Mythology World Tour: Australia

Australia, the land of things that prove evolution is a biological weapon arms race. But the people who live there and the culture that has formed there have produced some of the most interesting creatures to be found. What sort? Well they have a range anywhere from larger beasts based on the ones you would find in the mortal plane (which is hard to imagine in a place producing 20 foot crocodiless) to wilder, more fantastic creatures born of the imaginations of people who believe in something as mind bending as Dreamtime.

Aboriginal stories range from the mundane to the truly ethereal and the average Australian’s sense of “fuck it all” gives them a wicked sense of creativity (and humor, as you’ll understand down the list). So for this week’s stop on the tour, let’s take a look at something a little unusual with…

Australian Mythology

Australian folklore, at its roots, is primarily animist. The idea of animism is that everything has a soul, including nature. We’re all familiar with these concepts in the ways of the Native Americans and the like, and the Aboriginal concepts are not much different. But where as most animist religions eventually evolve into something more human-like, bringing about gods and characters to take the place of natural phenomenon, the Australian Aborigines didn’t go about naming their thunder something like Zeus or Thor, nor did they create a god that looked like them.

The Aboriginal people of Australia instead maintained their animist nature and took it a step further by placing all of existence into a dream-like state. And the thing that created that all was, rather than something with a human face, one of the creatures that the Aborigines respected most… a big fucking snake.

The Rainbow Serpent

In the beginning of the Dreamtime (which, as you will remember, has no real beginning or end), there were many totem entities which molded the formless world into what we recognize today. Some of these entities were animals, some were human, but the one that is often cited to be the creator of all things is the Rainbow Serpent, which created mountains, ridges and valleys as it slithered up from beneath the surface of the Earth.

More importantly, the Rainbow Serpent is said to be in control of the most vital resource, especially for the arid lands of the outback – water. Living within deep permanent bodies of water, especially watering holes, it can control the flow of rivers and the fall of rain. In some cultures it comes to bring the rain, in others it comes to stop it. But what all versions of the story agree on is that it will be involved in the water cycle and that it is a vital part that either prevents drought or prevents flood. Either way, when there is rain, the Serpent isn’t far away.

The different subgroups within the Aborigines have different views on the Serpent and find it can be either one of many totems to create the world or the great creator itself. It can be identified as male or female, as one form or many forms. When represented as female it can sometimes even be depicted with breasts despite being a serpent. But, then again, it has also been depicted as a flying fox, which makes very little sense considering the relationship pythons have with flying foxes.

The serpent is unpredictable and wild, like the weather itself. One could even argue it as a metaphor for the work water itself has done to shape the world. And in that case it’s actually a pretty adept observation of the way river channels can carve the landscape over time. This makes sense with Aborigine culture having the time to study the world around them without much outside interference, being on the Australian continent for nearly 48,000 years.

Still, despite being associated with water itself, the Rainbow Serpent isn’t the sole entity to be bound to those same deep watering holes. And, while the Serpent is clearly based on the rainbow, other things are a little less gently inspired. One such example being…

The Bunyip

Water spirits are a major part of the Aboriginal culture. Though they rarely agree on the form of the spirits they inevitably have a shared belief that water is tied to their very existence and the existence of more mystic beings. There are multiple river monsters in the folklore, creator spirits which are based in water and creator spirits which create the water itself. The Murray River, which is the longest river in Australia, actually has multiple river monsters in it, including one simply known as a “water spirit”. This water spirit was a terrifying creature described to a European that encountered the native people living on that river. Modern belief is that the water spirit described in the 1840s was actually something much more commonly known (but not much understood) creatures of Australian folklore: the Bunyip.

The Bunyip is something of a mystery. Though it’s one of the most commonly shared cryptids of the Australian continent, not many people actually agree what it looks like or how it behaves. The descriptions have varied anywhere from “looking like a starfish” to being some sort of chimeric beast. But the one thing that can be agreed on by all on the continent: it’s not something to be fucked with.

The Bunyip’s most common description today is actually one that was constructed by the colonists while talking to the Aborigines about it. It has the face of a dog with a head shaped like a crocodiles on a dark furry body with a horse-like tail, flippers and Walrus-tusks (or, alternatively, a duck-bill).

