Aboriginal mythology tells of an aquatic demon called a “bunyip” that haunts Australia’s riverbeds and marshes, lurking silently beneath the water’s shimmering surface, waiting to devour or drown any careless passersby. At night, the bunyip’s fierce roaring call sounds out across the black, hollow veil of darkness, rousing children from slumber and echoing through the dreams of adults.

According to the traditional folklore of various tribes, the bunyip has a dog-like head, walrus tusks, seal flippers, a furred torso and a horse tail. Sometimes also feathers. Or scales. It has also been described as a giant snake with a wild, tattered mane and as a half-human monster with a long neck and the head of a bird. There isn’t much consensus.

The creature’s tribe-to-tribe physiological variants underscore an interesting aspect of mythology – the biological attributes of legendary monsters are far less important to their existence than the socio-cultural service the beasties offer. The bunyip, for example, boasts as many physical variations as it does alleged sightings, but one detail remains consistent – its predilection toward dragging hapless Aborigines into streams, swamps and billabongs. The tale of the bunyip, then, has less to do with compiling a thorough dossier of Australia’s supernatural threats than with creatively imparting children with cautionary advice and containing the chaotic, imposing enigmas of the natural world within a comfortable, familiar narrative. Whether a bird-headed humanoid or a tusked snake, by keeping kids away from the crocodile-laden waters of Australia’s rivers, the bunyip helped prevent drownings and other gruesome deaths. It also, as evidenced by the many terrified descriptions of the animal’s nighttime vocalizations, offered tribes an explanation for the many unexplained sounds that issued out, distant and haunting, from wild dark glens and black lakes.

In the 1800s, the bunyip took on an entirely new cultural significance – as an example of the way Britain co-opted and Westernized the folklore and traditions of its colonies. In typical European fashion (as evidenced in America by the transmogrification of Native American mythology from symbolic representations of the aspects of nature to horror stories about colossal birds and sea serpents), the bunyip was immediately removed from its cultural context and literalized. The story promised more than ethnographic insight into an unfamiliar indigenous civilization – it promised a marvelous new animal.

Wednesday: The Great Victorian Bunyip Hunt

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