us know if
Speaker 1: you think that's a good idea for a T shirt.
Speaker 2: But that's it sounds like the Sasquatch yells and some
Speaker 2: of the communications that we've heard about where you it's
Speaker 2: tough to nail down exactly what it sounds like, but
Speaker 2: if you hear it, you'll know that that's what it is.
Speaker 2: Some some recordings have been made over the years of
Speaker 2: supposed Sasquatch sounds, and I wonder I haven't dug too
Speaker 2: deep into the bunyip yell or the shriek or whatever
Speaker 2: you might call it. But I haven't found a good
Speaker 2: recording of something like that says that's what it is.
Speaker 2: That I would at least say, hey, let's play that
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean. And even with
Speaker 1: even with very well established or well known cryptids such
Speaker 1: as Bigfoot or Sasquatch's still it's such an audio rorshack test,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Yeah, I really will hear
Speaker 1: things that they want to hear, unfortunately, you know. But
Speaker 1: that's the thing with the Bunyip. It's supposed to be
Speaker 1: a very distinctive characteristic fellow. We have not found a
Speaker 1: definitive recording of that. We did find the earliest published
Speaker 1: reference to the bunyap or one of them, which was
Speaker 1: a pamphlet published in eighteen twelve by a guy named
Speaker 1: James Ives, and he refers to it as a black
Speaker 1: seal like creature that has a terrifying voice. I have chills, chills, nol,
Speaker 1: I have chills. It's probably like that, but like a
Speaker 1: lot more sinister. So it's kind of a sinister it's
Speaker 1: like an arch er. Maybe that's that's too Scooby dewish.
Speaker 3: That is a little Scooby doish.
Speaker 2: It has to be lower like a like a like
Speaker 2: more of a death metal seal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah, like a death like
Speaker 1: the sealized corpse. Pain on.
Speaker 3: That's that that would that would spook me.
Speaker 1: We've solved it, folks. You heard it here first, the
Speaker 1: bun yip. So this this black seal like creature, right,
Speaker 1: that's that's one of the that's one of the descriptions.
Speaker 1: Other accounts, also in the eighteen hundreds, called it a
Speaker 1: dog like amphibious animal, or a calf size, shaggy haired
Speaker 1: or maine quadruped, sometimes seen on land, but mostly amphibious.
Speaker 1: So what what does that mean? You know, Originally in
Speaker 1: the Aboriginal dream time, which you know, early anthropologists created
Speaker 1: this word to describe that world. You but we'll go
Speaker 1: with it. In the dream time, bunyips were very nasty creatures.
Speaker 1: They were punishing spirits. They were like forces of righteous
Speaker 1: punishment that you did not want to run into. But
Speaker 1: now they're pretty toned down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find them in commercials now they're like
Speaker 2: kids commercials, like as in, look at this thing, it's
Speaker 2: a bunyip. It's fine, it's silly, it's uh it's gonna
Speaker 2: bring your cereal to you. I honestly don't know if
Speaker 2: it's been used in this series, but yeah, to.
Speaker 3: Be fair, bunyip it sounds a lot like bunny to me,
Speaker 3: so it makes me think of something cute and malleable.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel like a scary word to me either.
Speaker 1: But there's a long list of suppose ex sightings of
Speaker 1: these creatures, and some of the most recent ones were
Speaker 1: during the midst of the depression, during the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 2: Hmmm, I wonder what correlation there is there. I wonder why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder why as well. It was the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: the economic depression that racked to the world did drive
Speaker 1: a lot of people to pursue alternative viewpoints I mean
Speaker 1: economic and cultural and spiritual that they ordinarily wouldn't have done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and probably alternative like living places to live and
Speaker 2: trying to save money and live off the land in
Speaker 2: different ways. So maybe there's something there.
Speaker 1: Well, what about I mean, if they were something, would
Speaker 1: they be a relic population of an animal that we
Speaker 1: thought went extinct before? There's that possibility.
