Keeping Tabs Weekly, Fall 2020
Reprinted from The Aussie Tattler
It’s been three weeks, and twelve-year-old Charlotte Smith is still missing. The rest of her class from Broken Hill, NSW, emerged from the Outback after becoming lost during a wilderness observation daytrip, and they credit Charlotte with leading them through the rugged red terrain until they reached a road.
But when they were finally safe, Charlotte turned back into the bush. She’d been telling her fellow students that it wasn’t her who was guiding them to safety—it was a creature that doesn’t exist, one that only Charlotte could see.
A bunyip.
And the girls of St Brigid’s College for Girls believe Charlotte’s with that bunyip now, somewhere in the Outback.
A Penny Saved
The bunyip has acquired quite the negative reputation among Aussies. For over a hundred years, it’s been a pop culture monster—the villain in horror flicks, or a goofy animated sidekick in kids’ telly. But in the last two years, multiple sightings of this legendary greenish-blue aquatic terror have given it a new role: rescuer.
In May, a Silverton couple, Albert and Penny Worth, described an unexpected encounter with a kangaroo on a local golf course. The animal, clearly agitated by the presence of the golfers and Albert’s attempt to stare it down, boxed him repeatedly and knocked him over.
“That’s when that bunyip came onto the green,” Albert said. “It looked like a dog. Or a seal. It was a dogseal. And it fought that roo right off of me.”
His wife, Penny, however, saw no such creature.
“I drove that roo off with a nine iron,” she said. “I’ve no idea what he’s on about. Frankly, he drinks.”
Some Bunyip to Watch Over Me
A woman in Menindee tells a similar tale. Elisa Ray said her cavapoo, named Baby, was cornered by a pair of wild dogs, and she was unable to intervene.
“This little roly-poly creature came out of nowhere and lit right into those dogs,” she said.
“I gave her a personal alarm for her birthday. Sounds like your eardrums might blow out. That’s the truth of how she saved that nasty little dog. Ask me, though, she should’ve let it be,” her husband, Ted, said. “Then we could tell the papers a dingo ate our Baby.”
“You didn’t even charge that thing before you gave it to me,” Elisa replied, sighing and snuggling her rescued cavapoo. “I don’t know why I bother.”
