Groundhog Day is here, the day of imbolic, a holiday that connects us to nature in the hopes of predicting the arrival of spring. In the age of satellite telephones and atomic watches, what credence do we reallly give a shy gopher anymore. Certainly not a day off work.

But, as it turns out, this day is the technical halfway point of my exploration of lake monster culture, and I cannot help but consider it a day of portent, even here in the far off Indian subcontinent far where lake monsters don't exist, and groundhogs definitely don't. Regardless, I ponder, what is to come of this second half of the Watson Project?

Certainly there will be a shift from the broad to the narrow, as I will spend most of the time in two areas where lake-monster culture is more prevalent than anywhere else in the world: Sweden and Scotland.

But the broad topics are not to be forgotten or cast aside during this shift of focus. They've provided hotspots to look for. Often by accident, I've uncovered a new approach towards lake monsters in these first six months - something which I've often only mentioned here in scattered and unorganized quips. I figure that I'm long overdue for a gathering of these thoughts - a casting of mental drag nets and cerebral sonar, in an effort to ensure that a pattern actually exists. It is halftime, and here is my attempt to reckon the so far.

I. Where Do Lake Monsters Begin?

Before beginning my journeys, I had a vague concept that lake monster legends, as a vast majority, originated in indigenous legends. I knew this pattern was a curious one, but wasn't sure what to make of it. As I've learned in these months, however, the idea of a legend's origination is a complicated one.

Yes, these legends are often tied to old myths that stretch to a traditional and indigenous past. But there is a rhetoric involved in this way of telling the story. Recall the famous Shroedinger's Cat experiment - that even the act of observing an event influences its outcome. The historical method is not transparent and is not without an inpact on its subject, especially the subject of lake monsters. Far from the simplified idea that lake monster legends are ancient and untouched mysteries, their shape and context of today are of peripheral spaces, collisions between Old World and New.

II. Monsters as Peripheral Spaces

The term "peripheral space" is not my own. Professor David Gilmore of SUNY Stony Brook, last year wrote a book about monsters. Indeed his scope is incredible; he introduced me to several new water monsters hailing from Egypt, Cherokee country, Aztec Central America, and Polynesia among others. His approach is distinct in that it is grounded in psychoanalysis, questioning why monsters are important to our psychology. He cites David White with the concept of "peripheral spaces," liminal places where wilderness or "nonculture" areas meet the known or cultured world. They can also represent the border between real and unreal, or between permitted and forbidden.

A large body of water, to me, presents an involuntary reaction of danger - a place where my limited swimming abilities could lead to my drowning. Even capable swimmers would fear being dropped in the middle of a large lake. This is what makes a lake or large body of water an ideal peripheral space.

III. The Lie That Inspired a Continent

Recognizing the potency of a lake as a proper venue for a "folklore of fear" as Robert Holden describes would imply that, for as long as humans have consciously thought of their environment, monsters have "existed," whether or not they existed, in our nearby lakes.

We may only guess at the true forms each of these early monsters might have taken, for they are not exactly the same today. For centuries, if not millenia, all cultures have been globally connected. In particular, colonialist expansions affected the role, and sometimes aided the origination, of lake monster legends. We have to go far back into history, farther than I expected at the outset of the Watson Year, to determine how and why lake monster legends evolved to become what they are today.

A key event in this chronology, I am convinced, is a book written by Sir John Mandeville in the 14th century. The full history of this remarkable character is better explained in my longer entry on the matter. But to summarize, his largely fabricated memoirs was one of the first pieces of early European literature to gain not only the favor of the Church but also the favor of Europeans in general. His work was far more influential than that of his more-famous contemporary, Marco Polo, in convincing Europeans that the world just past the horizon was a magically new place worthy of exploration.

His book included intricately detailed accounts of frightening and barbaric creatures, especially in the most distant lands. With popularity comes great influence, and the Church gladly appropriated his accounts as confirmation of old tales of a Great Southern Land, whose inhabitants composed the sheer opposite ideals of European nature and civilization. Mandeville's tales, particularly an encounter with a man who had circumnavigated the globe by sailing west across the Atlantic, were of great inspiration to Columbus, Swift, and Shakespeare, to name a few. The exact magnitude of Mandeville's influence to colonial exploration will never be quantifiable, but certainly this role should not be ignored.

III. Old World Meets New

The integration of the oft-debated subject of colonialism with lake-monsters is a long overdue connection. As mentioned previously, there is some psychological legitimacy to the belief that lake-monsters have been a part of human culture for a long time. However, their role distinctly changed during the colonial period.

European colonists, armed with Mandeville's memoirs, would eventually make landfall upon Australia, a strange continent of science-defying platypi, leaping kangaroos, and umaterialistic natives - a land that, while not as freakish fantastical as Mandeville described, was nonetheless a continent that seemed to run on natural laws opposite to those of Europe- or at the very least, flirt between myth and reality.