Speaker 2: What is this thing called the die protodon dip protodon?
Speaker 2: The dep Protodon. Oh, yes, the old dep Protodon. This
Speaker 2: is a fascinating looking creature. It's this I don't know.
Speaker 2: It looks kind of like a bear. But if you
Speaker 2: mixed like the head of a hippo or something in
Speaker 2: with it or kind of melded that into the creature
Speaker 2: walks on all fours and it's a marsupial and it's
Speaker 2: pretty dang huge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And some Aboriginal tribes have identified bones of this creature,
Speaker 1: fossils of it as Bunyant bones, so that might be
Speaker 1: the grain of truth there.
Speaker 2: Well, and you know what, this to protodonne went extinct
Speaker 2: roughly forty six thousand years ago, so after humans had
Speaker 2: crossed over into Australia, right, so they would have coexisted
Speaker 2: with this thing for thousands of years. Maybe it's the
Speaker 2: name that was given at the time to these things.
Speaker 1: So then is it then a relic from oral history perhaps, right,
Speaker 1: some kind of memory carried over. You could say the
Speaker 1: same thing about another candidate for the Bunyap tale, which
Speaker 1: is the poller Chests, which means ancient leaper or damn sir.
Speaker 1: And this thing when extinct eleven thousand years ago, so
Speaker 1: it has even more of an overlap. Oh yeah, with
Speaker 1: human settlements and occupation. It looks crazy. It's like a
Speaker 1: tape air looking creature about the size of a horse.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like again, if you're going if you look
Speaker 2: at the deprotodon, it's going to stand over six and
Speaker 2: a half feet tall generally, so taller than you. And
Speaker 2: that's walking on all fours. And I mean it would
Speaker 2: be it would be pretty pretty creepy. And I bet
Speaker 2: it could make a bellow that you would hear for
Speaker 2: a long way away, as well as what.
Speaker 1: Was the other one, Oh, the parloa chestis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet, I bet both of those could make
Speaker 2: a sound that you would notice.
Speaker 1: So here's the question, then, is this real? Is there
Speaker 1: a grain of truth to it? The thing is, there's
Speaker 1: a solid core of reasonably good and atomically consistent accounts
Speaker 1: of the bunyip, despite those regional variations. The most common
Speaker 1: one is a dark furd dog headed quote seal dog.
Speaker 1: Oh so a is it a seal that swam out
Speaker 1: of place and somehow got to a river or a swamp,
Speaker 1: a swamp or something.
Speaker 2: Or maybe a small population of them that started living
Speaker 2: and existing in a different environment than they normally would
Speaker 2: over the course of you know, a couple thousand.
Speaker 1: Years, right, Maybe they found a place that didn't have
Speaker 1: some of the natural privations they had evolved to combat,
Speaker 1: so maybe the living was easy. I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: just like keep going back to the bellow like Nola,
Speaker 1: like you did with the seal sounds. That seems like
Speaker 1: that would be loud enough, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's a bark. Yeah, they're inherently they carry, right.
Speaker 1: So that's that's our case on the bund yep. Let
Speaker 1: us know if you listen to your opinion of it.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's just folklore? Do you think it's
Speaker 1: an animal that went extinct at some time, but maybe
Speaker 1: not as long ago as we think. Do you want
Speaker 1: to do a lighter cryptid well.
Speaker 2: Yes, but first I want to talk about what we
Speaker 2: were discussing at the very top of talking about the
Speaker 2: bun Yips, that idea that they will hunt usually, or
Speaker 2: at least in the stories that are told about them,
Speaker 2: they'll hunt children, they'll hunt women to keep you away
Speaker 2: from bodies of water or you know, they exist in
Speaker 2: bodies of water. And my thought is perhaps it's an
Speaker 2: oral tradition to try and safeguard the young of a
Speaker 2: community and perhaps safeguard them from not only bodies of water,
Speaker 2: which can be very dangerous, and there can be animals
Speaker 2: close to water or in water that or you know,
Speaker 2: would would probably be carnivorous or could be carnivorous and
Speaker 2: attack a small child. So a boogeyman, Yeah, a boogeyman
Speaker 2: story to safeguard I don't know that. In my mind,
Speaker 2: that makes a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 1: I could see that. I could see that.
