THE BUNYIP (2025 Edit)

A bunyip is killing people in the Glen Hartwell area

Carol and Jim Black sat together on the red-and-yellow blanket upon the pine-needle-covered forest floor. A hundred metres away swirled the near-flooding waters of the Yannan River, a few kilometres outside Glen Hartwell in the south-eastern Victorian countryside.

Jim leant back and gazed up at the heights of the leafy trees that seemed, like Jack’s beanstalk, to go all the way up to the clouds. Breathing in deeply and enjoying the fresh smell of pine and eucalyptus, Jim said, “Just smell that clean air, honey. We don’t get anything like this back in LA.”

“That’s for sure,” agreed the moderately pretty ash-blonde sitting beside him, taking goodies from their picnic hamper. “In LA it pays not to breathe too deeply for fear of choking on the gasoline fumes.”

Grabbing an empty milk jug, Carol stood, unmindful of the crackling pine needles beneath her bare feet. “I’m going to get some fresh water,” she said, heading toward the river.

“Okay, honey, don’t fall in,” cautioned Jim. He watched her jiggling behind for a second as she ran. Then, thinking, ‘This is the life!’ he lay back on the blanket and shut his eyes.

Seconds later, his eyes sprang open again as Carol began screaming, “Help me! Help me! Oh, Jeeesuuuus!”

“Carol?” cried Jim. He leapt to his feet and ran down to the riverbank ... Where there was no sign of his wife. “Jesus, where is she?” he wondered aloud. He scanned the tree-lined banks of the river in both directions.

“Where the Hell?” he began to say in mounting hysteria. Suddenly, there was a violent outburst of bubbles, like someone releasing their breath underwater, a few metres out into the river.

“Oh my God, she’s drowning!” cried Jim, racing fully clothed out into the river.

There was a second explosion of air bubbles, and then the water around him suddenly turned red.

“Oh God, she’s bleeding!” shrieked Jim. He began thrashing about in the water with his hands, feeling for his wife under the water.

There was a third great outburst of air bubbles, and then Carol Black’s ash-blonde head suddenly broke water.

“Oh, Carol, thank God you’re alive!” cried Jim. He raced over and grabbed her by the neck to help her to stand. “Thank God! Thank God!” sobbed Jim, holding her head against his chest.

There was a fourth great eruption of air bubbles, and then a long, slender arm and delicate hand floated to the surface.

“What the Hell?” asked Jim. And for the first time, he realised that it was only Carol’s severed head and neck that he held against him.

“Carol!” sobbed Jim.

Air bubbles continued to erupt around him, and his wife’s other arm and hand appeared. Then her left foot and leg, and finally her right foot and leg.


The tall, handsome, coffee-coloured man stood in the corridor watching the biology class through the glass door. An attractive, leggy brunette stood at the front of the class, hurriedly scrawling what could have been Mongolian for what the Aborigine, Joseph Garbarla, could tell on the blackboard with chalk.

Garbarla waited till the class had filed out, then knocked on the glass and entered. “How about letting me take you out to dinner tonight, if you’re not busy?” he asked.

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Geraldine Gleeson, the brunette. “How about coming back to my flat to let me cook us both some pizza, then we can make passionate love all night long.”

“Even better,” agreed Garbarla.

“How did your class go?” Geraldine asked.

“So, so,” said Garbarla. “At times, I think I’ll never get anyone in this area interested in learning about Aboriginal culture.”

“Give them time, honey,” she said, “they’ll come around.” She knew that it was difficult for him as a half-breed. Abducted by his white grandmother, Garbarla had been raised in Western society until returning to his tribe in 1982. Nine years later, in July 1991, he had grown to feel that he didn’t fit into black society any more than he had into white Australian society.


It was shortly after dawn the next morning when Garbarla and Geraldine were awakened by a heavy hammering on the door of her Lawson Street flat.

“Open up in the name of the law!” called a deep male voice. The hammering resumed.

“Oh my God!” cried Geraldine. Leaping out of bed, she began scouring around the floor beside and under the bed for her clothes.

“Relax,” said Garbarla, climbing slowly out of the other side of the bed. Slipping on a dressing gown, he calmly headed out into the lounge room to open the front door.

A few seconds later, Garbarla returned, followed by a huge bear of a man in a police sergeant’s uniform.

Geraldine squealed and pulled the quilt off the bed to cover her nudity.

“What’s the charge, officer?” she demanded. A Queenslander, newly arrived in Victoria, she was accustomed to being harassed by the state police.