Wouldn’t be the first time something with a duck-bill was deceptively dangerous.

But even that isn’t entirely agreed on. The fact is, no one really knows what a Bunyip looks like, and yet it’s something that many Aborigines believe to have existed. Non-native Australians have tried explaining the existence of the Bunyip as long as people in North America have tried to explain Bigfoot. In fact, they very much share the same space in the cultural mindset since, while Aborigines avoid the Bunyip, dumbass white guys have been trying to hunt the damn thing down for a couple centuries now. And, honestly, this is even apparent in the artwork of the creature, all drawn by Europeans and managing to turn the creature above into something more like this.

Behaviorally the things known about the Bunyip are that it has a tendency to attack humans near water, especially the weakest prey it can find, and basically behaves like a natural predator would. This has led a lot of the non-natives to believe that it’s a story of an actual animal such as a particularly aggressive form of seal or even one of the prehistoric monstrous marsupials that existed in the past.

Australia: It used to be worse

What is known is that it is a mammal, it swims, and it can kill someone, which really doesn’t narrow it down a whole lot in this world.

Perhaps Leopard Seals were originally Australian before shit got too real

But, due to its somewhat natural behavior descriptions, there are people in the world who believe that the Bunyip may actually exist. Though, like Bigfoot, the people who believe such things are discredited, they can make some arguments to the validity of such a creature existing in their world. That cannot, however, be said for…

Yara-ma-yha-who

Coming in at 4 feet tall and bright red, the Yara-ma-yha-who isn’t particularly fearsome sounding on paper. But when you go into the full details of the little bastards you’d find they’re probably one of the craziest fucking things you’d ever see. The Yara-ma-yha-who is a red angry looking dwarf creature with octopus-like suction cups on its fingers and a mouth large enough to swallow someone whole. Of course, we’re still not sounding all that strange considering where it came from… but then it attacks people.

The Yara-ma-yha-who lives in the treetops and drops on its prey from above, latching on with the suckers on its fingers and then draining the blood from its victim’s body like a vampire. This still isn’t the batshit end of what it does, as that’s typically something a vampire would normally do. But then the Yara-ma-yha-who swallows that victim whole and takes a nap. It then wakes up, vomits up the victim again, and eats them again. The victim remains alive during this entire process, being fed on like cow’s cud for as long as it takes for the victim to come out as another Yara-ma-yha-who.

They’re alive and aware of it the entire time.

Picture that, like being eaten by a snake and having it spit you out again to eat you again until eventually you come out as another snake. The whole time you’re too weak to struggle because it has drained you of your blood and continues to digest you the whole time. Australia, right?

But hey, they still have some fun with people. Not all of these stories are folklore, some of them are just urban legends cooked up to fuck with outsiders. One example?

The Drop Bear

Once upon a time, Australia was murder machines given free roam of the continent without much human interference. Then the Aborigines came and they managed to survive so the natural order let them stay so long as they knew what was up. Marsupials slowly got smaller and cuter as a result of Australia deciding not to fuck up their new human friends. Then white people came and the Aborigines and the continent begrudgingly accepted them based on the terms they also knew what was up. By this point, marsupials went from this:

To this:

“Man, our continent is deadly and all, but it got fluffy and cute at some point,” said the locals. “All these fucking tourists keep coming to take pictures of the teddy bears climbing our trees. We need to fix this shit.”

And so was born the legend of the Drop Bear.

The drop bear, like the Yara-ma-yha-who, is a tree top predator that enjoys the prospect of being death-from-above. The Drop Bear is said to be the giant carnivorous cousin of the Koala, living in the treetops and dropping on people with their massive frames to knock them unconscious before tearing them apart with razor sharp claws and teeth. The locals know, of course, that this one is completely bullshit (unlike the Bunyip) and yet they insist on telling it to people who happen to come around for the good old fashioned fun of creating a deadly monster in a land that already had a surplus of them to begin with.

Why?

Because, when you get used to the fact that everything is trying to kill you in that place, the fact that these things happen to have razor sharp claws and a bad temperament:

Is kind of boring if they’re not man-eaters too.