The settlers, in this desertlike environment, naturally depended upon billabongs (oases) for their water supply. Of course, so did the aboriginal natives. It was here at this mutual source of survival, where took place the earliest of Australian cross-cultural exchanges. And it was these billabong venues, ideal periphery spaces of both science and culture, that the legend of the bunyip, the first of modern lake monster legends, would be conceived. In similar contact between Old World and New would all contemporary lake monster legends be "discovered" over the next subsequent century, from Ogopogo to the Loch Ness monster, co-originating through the help of indigenous knowledge and settler curiosity.

IV. The Bunyip Shifts As it Integrates

First, we should discern what we can from this earliest of lake monster legends. But before further consideration, a disclaimer is in order. The bunyip reputedly lives in several rivers and billabongs, which renders it distinct from monster legends from larger single lakes. Additionally, the word bunyip is of an obscure origination. There are no known aboriginal languages that refer to a "bunyip." More likely than not, the word originated when a settler misheard an aboriginal speaker and then, when questioned, the aboriginal speaker assumed it was an English word. (A similar process was allegedly responsible for the inception of the word "kangaroo" which no aboriginal nation used to describe the furry marsupials the word has come to define today.)

Settlers were told of dangerous monsters that protected specific watering holes. Given the very real and visible danger of crocodiles, settlers initially had every reason to trust native wisdom. Many of these aboriginal people would not - and in some cases today still do not - fetch water from these billabongs. As the word "bunyip" began to pass from settler to settler, and newspaper to newspaper, it was usually assumed that all aboriginal tribes were speaking of the same water monster. Anthropologists have since discovered, not only did different aboriginal nations use different names, but the physical descriptions and behavioral characteristics were often radically distinct - giving credence to the likelihood that settlers amalgamated several water-monster legends into a single monster legend. In fact, newspapers of the time interchangeably employed the word "bunyip" when reporting sightings of yah-hoos (hairy men), whowies (humongous lizards), or any other monster bearing connection to an aboriginal legend.

V. The Search for Bunyips

In the case of the bunyip, the timing couldn't have been better. Mandeville and the Church had given the initial inspiration to the imaginations of the Australian settlers. But before long, the fascination of uncategorical monsters in the antepodean would soon reach the receptive ears of scientists who were beginning to challenge these very foundations. Mandeville had, by now, been disproved as a quack. But a deeper struggle was just beginning - a creation myth for the Industrial Revolution. Science versus the Church.

Charles Darwin's Origin of Species is widely regarded as the turning point between societal acceptance of "survival of the fittest" as opposed to "creationism" - that the Earth was created by God only a few thousand years ago. Archeaologists were beginning to unearth evidence of human civilization that disproved the Church's math. Even more significant were unearthed fossils of humongous reptiles, allegedly several millions of years old. Understandably, scientists set out to find a living specimen of these prehistoric monsters. The legends of bunyip of Australia proved too tantalizing to be left unsurveyed. Australian scientists set out to find a specimen to prove their identity to the English empire.

At this point, much credibility was lent to aboriginal myths - perhaps the "noble savages" could lead to a scientific breakthrough. At one point, an alleged bunyip skull turned up - likely a hoax. Over a decade of failed expeditions, the Australians felt themselves on the butt end of a joke, and the word "bunyip" made a quick transition - from an unseen monster to be feared, to a laughable indigenous concept with no basis in reality. (see the Appendix on cultural inlfluences) Shamed by this result, it would take decades, perhaps more than a century, before Australians would give any recognition to the values of aboriginal epistomologies again.

Which is of course a shame, because it was not the settlers that were lured into a joke, but rather the aboriginal nations. Scientists were keen on finding a living dinosaur. As a result, the more important values of the bunyip to aboriginal society were abandoned in the desperation of the hunt.

But as it turns out, the many variations of bunyip legends have a range of values to aboriginal histories. For instance, it is said that a bunyip-related legend was the impetus for the use of circumcision for some aboriginal nations in South Australia.

But even beyond this, one could argue that the bunyip was a potent and deadly monster because it represented the respect of water sources. It shares this role with the rainbow serpent and the toad, two animals which various aboriginal nations give credit for the balance of the water table.

Aboriginal societies were especially advanced in their methods of procuring water in the arid environments of Australia. Some of the examples I learned of were simply brilliant, for example: the use of clay could be used to trap water in severed tree roots (effective as your average bottle) or could be thrown down hollowed trunks, with leaves used as catchments to funnel water into the now compact cylinder. Fire would be used to crack large boulders to create small reservoirs. Or, my personal favorite, the capture and upturning of frogs, that could then be coerced to regurgitating several ounces of potable water.

And, in a world whose freshwater resources are exponentially challenged each year, the legend of the bunyip takes on a surprisingly 21st century significance. If this is something you haven't considered, a google search for "water shortage" is in order. This is a pressing issue globally.