“Relax,” said Garbarla, “this is a close friend of mine, Danny Ross. But everyone calls him ‘Bear’.” Turning to the cop, he said, “You’re a sick man, Bear, ‘Open up in the name of the law’!”

“Well, it certainly got your attention, didn’t it?” said Bear with a laugh.

“It did at that,” agreed Garbarla. He turned and grinned at Geraldine, who looked extremely embarrassed and not the least bit amused.”

“Would you mind turning your back, officer?” while I get dressed, she asked.

“If you insist,” said Bear, disappointed, turning. “I’d advise you to put on some outdoor clothes. I was hoping we could get your advice on a murder I’m investigating.”

“My advice?” asked Geraldine.

“In your capacity as a biochemist,” Bear explained.

“Oh, I see,” said Geraldine. “So that explains why you came hammering on my door at first light, crying, ‘Open up in the name of the law’!”

“She's a feisty broad,” teased Garbarla. Then, when Geraldine glared at him, “What? I thought I was allowed to call you a feisty broad?”

“A feisty sheila, maybe,” conceded the brunette with a laugh.


Half an hour later, they were standing on the pine-needle-coated bank of the Yannan River. Geraldine and the local coroner, Jerry ‘Elvis’ Green, knelt taking samples of the bloody water. Behind them, Bear’s constable, Terry Blewett, snapped off dozens of pictures of the bloody water and the remains of Carol Black on the bank.

“Still no sign of the torso?” asked Bear as they walked across to the river.

“Not so far,” agreed Elvis, nicknamed due to his long, black sideburns. “We’ve got the head and all four limbs, but no torso. Jesus! Who’d be sick enough to do something like this, then steal the torso?”

“Christ, I see what you mean,” said Geraldine.

She turned away from the river and began examining the body pieces; while Garbarla held back, not keen on seeing the remains up close.

“Weirdness always seems to come in threes,” said Bear. “First, we’ve got an invasion of frogs, then we start getting reports of a Tasmanian tiger in the area. Now this.”

“A frog invasion?” asked Geraldine, looking back toward them with interest.

“That’s right,” agreed Bear. “The countryside has been overrun by millions of the damn things for the last few months.”

“It’s because of the record rainfall we’ve had from May through July this year,” explained Elvis. “While the rest of the damn country is complaining about being in a drought, we get deluged and overrun with frogs.”

“Big frogs too,” said Garbarla. “Some are almost as big as cats. They’re not dangerous or anything, but they’re a damn nuisance.” As Geraldine went back to examining the bloody water, Garbarla turned to Bear Ross and asked, “What’s this about a Tasmanian tiger sighting?”

“Two sightings so far,” said Bear. “The first by Mark and Don Blythe out near Pettiwood.”

“They’re the town drunks,” pointed out Elvis Green. “You should have asked them to blow into a breathalyser after taking their statements.”

“The second was Deni Borowitz,” said Bear.

“Who’s he?” asked Geraldine.

“A local tractor salesman,” said Bear. “A teetotaller and about as old-fashioned and strait-laced as you can get.”

“Not the kind to make up stories about seeing Tassie tigers,” Garbarla finished for him.

They were finishing up an hour or so later when Geraldine suddenly tripped and almost fell backwards into the river.

“Holy shit!” she cried, fighting to keep her footing.

“What is it?” asked Garbarla. He ran across to help steady her.

“I trod in something slimy,” she said, grimacing as she looked down at her left shoe.

“Something green and slimy,” said Garbarla, seeing the squashed remains of a frog. “We told you that they were everywhere.”


After leaving the river, Elvis, Bear, and Geraldine returned to Glen Hartwell to analyse their samples. Feeling left out, Garbarla returned to his tribal village a few kilometres beyond the town of Harpertown.

In the 1960s, when he was a child, the village had been a collection of wood and bark humpies and lean-toes. When he had returned in 1982, Garbarla had been dismayed to find it metamorphosed into a great mass of one-, two-, and three-room corrugated-iron huts, separated by a series of narrow dirt “streets”. After nine years, he still felt a great sadness at the Westernisation of his tribal people.

After a late dinner of red kangaroo, Garbarla walked out into the brown dirt desert beyond the village. ‘How can I ask Geraldine to come and live here?’ he thought. He had met Geraldine ten years earlier at Queensland University while doing his B.A. Then, returning to Victoria, he had thought that he would never see her again, until she had turned up at Glen Hartwell six weeks ago. Now he didn’t want to lose her again. ‘But I can’t ask her to live in a corrugated-iron hut!’ he thought. ‘And I can’t abandon my tribal people again.’ Although after nearly a decade, he still had doubts that he could ever fit back in with the Aboriginal way of life.