Speaker 2: And also kind of the extrapolation from this is using
Speaker 2: that the dream time, the oral tradition of the dream time,
Speaker 2: because a lot of in many cases, stories from the
Speaker 2: dream time are used as kind of an allegory to
Speaker 2: teach a lesson or to have something that you need
Speaker 2: to learn. So there's like one place that you could
Speaker 2: go to or one set of stories you could tell
Speaker 2: that would give a person living in your community everything
Speaker 2: they would need to know to survive. There a lot
Speaker 2: of just that's part of folklore and that's part of
Speaker 2: history learning those things. Just got to put that out
Speaker 2: there absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, would you say, coming back to the boogeyman thing,
Speaker 1: would you say that the next animal on our list
Speaker 1: is also.
Speaker 2: A boogie ban the drop bear.
Speaker 1: The drop bear.
Speaker 2: Drop bears, noel, what you know about them?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a delicious gummy treat with a marshmallow tummy.
Speaker 2: Oh how much thc per per miligram?
Speaker 3: Isn't there?
Speaker 2: Okay, m m.
Speaker 3: It takes you right to the dream dime, all right, No,
Speaker 3: but seriously, it's like a terrifying carnivorous marsupial that drops
Speaker 3: down upon you from the trees. At least legend would
Speaker 3: have it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's got giant fangs, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got giant jagged fangs, claws, I'm sure, claws,
Speaker 1: and it uses these fangs and claws to rip chunks
Speaker 1: of flesh from the neck, head and back of unsuspecting tourists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because like if it comes down on you and
Speaker 3: and it hits you on the back, it probably immediately
Speaker 3: jaws right down on the back of your neck, right.
Speaker 1: Right, gets an artery or vein, depending on the side
Speaker 1: of the neck, maybe paralyzes you. That's a drop bear, folks. Luckily,
Speaker 1: it's taken about as seriously as the idea of a jackalope, which,
Speaker 1: if you if you're not familiar with jacoalope, Google it.
Speaker 1: It's this weird American in joke.
Speaker 3: Isn't it just really a taxid army joke?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it's it's a taxidermy joke is
Speaker 1: very American. I feel like nobody really believed in the jackalope,
Speaker 1: but maybe maybe they did.
Speaker 2: Just so anyone who doesn't know. It's it's a jack
Speaker 2: rabbit or a larger rabbit and or a hare and
Speaker 2: it's got antlers, right, that's the whole point of it.
Speaker 1: It's as yeah, there you go, jackalope. So it's it's
Speaker 1: been according to folklore that belief has been around since
Speaker 1: colonial days, but the belief in the drop bear is
Speaker 1: a little bit more recent. We don't know exactly when
Speaker 1: it occurred, but it's it's like an in joke for Australians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fun. You tell a taurus, hey, watch out
Speaker 2: for drop bass. Yeah right, all right, Well but again,
Speaker 2: and there's a there's this delightful commercial that you can
Speaker 2: find on YouTube right now. It's for this company called
Speaker 2: Bundaberg or Bundy Rum and Cola. That's a whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's at least one of their products and features this
Speaker 2: drop bear where there's a group of these camping blokes,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call them blokes. In this instance, they're accompanied
Speaker 2: by a polar bear who's just hanging out by the
Speaker 2: trunk of their car the boot or whatever you call
Speaker 2: it there, and they're The whole point is they're trying
Speaker 2: to convince this separate group of shila's in this case,
Speaker 2: see what we're doing here, ladies. Yeah, they're trying to
Speaker 2: convince the ladies to join them and camp with them,
Speaker 2: because they're like, oh, you guys are camping over there,
Speaker 2: we're camping over here, we should get together. Well, the
Speaker 2: polar bear understands what's happening here, So the polar bear
Speaker 2: sneakily climbs up to this tree that's hanging over the
Speaker 2: ladies tent right right, And then the lads they go
Speaker 2: to the shila's and they're like, hey, you gotta be
Speaker 2: careful for them drop bears. We got drop bears around here,
Speaker 2: and they're like, drop bears? What are those? And then
Speaker 2: the polar bear drops down onto the tent and they scream,
Speaker 2: and then they all camp together and they drink I
Speaker 2: guess Branderburg.
