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The Bunyip single work   short story  
Issue Details: First known date: 1891... 1891 The Bunyip
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

A story about a group of men camping near a creek who begin telling ghost stories and get onto the topic of the bunyip - an uncanny creature said to live in lagoons and possess a supernatural influence over its victims. At hearing a strange cry from the bush, they become convinced it's the bunyip and set off to discover it. Instead they find the body of a young girl from a nearby town with a snake twined round her (supposedly it is this which killed her). However, the young girl has been dead for some hours and they don't believe she died from a snake bite, leading them to question whether the cry was the bunyip after all.  

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Coo-ee : Tales of Australian Life by Australian Ladies Mrs Patchett Martin (editor), Nottingham : Boots Ltd. , 1890-1920 Z571685 1890-1920 anthology short story London : Richard Edward King , 1891 pg. 271-286
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon From the Verandah : Stories of Love and Landscape by Nineteenth Century Australian Women Fiona Giles (editor), Fitzroy Ringwood : McPhee Gribble Penguin , 1987 Z373115 1987 anthology short story extract Fitzroy Ringwood : McPhee Gribble Penguin , 1987 pg. 27-35
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories Ken Gelder (editor), Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1994 Z356827 1994 anthology short story crime young adult 'Did Australian ghosts suffer from a cultural cringe? Dr Ken Gelder indicates in the introduction to another fascinating OUP anthology that early ghost stories were essentially a "transported genre" that looked back to England as their source. Thus John Lang's well-known story "The Ghost upon the Rail" is based upon a case of murder for post-convict wealth. Gelder argues that Australian ghost stories possess their own ironical flavour, but the gothic tradition has to be resolved in outback locations or deserted mining towns, as in David Rowbotham's "A Schoolie and the Ghost".'

    'Gelder relies heavily on Victorian and Edwardian writers, such as Marcus Clarke, Barbara Baynton and Hume Nisbet, as if unsure as to the nature of contemporary ghosts. It is interesting to see that Australia's science fiction writers, such as Lucy Sussex and Terry Dowling, provide the link between the past and the present. Dowling's "The Daeman Street Ghost-Trap" effectively uses traditional settings to link ghosts with a current horror, namely cancer. Several bunyip stories remind us of a particular Antipodean creature to stand against the assorted European manifestations.'

    (Colin Steele, SF Commentary No 77, p.55).


         Melbourne : Oxford University Press , 1994     pg. 102-109
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Anthology of Colonial Australian Gothic Fiction Ken Gelder (editor), Rachael Weaver (editor), Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2007 Z1415120 2007 anthology short story extract horror mystery science fiction historical fiction children's (taught in 7 units)

    'This anthology collects the best examples of Australian gothic short stories from colonial times. Demonic bird cries, grisly corpses, ghostly women and psychotic station-owners populate a colonial landscape which is the stuff of nightmares.

    'In stories by Marcus Clarke, Mary Fortune and Henry Lawson, the colonial homestead is wracked by haunted images of murder and revenge. Settlers are disoriented and traumatised as they stumble into forbidden places and explorers disappear, only to return as ghostly figures with terrible tales to tell. These compelling stories are the dark underside to the usual story of colonial progress, promise and nation-building, and reveal just how vivid the gothic imagination is at the heart of Australian fiction.' (Publication summary)

         Carlton : Melbourne University Press , 2007     pg. 117-126
  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Ghost Stories James Doig (editor), Ware : Wordsworth Editions , 2010 Z1692736 2010 anthology short story horror 'Murderous ghosts, horrific curses and monstrous beings haunt an unforgiving landscape into which travellers stray at their peril. Journey through the dark byways of Australia's Gothic past in the rare stories gathered in this memorable new collection. Work by acclaimed Australian writers such as Marcus Clarke, Henry Lawson and Edward Dyson appears alongside many lesser-known authors such as Beatrice Grimshaw, Mary Fortune and Ernest Favenc. Many of the stories collected here have never been reprinted since their first publication in 19th and early 20th century periodicals and showcase the richness and variety of the Australian ghost and horror story.

    James Doig provides an authoritative introduction full of fresh insights into Australian Gothic fiction with detailed biographical notes on the authors represented' (cover).         Ware : Wordsworth Editions , 2010
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Works about this Work

The Bunyip as Uncanny Rupture : Fabulous Animals, Innocuous Quadrupeds and the Australian Anthropocene Penny Edmonds , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 63 2018; (p. 80-98)

