| Bunyips The bunyip has always been something of a shape-changer.
Nineteenth-century parents in Australia used the story of the bunyip to good effect. Its presence in cautionary tales warned children about an alien environment. The average bush youngster has a horror of darkness, and talks in awe-struck whispers of hairy men, ghosts, and bunyips. This fear is inculcated from babyhood. The mother can’t always be watching in a playground that is boundless ... so she tells them there is a bunyip in the lagoon. Life in the Australian Back-Blocks, 1911
Everyone who has lived in Australia has heard of the bunyip. It is the one respectable flesh-curdling horror of which Australia can boast. The old world has her tales of ghoul and vampire, of Lorelei, spook and pixie, but Australia has ... her Bunyip ... the bushman will warm to his subject as readily as an Irishman to his banshee. The Bunyip, Mrs Campbell Praed, 1891
Australian aboriginal stories describe the bunyip as an evil spirit which dwells in creeks, swamps, and billabongs. The bunyip's loud bellowing cry terrifies the aborigines. They avoid water sources where they believe a bunyip might live. Some stories suggest the bunyip emerges at night principally to prey on women and children as well as animals. Many white settlers also claimed encounters with the bunyip. While descriptions of the bunyip vary, most portray a creature with a hairy horse-like head and large body. Aboriginal stories about the bunyip may reflect oral traditions of the diprotodon, a rhinosceros-sized herbivore. Diprotodon was the largest marsupial ever to have existed. Diprotodon is believed to have become extinct between fifteen and twenty thousand years ago. Memories of encounters between the aborigines and diprotodon might have been passed down through the centuries. According to Oodgeroo Noonuccal (Kath Walker) in Stradbroke Dreamtime, the bunyip is an evil or punishing spirit from the Aboriginal Dreamtime. Today the bunyip mainly appears in Australian literature for children and makes an occasional appearance in television commercials. Source--http://www.pibburns.com/cryptost/bunyip.htm | 
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