Speaker 1: The bear doesn't like dismember them, and then drinks rumbing coke.
Speaker 2: No, No, the bear falls on the tent and then
Speaker 2: gives them a nice little like wink, And like.
Speaker 3: Why does the bear want to help out these blokes?
Speaker 3: I don't understand the motivation there.
Speaker 2: He is certainly in with that group, so he's either.
Speaker 4: Gang.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his motivation is to maintain that group of friends.
Speaker 3: So he's an anthropomorphic pervy bear.
Speaker 2: He's a polar bear, and he's also on the Bundenberg Rum.
Speaker 2: He's like part of their logo.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's like their two can sam.
Speaker 2: Oh I get it, or he's like their coke polar bear.
Speaker 3: I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a little skeezy. It is, it is, but hey.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's like hijinks. He wasn't aiding a crime, right, Well, well,
Speaker 1: we've only seen a snippet of this bear's life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we we only know how the night started.
Speaker 1: That is also true. And while we're overthinking animal commercials,
Speaker 1: you guys know about panda cheese, right, I'm sure when
Speaker 1: ad nauseum panda cheese?
Speaker 2: What the hell is that?
Speaker 1: Oh? Okay, so we're gonna have to hang out for
Speaker 1: a second after we record, and we'll post this on
Speaker 1: Here is where it gets crazy when this episode comes out.
Speaker 1: There's an Egyptian cheese company named Pandaka and they put
Speaker 1: out a number of years ago a series of advertisements
Speaker 1: about this evil panda that would appear if you turned
Speaker 1: down panda cheese, it would appear and ruin your life.
Speaker 1: What in increasingly dark and sinister ways.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a YouTube video called top seven Panda Cheese Commercials.
Speaker 1: We don't have time to do it now, but oh he's.
Speaker 2: Doing a slow clap in this one.
Speaker 1: But they're worth it worth He's a creature pure evil.
Speaker 1: So I would take the Bundy rum guy over this one.
Speaker 1: But you know what we should also take at this
Speaker 1: point a break.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you just need to set them up and I
Speaker 3: knock him down.
Speaker 2: There you go, and we're back.
Speaker 1: So we talked about the Bundy if we explored the
Speaker 1: drop Bear just for fun. Now it's time to dive
Speaker 1: into the story of what I would call the most
Speaker 1: likely to be real cryptid okay here in this case,
Speaker 1: and that is the Thylocene or Tasmanian tiger, one of
Speaker 1: the most fascinating alleged cryptids in the region.
Speaker 3: Also known as the Tasmanian Tiger, This creature technically went
Speaker 3: extinct in Tasmanian in the nineteen thirties with the last
Speaker 3: thyla scene, which was a male named Benjamin. Oh, it's
Speaker 3: like it's like your name.
Speaker 1: They have a weird they have a weird story about Benjamin.
Speaker 3: Well, let's get to it. So Benjamin died on a
Speaker 3: zoo in nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: And for years and years after there was this controversy
Speaker 1: because they didn't know the gender of the animal. So
Speaker 1: there were some people who went back an obsessively watched
Speaker 1: video this one short clip of the animal walking frame
Speaker 1: by frame by frame, enhancing the crap out of it
Speaker 1: until they could see one test stickle.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So a lot of science went into that. Okay, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you just couldn't they have just said, oh, its name
Speaker 1: is Benjamin. I don't know, one.
Speaker 2: Would think obviously, so Benjamin.