'My love affair with museums began when I was seven. I saw a bunyip’s head in a glass case, a strange, unsettling creature with a one-eyed blind stare, a cycloptic monster. I was small and I stood up on my toes to see the creature through the glass. On show, the bunyip was mounted in a tall, ornate nineteenth-century wooden cabinet. The typed paper label gave scientific verification: ‘A bunyip’s head, New South Wales. 1841.’ I recall the palpable shock of it, and my mixed childhood emotions: bunyips were real. With its long jawbone wrapped in fawn-coloured fur, it was a decapitated Australian swamp-dweller preserved.  Yet, the horrific creature looked so sad, and with its sightless eye, gaping mouth and cartoonish backward drooping ears. It was a creature of pathos—a gormless, goofy redhead, a ranga, a total outsider.' (Introduction)
Australian Ghost Stories James Doig , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: The National Library of Australia Magazine , June vol. 3 no. 2 2011; (p. 22-24) James Doig looks for Australian supernatural fiction authors and unearths their curious lives. (p. 22)
Settler Colonialism and the Formation of Australian National Identity : Praed's 'Bunyip' and Pedley's 'Dot and the Kangaroo' Christa Knellwolf King , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe 2009; (p. 107-121) 'This essay discusses stories that performed the task of defining the identity of the white settler community at the turn of twentieth-century Australia. It concentrates on two late nineteenth-century narratives, Rosa Praed's short story 'The Bunyip' (1891) and Ethel C. Pedley's children's book Dot and the Kangaroo (1898) which, in different ways, utilise the mystery and danger of the Australian outback as building blocks for representing experiences that were supposedly familiar to all Australians. These two stories describe their white characters' responses to Aboriginal legends and rituals as seminal moments in their personal growth, implying that first-hand knowledge of Aboriginal traditions was an essential element in the collective experience of Australian settlers.' (p. 109)
Unknown Australia : Rosa Praed's Vanished Race Andrew McCann , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 1 2005; (p. 37-50) Examines the presentation of colonialism in some of Praed's work, in particular in her novel Fugitive Anne with its fantasy of the lost Lemurians.
The Postcolonial Ghost Story Ken Gelder , J. M. Jacobs , 1996 single work criticism
— Appears in: Current Tensions : Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference : 6 - 11 July 1996 1996; (p. 110-120)
Unknown Australia : Rosa Praed's Vanished Race Andrew McCann , 2005 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , May vol. 22 no. 1 2005; (p. 37-50) Examines the presentation of colonialism in some of Praed's work, in particular in her novel Fugitive Anne with its fantasy of the lost Lemurians.
Settler Colonialism and the Formation of Australian National Identity : Praed's 'Bunyip' and Pedley's 'Dot and the Kangaroo' Christa Knellwolf King , 2009 single work criticism
— Appears in: Imagined Australia : Reflections around the Reciprocal Construction of Identity between Australia and Europe 2009; (p. 107-121) 'This essay discusses stories that performed the task of defining the identity of the white settler community at the turn of twentieth-century Australia. It concentrates on two late nineteenth-century narratives, Rosa Praed's short story 'The Bunyip' (1891) and Ethel C. Pedley's children's book Dot and the Kangaroo (1898) which, in different ways, utilise the mystery and danger of the Australian outback as building blocks for representing experiences that were supposedly familiar to all Australians. These two stories describe their white characters' responses to Aboriginal legends and rituals as seminal moments in their personal growth, implying that first-hand knowledge of Aboriginal traditions was an essential element in the collective experience of Australian settlers.' (p. 109)
Australian Ghost Stories James Doig , 2011 single work criticism
— Appears in: The National Library of Australia Magazine , June vol. 3 no. 2 2011; (p. 22-24) James Doig looks for Australian supernatural fiction authors and unearths their curious lives. (p. 22)
The Postcolonial Ghost Story Ken Gelder , J. M. Jacobs , 1996 single work criticism
— Appears in: Current Tensions : Proceedings of the 18th Annual Conference : 6 - 11 July 1996 1996; (p. 110-120)
The Bunyip as Uncanny Rupture : Fabulous Animals, Innocuous Quadrupeds and the Australian Anthropocene Penny Edmonds , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Humanities Review , November no. 63 2018; (p. 80-98)

'My love affair with museums began when I was seven. I saw a bunyip’s head in a glass case, a strange, unsettling creature with a one-eyed blind stare, a cycloptic monster. I was small and I stood up on my toes to see the creature through the glass. On show, the bunyip was mounted in a tall, ornate nineteenth-century wooden cabinet. The typed paper label gave scientific verification: ‘A bunyip’s head, New South Wales. 1841.’ I recall the palpable shock of it, and my mixed childhood emotions: bunyips were real. With its long jawbone wrapped in fawn-coloured fur, it was a decapitated Australian swamp-dweller preserved.  Yet, the horrific creature looked so sad, and with its sightless eye, gaping mouth and cartoonish backward drooping ears. It was a creature of pathos—a gormless, goofy redhead, a ranga, a total outsider.' (Introduction)
VIEW ALL WORKS ABOUT (5)
Last amended 15 Sep 2022 11:27:23
Subjects:
  • Bush,
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