Everyone in Australia has heard of the bunyip, but since it appears I have more readers in the northern hemisphere, I had better explain. The bunyip is a mythical (?) monster which the Aborigines believe(d) frequents the inland waterways of southeast Australia. The name by which it went varied greatly between tribes, its description was generally vague, and its habits reputably dangerous. What is not often known is that it was reported not only by Aborigines, but by white settlers, every twenty or thirty years during the nineteenth century.
Interesting though this unusual history might have been, a major difficulty has always been documentation. The original reports were squirreled away in the musty archives of many local newspapers, too voluminous to search. The result was, when I began my investigations forty-odd years ago, I had to rely on secondary sources. Sometimes these secondary sources referred back to the primary source, sometimes not. When I wrote Bunyips and Bigfoots, I was forced to list a number of sightings of which I knew practically nothing, except that I had noted some fleeting reference.
Fortunately, time brings a change. The National Library of Australia has now digitalised an enormous number of newspapers and magazines up to the 1950s, or even later, on a website labelled Trove. As it is easily searchable, I have at last had the opportunity to follow up these stories. It turns out, many reports were copied almost verbatim from one newspaper to another, but I have attempted to cite the original as far as possible. I might add, too, that Andrew Nicholson appears to have beaten me to the Thargomindah Bunyip.