Speaker 1: So last one dies in nineteen thirty six. As you're saying, right.
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating looking creature, it really is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and over the it's true and over the years
Speaker 3: there have been numerous residents of Tasmania who claimed to
Speaker 3: see encounter even this carnivorous marsupial. So it's a lot
Speaker 3: like the drop bear in that respect. So the Tasmanian
Speaker 3: tiger can grow to six feet long if you count
Speaker 3: the tail, and folks like Andrew Orchard who have investigated
Speaker 3: this cryptid claim to have seen the creature multiple times.
Speaker 3: And often people hunt these much with the same dedication
Speaker 3: that we attached to bigfoot hunters here in the United States.
Speaker 1: So maybe we could interview a devil hunter also. That
Speaker 1: sounds really cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the devil hunter. Well, it looks it's a fascinating
Speaker 2: looking animal. It looks kind of like the head of
Speaker 2: a canine almost in a way, but then its tail
Speaker 2: is very rodent or marsupial like, but again it's large.
Speaker 2: And then its body has the stripes of gosh, I
Speaker 2: don't even know, almost some African animals that you can
Speaker 2: find just to have the stripes of this kind, not
Speaker 2: tiger stripes, but they're very they're lines, they're not like
Speaker 2: some kind of jagged shape or any kind of they're
Speaker 2: not even really swooping or anything.
Speaker 1: And they start on the upper back, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: they expand as they go down towards the haunches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very very strange placement. It looks like somebody
Speaker 1: customized the creature in a video game of some sort,
Speaker 1: for sure. So it was common in Australia for some
Speaker 1: time as well, but it went extinct in Australia first
Speaker 1: and then later extinct in Tasmania, at least officially. And
Speaker 1: as you pointed out, there are a ton of people
Speaker 1: in Tasmania who are certain they have seen this thing.
Speaker 1: And the Australia Rare faun Or Research Association has almost
Speaker 1: four thousand reports of Tasmanian tigers in Australia since nineteen thirty.
Speaker 2: Six, observations or sightings of some sort.
Speaker 1: Right, And if you look at the silhouette or the
Speaker 1: profile of the thing, it looks different enough from a
Speaker 1: dog or dingo, even because that tail sticks straight out
Speaker 1: like a kangaroo tail.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, if you saw it at night, I can see
Speaker 2: how you would mix this up with a few things,
Speaker 2: with the exception of the tail, if you're like seeing
Speaker 2: it with a flashlight night or headlights or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. The most popular, I guess misidentified animal
Speaker 1: we have here in Atlanta now is a coyote.
Speaker 2: If you have seen an yet, I have, actually yeah,
Speaker 2: me too, and some foxes. I got them mixed up initially.
Speaker 2: Really yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw in a neighborhood outside of Atlanta a few
Speaker 1: years back, I saw a lost dog poster and someone's like,
Speaker 1: have you lost your dog? I've been seeing this one around.
Speaker 1: I haven't caught him. He's kind of shy. It's totally
Speaker 1: a coyote. Whoa Yeah, kilts and cats. But but look,
Speaker 1: people who think that the Tasmanian Tigers survives think that
Speaker 1: it survives most likely in a remote part of Tasmania,
Speaker 1: you know, the island off of Australia, or in a
Speaker 1: very remote part of the Australia, not quite the outback
Speaker 1: the bush. Like you said, no, I'm Glerine.
Speaker 2: Don't let the game boy machinehead.
Speaker 1: Did you know he played the one of the bad
Speaker 1: guys in Constantine.
Speaker 2: Yes he did, and he was fantastic in it is
Speaker 2: very else he's.
Speaker 3: There are the Australian British.
Speaker 1: The British didn't take the trip.
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 3: It would have been a good a good transition, not
Speaker 3: a transition, at least a better non seculator.
