The Bunyip

There are places in this world where the shadows are older than the trees. Where time seems to stagnate like the still surface of a billabong, broken only by the occasional ripple — a sign that something may be watching from beneath. These are the places we tell stories about. Stories that don’t just explain the world around us… they warn us about it.

In Australia, one of those stories comes from the deep swamps and isolated riverbanks — from the muddy waterholes and forgotten backwaters that dot the vast and unforgiving landscape. It’s a creature whispered about by First Nations people for countless generation. and later, by settlers who heard the same sound in the dark and felt the same dread in their bones.

It starts with a sound. Low. Distant. Almost imperceptible at first — like the groan of the earth itself. A guttural, mournful cry that winds its way through the fog-draped trees, bouncing off the water, rolling across the reeds like a warning too old to be translated. Some say it sounds like a bull bellowing underwater. 

Others compare it to the echo of a didgeridoo played far off in a cave — deep, sonorous, vibrating in your chest more than your ears. It is the kind of sound that feels… wrong. Like it doesn’t belong in the world of birds and frogs and rustling leaves.

You may hear it while camped beside a dark, still billabong. Or alone at dusk, casting a line as the last light drains from the sky, insects thick in the air, the bush falling into silence. That is when it comes. Not loud, but drawn-out. A sound like grief. Or rage.

Your mind will reach for explanations. The wind slipping strangely through the paperbarks. You will try to convince yourself it is nothing. Because the alternative is harder to face.

Ask the locals — those who have lived long enough to know which waters to avoid and which stories endure — and they may give you another answer.

The Bunyip.