Good tidings, y'all. Mi amiga wrote me to say that back home in New York, there was a huge snowstorm yesterday. I know I deserve no sympathy, but It's been summer for so long I genuinely miss the cold, rain, and snow. Yesterday it was 48 degrees here... Celsius. That's about 117 degrees Farenheit. I figure at any moment I may spontaneously explode. Which leads to an important distinction here in Australia - here they call it "air con" instead of AC.

Such are common summer temps here in Alice Springs. This town, much like Cairns, is still quite small, but has grown to unnatural proportions for its desert location due to its function as airport hub for Australia's biggest attraction - Ayers Rock. Tomorrow I'm off to have a gander myself.

For today, I've compiled some new information for you on Australia's role in lake monster culture - the Bunyip. I recognize that Oz is in a drought now, but that's now excuse for my recent drought of postings, so I want to impart some of my research out here.

What's a Bunyip? Such is the million dollar question, naturally. Foremost it should be mentioned that the Bunyip is an amalgamated version of many such legends across Australia. The Westernport Aborigines called it Toor-roo-dun, while the names Bunyup, Boynip, Dognus, Kianpraty, Kine Praty and Katenpai were used in various parts of NSW. In SA, the Narrinyeri tribe of the Coorong feared the Moolgewanke, and the Encounter Bay Aborigines, the Moodabbie. Other names are Wau-gul and Bunnyar (WA and Munni Munni (Queensland). Adelaide names many places after Nganno, a sea monster, which is perhaps a form of Bunyip. Bones of a monster called Kadimakara lie in the area of Lake Eyre. The Blucher tribe of the Darling Downs in Queensland fear a water monster called the Mochel Mochel. In NSW, the Wauwai inhabits Lake Macquarie and Tunatabah the Edward River. I even learned of another Bunyip-type legend on Fraser Island, called the Melong.

Compounding the problem is that there also exists the legend of a hairy wild man, with feet turned backwards, known as the Yaa-hoo or Wowee Wowee of the Hunter River. In newspaper accounts of the 19th century, this sharply different legend was also incorrectly referred to as a Bunyip.

This has led to a huge problem of ambiguity as to what the Bunyip looks like and what its habits are. For instance, some legends have it feathered, others furry.

I entered an odds and ends shop in Townsville and noticed lots of old trinkets, porcelain, carvings, and the lot. When I asked the lady who worked there if they had any Bunyip items, she smirked and remarked that you can't really paint something that you can't see. Of course, she had a point; some sources say that the Bunyip is invisible.

One official take on the matter comes from the Oxford Companian to Australian Literature, the Bunyip is: "a monster of Aboriginal mythology with a huge body covered with fur, is said to live in swamps, lagoons, and billabongs from which it emerges on moonlit nights to prey on humans, especially women and children. Zoologists believe the Aboriginal legend may have originated in the occasional appearances of seals in coastal and inland streams and rivers."

Of course, seals aren't particularly menacing animals. I cannot think of the last time I heard of a seal attacking someone. There is a threatening connotation to the Bunyip in aboriginal culture, which unanimously found Bunyip to be a manifestation of evil. Of course, now, one could almost say the Bunyip's potency has been castrated. It is much more likely to be found in children's books such as The Bunyip of Berkely Creek.

The unlikely transition, from omnipotent beast to friendly misunderstood monster, is not without reason nor significance. As noted in my previous entry, Sir John Mandeville could be credited for igniting European interest in the wonders of the Oriental world. A main element to his popular work was numerous monsters of ridiculous descriptions, living ostensibly just off the edge of the known world.

Centuries later, European settlers would begin to populate southeastern Australia (whose name literally means "southern land") The name reflects the baggage of an ancient legend within the Christian Church at the time, which believed there was a place at the bottom of the world, Terra Australis, with strange creatures and people as uncivilized as Europe was civilized.

These pioneers faced the challenges of a strange new world, in many ways the unwelcoming reverse of what they'd known in England. In their first days, they would experience a ruthless thunderstorm, a small earthquake, a fatal whale attack on a small boat, and frightening visitations by crocodiles. Theatres for imaginations were plentiful.

At first, both settlers and aboriginals kept their distance, not wanting much to do with each other. However, contact at precious waterholes, or billabongs, was inevitable. It is this meeting place that is the home of the legend of the Bunyip. Aboriginal nations would warn settlers not to collect water at certain billabongs, due to the presence of Bunyip. Immediately, the Bunyip would be associated as a strange creature of the new land, and something to fear, as the natives did. Before long, witness accounts from white settlers were common.

Things would come to change, however. In 1842, Professor Owen would coin the term "terrible lizard" -- dinosaur -- to explain the growing number of inexplainably large bones discovered by the infant field of archaelogy. The bones seemed to be of creatures long gone from the known world. Attention would then turn, of course, to the mystery down under - of a dangerous creature of the night, perhaps a living dinosaur, the Bunyip.

It wouldn't be long before an alleged Bunyip skull was found, received with great excitement by a museum in Melbourne as well as the populace of Australia. However, by the time that the skull was determined to be a hoax, the opinion to English universities was that the amateur scientists of Australia could not be given much credence if there were to be so easily swayed by indigenous legends which probably held no basis in reality.

It was around this time that the word "Bunyip" became nearly synonymous with "humbug". Australians, by this point, considered that if the Bunyip did in fact exist, it would have been conclusively found by this point, and the debacle with the skull hoax crushed any credibility that had previously been giving to the legend. Although the aboriginal cultures often held a more sophisticated significance for the legend of the Bunyip, from this point on, for the purposes of the settlers, the Bunyip was relegated to a role in children's stories, to prevent them from swimming in deep water or running off unbeknownst to their parents. A century or more later, anthropologists are beginning to pursue the Bunyip's value to aboriginal storytelling and history. But by this point, much of it is undoubtedly lost or assimilated into a symbology akin to the boogie man.

Two years ago, author Robert Holden published The Bunyip: Folklore of Fear, and his devoted research of the Bunyip has brought many new facts to light

"After a century of exposure to Aboriginal folklore, as well as to the mystery of a strange land, colonial Australians had effectively appropriated the story of the bunyip. In some ways this was a measure of their achieving a sense of belonging to what had formerly been an alien environment. Even so, it must be admitted that the crossover was not effected without the bunyip losing some of the antediluvian mystery of its mythic aboriginal stature. By turning an amused eye on the bunyip, settlers were able to deflate their terror of the bush and even scoff at their fears. In the process, the bunyip became a figure of gentler habits more likely to find a place in the fantasy world of children's books."

Hence we have the Bunyip of today, often best known for Alexander Bunyip, a children's show of the 1980's. It has also been the showpiece of parades in Melbourne. Whatever its form today, it has consistently and ironically become the opposite of its menacing tempermant of the past.