Speaker 1: Well uh, speaking of fantastic segues sequators even yeah, sequitors
Speaker 1: and segues which is another name of a different podcasts
Speaker 1: will probably do one day. What about large cats? This
Speaker 1: is when it gets me. Every place that we have
Speaker 1: ever investigated in terms of cryptozoology, they always have at
Speaker 1: least a few large cats. Like every state in the
Speaker 1: US has its own alleged cryptid large cat. Even states
Speaker 1: that have mountain lions say they have a large cryptid cat.
Speaker 1: But it's different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's different from a mountain lion. However, mountain lions
Speaker 2: are terrifying. If you've ever seen one in the wild
Speaker 2: or maybe on your property, beware, that's a mountain lion.
Speaker 2: It will take your dog and or maybe you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not they didn't come to play with you, Nope.
Speaker 1: But it feels like the reports of large cats in
Speaker 1: Australia have a little bit more credibility.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one, I guess. The most famous sighting is
Speaker 2: the Gippsland phantom cat. It's been spotted all over the place,
Speaker 2: repeatedly in the Grampians. Grampians, I don't know how to
Speaker 2: say that correctly. Australians, I'm sorry, but since the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: Are Grampians like geriatric champions.
Speaker 2: Yes, just like that. It's a region or a little
Speaker 2: an area and experts and skeptics believe these are maybe
Speaker 2: perhaps the feral descendants of just you know, plain old
Speaker 2: house cats, but maybe a little bigger, maybe a little
Speaker 2: more feral.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So this National Park is huge, six hundred and
Speaker 1: forty six square miles, and it's a nature reserve, so
Speaker 1: it's ticking a lot of the boxes for us. It's
Speaker 1: not heavily populated, and it's remote.
Speaker 2: There you go, maybe it's a different species that we
Speaker 2: just haven't cataloged.
Speaker 1: Yet, and where it's located plays a role in its
Speaker 1: credibility too, because there's this long standing theory or somewhat
Speaker 1: of an urban I don't want to call it a myth,
Speaker 1: but there's a tail.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a story.
Speaker 1: At least it says when US soldiers were stationed in
Speaker 1: Victoria World War two, they had a pair of pumas
Speaker 1: that were mascots, and after the war, when they were
Speaker 1: going back home to the States, they released these cats
Speaker 1: into the wild. Pumas pumas.
Speaker 2: You say, which is it's just a cougar. Cool a cougar. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but it looks I mean, it's just a large it's
Speaker 2: a large cat.
Speaker 1: It's another way for mountain lying.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Two to three feet in height, so maybe not as
Speaker 1: intimidating as a gigantic wombat, but it is carnivorous. It
Speaker 1: can run fifty miles per hour, and if you piss
Speaker 1: it off, it will it will attack you. Right, most
Speaker 1: animals in the wild, It's pretty much true everywhere, if
Speaker 1: they have the option to avoid a human versus confronting them,
Speaker 1: the majority of animals would rather avoid a human being, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the majority of human beings would rather avoid human beings.
Speaker 1: It's true, that's true. In Victoria, however, these reports of
Speaker 1: large unidentified cats were taken very seriously, so much so
Speaker 1: that the state government investigated the sightings and in twenty
Speaker 1: twelve they released a report that said there was no
Speaker 1: evidence to back these concerns. Don't ask us how much
Speaker 1: it costs to do this investigation, which became another sticking
Speaker 1: point for the local government. But the stories continued, and
Speaker 1: they continue today. In twenty eighteen, and there was there
Speaker 1: was at least one case where somebody caught an unidentified cat.
Speaker 3: Yeah. This was a fellow by the name of Kurt Engel.
Speaker 3: He shot a that said unidentified cat which had a
Speaker 3: twenty six inch tail. Wowsers, it's huge. Yeah, and tests
Speaker 3: on the cat showed that it was at least partially
Speaker 3: a common domestic cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they had a mitochondrial DNA test, which means
Speaker 1: they can only trace the matrilineal side, yeah, and the
Speaker 1: other side of it. So the official conclusion was, like
Speaker 1: you said, it's partially a regular common.
