Patrick J Gallagher

Beasts of the Bush Patrick J Gallagher

The Australian continent was a strange place for early European settlers, full of exotic wildlife unlike anything encountered before. As settlements spread across the country, opening up new areas, it must have seemed like almost anything was possible with regards to the discovery of new flora and fauna. The legends of the local indigenous tribes were fertile ground for sowing the seeds of expectations. Folklore involving giant hairy men or strange aquatic creatures seemed all too plausible given the nature of other creatures already encountered and catalogued. So it should be no surprise that European accounts of the Yowie, the giant hairy man-beast (Australia's own Bigfoot), or the swamp-dwelling, seal-like Bunyip, began to be reported in the newspapers of the time. Did these creatures once roam the Australian bush? Might isolated communities of them still exist in the dense hinterlands? This book presents the available evidence of the former, while we still seek proof of the latter.