Garbarla walked for kilometres. Until suddenly he was startled by the appearance of a strange, shimmering band of air. Like hot air seen in the distance in the desert, except that the shimmering did not recede as he approached and seemed to emit its own light. So that it was visible when Garbarla reached it, although by then it was well after dark.

‘What the Hell is it?’ Garbarla wondered.

He approached within a few metres. Up close, the shimmering seemed like a slightly misted or dirty window, which could be seen through, but with some difficulty.

Peering through the “window” Garbarla saw what looked like sun-lit forestlands. ‘My God, what is it?’ Garbarla wondered. He reached out one hand toward it, and then drew back, afraid to touch the window.

Hearing splashing, he peered to the left and could just make out a small billabong -- a natural pool. He could see the backs of creatures with long, green, scaly, crocodile-like tails diving into the billabong. But peer as he might, Garbarla could not quite make out what the creatures were. ‘Some kind of Cayman or alligator, perhaps?’ he wondered. But he knew that there supposedly was no species of crocodile or alligator in Victoria. They live up north in the sultrier climes.

For nearly fifteen minutes, Garbarla strained to see what the diving creatures were. Finally, one of the beasts turned and started back toward him. As the animal climbed out of the billabong, Garbarla gasped. Seeing its bull-terrier-like head, he thought, ‘Mark and Don Blythe’s Tasmanian tiger!’ But then, as it came ashore, he saw its large golden, kangaroo-like torso; powerful emu-like coiled steel legs, long crocodilian tail and huge feathered, eagle-like wings.

“Holy shit, what the Hell?” Garbarla said.

For a second or two, the creature stood sunning itself dry. Then there was a loud “Grrrrrup” of frogs’ croaks in the nearby forest. The creature’s long ears shot up, and it spun around toward the direction of the sound. Then, in the blink of an eye, the creature vanished.

‘My God, I’ve never seen anything move that fast!’ Garbarla thought.


“It was just unbelievable,” Garbarla related an hour later. He felt foolish sitting on the woven grass mat on the dirt floor inside the old man’s corrugated-iron hut, relating to a village Elder what he had seen.

The tall, spindly, thin, grey-haired, wrinkle-skinned Elder considered Garbarla’s story for a while. Then, instead of laughing, Weari-Wyingga said, “The Dream-Time teaches us that there is no such thing as absolute reality. Many varied, contradictory realities can exist, all equally true. That is how a modern Aborigine can be a Christian, yet still believe in the Great Rainbow Snake, Gurugadji the Emu-Man, or the bunyip. In one reality, Jesus is real, and the Dream-Time is not. In another, equally valid reality, the bunyip, or other Dream-Time creator-destroyers, are real, and Jesus is not. So there can be no contradiction ....”

“But what I saw ...?” interrupted Garbarla.

“What you saw was a reality leak. A gateway from one reality to another. Sometimes these leaks form when we believe too strongly in another reality. Then that reality can start to become our reality by usurping, taking over the reality in which we live.”

“But the Thylacine-headed creature ...?”

“The Tasmanian tiger-headed creature is a bunyip,” explained the old man.

“But the bunyip is only a myth, it doesn’t exist!” protested Garbarla.

“Not in our reality,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. “But as I have just said, if enough people start to believe in the bunyip, its reality can start to become our reality. Traditionally, different Aboriginal tribes believed in three different creator-destroyer god-demons: the Great Rainbow Serpent, Gurugadji the Emu-man, and the most fearsome of them all, the bunyip.

“Up until December 1984, nearly a third of the Aborigines in Victoria believed in Mamaragan: the Great Rainbow Snake. But at that time, we were forced to use the Dark Stone and Dreaming-Time magic to send the rainbow serpent to eternal sleep after it killed most of the males in this village. After that, most of the tribes that had formerly worshipped Mamaragan began to worship the bunyip instead.”

The old man paused for a few seconds, considering. “Possibly so many extra believers have started to will the bunyip into existence in our reality?”

“Will it into existence?”

“Yes, the Dream-Time Heritage tells us that if enough people believe in something, they can unintentionally will it into existence.”

“But how could the creature move so fast? And why did it race after the croaking frogs?”