Speaker 2: Cat, yeah, but the other parts are just monster.
Speaker 1: Doesn't twenty six inches seem cartoonishly long for a tale.
Speaker 2: It really does. Why would you ever need that from
Speaker 2: an evolutionary perspective unless you're like hanging from it or
Speaker 2: or I don't know, getting objects out of the water
Speaker 2: with it.
Speaker 3: Seems like it'd be a liability.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can go fishing with it.
Speaker 3: Maybe I bet you could deep sea fishing.
Speaker 1: Well, Unfortunately we don't know because he discarded the body.
Speaker 2: Oh great, it was dumb, thanks Kurt Engele.
Speaker 1: One point six meters long, although he says two meters.
Speaker 1: You can see a picture of the cat hanging up
Speaker 1: where he caught it. But destroying the body really hurt
Speaker 1: his credibility, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: Jeez.
Speaker 1: But then there's other there are other video clips you
Speaker 1: can find, and there's a wealth of stuff out there.
Speaker 1: The problem is that people were skeptical about this stuff.
Speaker 1: We'll say it's inconclusive. There are also rumors that there
Speaker 1: are large, essentially comodo dragons wandering the outback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see that.
Speaker 1: We didn't dig too deep by that. That's just one
Speaker 1: of those where I think I could also that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, you think there'd be
Speaker 2: more than just a few sightings if there was a
Speaker 2: large enough population of them out there. But who knows,
Speaker 2: maybe they're that isolated. Well, but the best one, my
Speaker 2: favorite one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, what is it anything.
Speaker 2: Walking around on two legs up in this piece?
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you asked, Matt. Yes, there are not one,
Speaker 1: but at least two types of Bigfoot esque creatures in
Speaker 1: the world of Australian cryptozoology. The first is the Mohow
Speaker 1: of New Zealand. According to reports, they're about the size
Speaker 1: of a normal person, normal guy, but they have an
Speaker 1: eight like face, long shaggy hair, and really long fingers
Speaker 1: with sharp fingernails or claws.
Speaker 2: Uh. I don't like that. It was with you until
Speaker 2: you got to the long.
Speaker 1: And started acting it out. Yeah, you crossed the table
Speaker 1: towards you. They're thought to be responsible for two deaths
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty two, a prospector and a woman who
Speaker 1: was found nearby. She'd been abducted from her home. Someone
Speaker 1: had broken her neck. The prospector have been partially eaten. Ooh, no,
Speaker 1: one knows what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah did they Well? Yeah, just makes you wonder if
Speaker 2: they found, you know, any long scratches or strange creepy acting.
Speaker 2: I know, and I'm not liking me doing it even.
Speaker 1: And then there's the Yawi, which probably has one of
Speaker 1: the more fun names all our cryptids.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean this is this is your bigfoot.
Speaker 2: This is your Australian bigfoot. Essentially, it lives deep within
Speaker 2: the wilderness. It avoids contact with humans. You might be
Speaker 2: able to hear a yaowie if you know, if you're
Speaker 2: walking around the woods, you're maybe you're camping or something.
Speaker 2: You're just exploring or hiking, or you're on the like
Speaker 2: at the outskirts of the woods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, yowey Yawi Zali. Isn't that a nu's Wowie's Awi?
Speaker 3: It's a Pavement album.
Speaker 4: Ah.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, Noll. There might be some confusion
Speaker 2: here because within the oral storytelling over the years and
Speaker 2: within the Aboriginal communities. The term yowi is also a
Speaker 2: regional term for the bun yip creature.
Speaker 1: Oh so there's some conflation and confusion there exactly.
Speaker 2: So maybe it's one and the same, or at least
Speaker 2: originally was, and then it just became its own separate
Speaker 2: set of stories.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, if I have become persuaded in this episode
Speaker 1: about one thing and one thing only, it's the Pavement
Speaker 1: should do an album that is entirely about the Yawi
Speaker 1: and it's called Yawi Zaui.