Phew! That's way too much to read. I'll expand on this later... Some appendices:

XXX. Examples of Poetry on the Bunyip

Along the oozy marge, the Bunyip glode-
When the stars were faint and pale.
No ripple on the waters rode,
I felt my pulses fail.
A cry rang up to the ringed moon,
I felt my pulses fail.
No ripple on the waters rode.
When the stars were faint and pale.
Along the oozy marge, the Bunyip glode.

--Henry Tate, 1908

Far off in lonely Tuckianne Swamp the awful Bunyip cries;
His home is in the tall green reeds where deep the water lies.
There, safe among the shady trees, beneath the verdant mud,
He sleeps all day and wakes at night, to gambol in the flood.
His body's like a yealing colt; his claws are sharp and strong;
His tail is like a rough pine log some nine or ten feet long;
His head is long, his neck is thick, with a long, waving mane,
And those who ever saw him once ne'er wish to look again.
His voice is that of mountain bulls - it echoes through the trees,
And rolls around the dismal swamp, borne on the midnight breeze;
But those who dwell near Tuckianne Swamp well know the dreadful sound
The Bunyip makes when he comes out and walks upon the ground.
There is an ancient prophecy (how true I cannot say)
That says that he weill ne'er be caught until theree comes a day
When ladies three shall go for him and shall not be afraid,
And one shall be a widow, one a matron, one a maid.
And when that day shall come to pass without the help of man,
The Bunyip shall no more be heard in lonely Tuckianne.

Anon?

Henry O'Brien hadn't time for suspended belief, that luxury of leisured campfire breakfast, where stories which extend the marmalade and coffee may validly defer the washing-up. Swimming near Bathurst, the Fish River's promise relieved the day of this heat which inhabits every hour of summer. But then from a corner of the eye, where the world so often enters, something prodigious, unfriendly and fast was swimming towards him, or where he'd been; never so quickly had he swum to shore grabbed clothes and horse and ridden away. He knew what he'd seen; but so, he found, did many others: a Katenpai or Kyenprate - the bunyip, a long-eared, two-tusked, three-toed, four-legged and very-long-tailed half-man, half-fish, dark brown, bristle-haired, saw-toothed, emu-necked, bullock-backed and perhaps horse-tailed, groaning, hissing, screeching, roaring, booming, black and furry, furtive and flippered inhabitant of billabongs, swamps and night shadows.

Timoshenko Aslanides 1998

"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 teh bunyip, settlers were able to deflate tehir 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."

-Robert Holden

YYY: Examples of Cultural Influence of Bunyip

19th century: The word bunyip, formerly referring to a shifty and ruthless creature, begins to become synonymous with "humbug."

19th century: The bunyip becomes a central figure in Australian children's literature, often used in a similar role to "the boogieman" to keep children away from dangerous places (such as deep bodies of water).

19th century: An Australian political candidate coins the phrase "The Bunyip Aristocracy" to describe corruption amidst his opponent's party. The phrase is still sometimes used in Australian politics today.

1907: Sydney-based literary magazine, Bookfellow, launches a national quest for bunyip images. The ultimate winning submission was a drawing, a harmless looking animal, its most distinctive feature a cross drawn across the creature's nosebridge. A hint perhaps, of the Church's antepodean tales that escorted the bunyip into dinnertime gossip tales? Alternatively, perhaps the cross symbolizes the taming, the conversion of an aboriginal legend from fearful monster into a civilized friendly beast.

1957: Melbourne's Moomba Festival seeks 'a unique animal, confined largely to Victoria, and big enough to command public attention' for its upcoming show. The result was a massive bunyip float.

1965: A protest numbering roughly 240 people, members of the Nerang Crocidile Club proceed to burn a bunyip in effigy, apparently livid at the legend for stealing undue limelight from their favorite reptile.

1979-1987: Airing of popular children's show, Alexander Bunyip's Billabong,

2001: An unidentified American commercial pilot posts topless pictures of the English Queen on USENET, ruffling a few feathers to say the least. His pseudonym: Bertie the Bunyip

ZZZ: A Fascinating, If Somewhat Tangential, Anecdote

"However, one 'sporting' example might have been of interest. The Rovers Football Club had some notable Australian football successes in the far west of South Australia, Ceduna way. Visiting in 1989, I was shown a photo of the 1958 premiership side. Would I like to meet Keith Willoughby? Why Willoughby? I asked. Because he was the only surviving member of the 18! This meant that 17 of 18 men didn't make it to 50, perhaps 55, There is no genetic predisposition to want to die at those ages."

(Cited from "The Dark Side of Sport" by Colin Tatz, who argues that the recent success of aboriginal athletes only serves todisguise the unpopular reality that poor opportunities exist for aboriginal children to succeed in Australian society.)