“Supposedly, bunyips can outrun a fast-moving car,” said Weari-Wyingga. “And frogs are their main source of food. You can usually find frogs in abundance wherever bunyips are lurking.”


Errol Thomas couldn’t believe his luck. For almost a year, he had been trying to get Leila Wilde to go out with him without success. Yet here they were sitting together in the back of his Fairlane, in the middle of the forest, doing some heavy-duty kissing and petting.

‘Jesus, she’s got the most beautiful tits that I’ve ever seen!’ he thought, gazing down toward her wide-open yellow cardigan. He had started to reach for one of those luscious orbs when suddenly Leila squealed and pulled away.

“What’s the matter?” asked Errol. He wondered if he had tried to go too far on the first date.

“Get me an apple,” demanded the gorgeous redhead.

“An apple?” asked Errol, astonished. “There are no apple trees out here, honey, only gums and pines.” He breathed in deeply, then said, “Eucalyptus and pine ...” Then he stopped as he saw the towering apple tree through the car’s rear windscreen. “Jesus, but there can’t be any apple trees out here?”

“Pick me an apple!” demanded Leila Wilde, pouting. She was used to men jumping to obey when she asked for anything.

“What? Er, okay,” said Errol. He reluctantly climbed out of the back seat, leaving Leila in the car.

Errol stopped a couple of metres away and stared at the base of the apple tree. A thick layer of gum leaves circled the base of the tree.

“What in the world ...?” said Errol, staring at the circle. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the dungy smell of sap or gum resin that coated the leaves, gelling them together. ‘Some kind of Abo mumbo-jumbo!’ he decided, knowing that there was an Aboriginal settlement not far away.

“Well, here goes noth ...” said Errol, stepping over the gum-leaf circle.

“Here goes noth ...?” repeated Leila, puzzled. She leant out the back door of the Fairlane and stared back at him.

“Errol?” she called, amazed, and a little frightened by the frozen-in-mid-step pose which Errol Thomas had adopted the instant that he had stepped into the gum leaf circle.

“Oh my God!” shrieked Errol.

“What ...?” asked Leila.

She started to laugh, thinking that it was a bizarre joke. But when she ran across to investigate, she saw the look of sheer terror in his grey eyes.

“Errol, what ...?” began Leila. Hearing a rustling in the leaves, she looked up ....

And saw what seemed to be a winged kangaroo crouching in the branches. The creature let out a strange, almost doglike “Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” barking sound, then dropped out of the tree onto Errol Thomas.

“Oh God, no!” shrieked Errol before the creature ripped out his throat.

Leila watched, too shocked to even run away as the lifeless head of Errol Thomas fell to the ground and rolled toward her, stopping only centimetres from her feet. Then, before the redhead’s eyes, the creature began to tear Errol’s body limb from limb.

Finally, it picked up Errol’s limbless torso in its wolf-like jaws and stepped out of the blue gum circle, toward the redhead.

“No, please,” said Leila, thinking that the bizarre animal was starting after her now. But the creature ignored the redhead and started to run into the forest. As it ran, it flapped its oversized wings and -- to the shocked disbelief of Leila Wilde -- launched itself into flight.

“Oh God, Errol!” Leila cried, looking back toward the apple tree.

Except that it was no longer an apple tree. But a common blue gum. Around which was spread the head and severed limbs of Errol Thomas, liberally soaked in his own blood.


“The bunyip can not only outrun a racing car,” persisted Weari-Wyingga, despite Garbarla’s obvious scepticism, “but it can also swim like a porpoise or fly through the air like an eagle. Although its favourite food is frogs, it will attack and kill humans or other mammals. But it only devours the torso, leaving behind the head and limbs.”

Garbarla fidgeted restlessly, not knowing what to make of the old man’s story. ‘Surely it can’t be true?’ he thought, staring at the old man, who sat on a grass mat on the dirt floor in the front room of the corrugated-iron hut. The squat red-gum table between them and the mats they sat on were the only furnishings in the grey-walled room.

“Sometimes the bunyip forms a Circle of Power. A circle of gum leaves or pine needles held together by its faeces. Anything stepping into the Circle of Power is frozen rigid, although it can still speak, bark, meow or whatever. A bunyip has the power to hypnotise people into seeing something that they like, to lure them to step forward into the Circle of power ....”

They were still talking early the next morning when they heard the sound of a car approaching the village.

After a few minutes, there was a knock on the iron door of Weari-Wyingga’s hut.