Speaker 3: Well, first we got to get him back together.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, look, everything's it's a journey of a thousand
Speaker 1: miles starts with a single step. So members of Pavement,
Speaker 1: for remembers of Pavement, if you're listening right to us,
Speaker 1: do this for us.
Speaker 3: Please.
Speaker 2: Do you know a member of Pavement will send them
Speaker 2: this podcast, make them listen to the entire thing.
Speaker 1: Against their will, don't send them just the.
Speaker 2: End, and then hopefully they'll they'll hear this.
Speaker 1: Well it does. You know. We do have to wrap
Speaker 1: up today, but we've explored, at least on a cursory level,
Speaker 1: some of the most popular and strangest cryptids in Australia.
Speaker 1: But there's much more to this story because Australia has
Speaker 1: its own rich history of these sightings, and although many
Speaker 1: of them share tropes and themes with stories in other
Speaker 1: areas of the world, these are very different. Found one
Speaker 1: big twist to the entire cryptid story here, and it's
Speaker 1: that of all the cryptids in Australia, at least the
Speaker 1: ones we encounter while working on the show, large cats
Speaker 1: and the Tasmanian tiger are the most likely to be
Speaker 1: quote unquote real right, rather than purposeful hoaxes or being misidentified.
Speaker 1: But the big twist is we might find Tasmanian tigers
Speaker 1: sooner than we think, and we might not do it
Speaker 1: by searching the remote reaches of Australia and Tasmania. In
Speaker 1: the past few years, scientists have successfully drafted the DNA
Speaker 1: sequence of the thylacine. This means that in the future
Speaker 1: we not all of us listening maybe, but our species
Speaker 1: may be able to create our own hybrids. Just like
Speaker 1: the work on the wooly mammoth, we may be able
Speaker 1: to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the grave.
Speaker 2: Ah the Phylocene park will be born. We'll get the
Speaker 2: blood from ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber and the great outback.
Speaker 2: Oh wait what, I don't even know what you'd find
Speaker 2: in the outback where you would get DNA like that.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe it will be huge Australian mosquitoes unbeknownst to
Speaker 2: man before this time. And we'll take that DNA.
Speaker 1: And we'll book the whomever. The Jeff Goldbloom of Australia.
Speaker 2: Doctor Ian Malcolm will be there and he will say,
Speaker 2: this is chaos.
Speaker 1: And it's chaos that we want you to be a
Speaker 1: part of. So let us know what you thought about
Speaker 1: this episode. And hey, if you're in Australia, let us know.
Speaker 1: Let us know if any of these cryptos are taken
Speaker 1: seriously on the ground.
Speaker 3: Where you live.
Speaker 2: You know, have you ever used drop bears to get
Speaker 2: a group of blokes or Sheila's to hang out with you?
Speaker 1: Is it all just sort of a dad joke? You
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Drop Bears we'd like to hear
Speaker 1: from you. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
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Speaker 1: Here's where it gets.
Speaker 2: Crazy, Panda cheese. Everybody, We are going on tour. Remember
Speaker 2: that we got to tell you this every time we're
Speaker 2: going on tour.
Speaker 3: We have been instructed.
Speaker 2: No, we haven't been instructed. We feel compelled to do so.
Speaker 2: You have to know this because we need you to
Speaker 2: come and see us. Yeah, we need you to be there.
Speaker 3: We want to see you. Yes, please, we need you
Speaker 3: more than you need us.
Speaker 2: Can we hang out please?
Speaker 1: Oh? Speaking of shout out to Michael Shelby. If you're listening, Michael,
Speaker 1: I kept my word said, I give him a shout out.
Speaker 2: Oh, one of the Shelby brothers. Huh. Anybody anybody get that?
Speaker 2: Anybody watching Peaky Blinders? Okay? Never run all right?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Thomas Shelby hit me up if you're listening to this. Okay. So,
Speaker 2: and that's the end of this classic episode. If you
Speaker 2: have any thoughts or questions about this episode, you can
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