“Come in,” called the old man.

Bear Ross entered and said, “We’ve found another one.”

“Another one?” asked Garbarla.

“A collection of scattered human parts: head and limbs, minus the torso. Geraldine is already there, so I thought you might like to come along?”

“Yeah, all right,” said Garbarla a little reluctantly.

To their surprise, old Weari-Wyingga said, “I would like to come too.”


Arriving at the forest site, they found Geraldine Gleeson and the coroner both examining the remains of Errol Thomas beneath the blue gum where he had been killed.

Although Garbarla was reluctant to view the remains, old Weari-Wyingga rushed forward eagerly to see them.

“Come on,” said Bear, tapping Garbarla on one shoulder.

They headed across to where Leila Wilde was being comforted by a plump, middle-aged policewoman, Petra Drysdale, near Errol Thomas’ green Ford Fairlane, a dozen metres away.

“How’s it going?” asked Garbarla.

“Not bad,” said Petra. Then nodding toward Geraldine, “I see you’re doing all right for yourself.”

Garbarla blushed. “She’s an old friend from my Brisbane Uni. days,” he said.

“Oh, is she?” teased Petra. “She looks more like a young friend.”

“How are you holding up, Miss Wilde?” asked Bear Ross.

For a moment, she failed to answer, merely stared glassy-eyed at them. But finally she said, “It was an apple tree before! Now it’s a gum tree!”

“That’s all she’s been saying for the last half hour,” Petra whispered to Garbarla.

Garbarla started to comment, but was drowned out as seemingly millions of frogs began “Grrrrrruping” at that instant.

“Damn this frog-plague,” said Garbarla when finally they quietened down a bit. Then he remembered Weari-Wyingga telling him earlier, “Frogs are their main source of food. You can usually find frogs in abundance wherever bunyips are lurking.”

“My God, frogs in abundance,” said Garbarla.

“What are you ...?” asked Bear Ross.

He stopped as something large and golden-brown suddenly raced past them into the forest behind them.

“Jesus Christ, what was that?” asked Bear, alarmed by the creature, but unable to make out what it was at the speed it travelled.

“A crocodile! Oh my God, a crocodile!” shrieked Leila Wilde. “That must be what killed Errol!”

“But I thought you said that it dropped out of a tree onto him?” pointed out Bear before he could stop himself.

He blushed in embarrassment as Leila Wilde stared at him. After a few seconds, she began to sob heartily.

“I’d better take her back to the Glen,” offered Petra.

“All right,” agreed Bear, handing her the keys to his car. After they had left, Bear said to Garbarla, “Well, let’s leave the goreophiles to check out the murder scene and see if we can find out what raced past us before.”

“Okay,” agreed Garbarla, glad not to have to view the latest human remains.

“Watch out,” warned Bear.

Startled, Garbarla looked down and saw that he had almost trodden on what looked like a huge, green cat. But he realised, ‘My God, that’s the biggest damn frog that I’ve ever seen!’ Aloud, he said, “I didn’t think we had Queensland Cane Toads in this state?”

“It’s not a Queensland Cane Toad,” said Bear. “Just a common green frog.”

“That size?” asked Garbarla, astonished. “The damn thing’s as big as a bowl of jelly.”

“And just as sticky if you step in it,” joked Bear.

“Don’t go too far into the bush,” called Weari-Wyingga, looking up from where he knelt by the remains of Errol Thomas.

“No, Mum, I won’t,” joked Garbarla. Then, receiving a stern look from the old man, he said, “All right, we won’t.”

“Come on, let’s get out of here before he banishes you from the tribe,” joked Bear.

With a laugh, Garbarla followed him into the forest.

Despite the recent rains, the pine needles still crunched underfoot, and there was a pleasant pine smell in the air. Along with the smell of eucalyptus from the red-, blue-, lemon-scented-, and ghost-gums.

Taking a sniff of the air, Bear said, “Smell that fresh salt air.”

“That only means that it’s going to start raining again soon,” pointed out Garbarla.

He sidestepped in time to avoid a group of three large frogs, only to hear a squelching as Bear stepped on a frog.

“Damn, looks like I stepped in a bowl of lime jelly,” said Bear.

Garbarla stood by, chuckling as Bear did his best to scrape the squashed frog off his shoe.

As they walked deeper into the forest, the concentration of frogs increased until they covered almost every centimetre of the forest floor. Plus, most of the lower limbs of the trees.

“Jesus,” said Bear, awed, “it’s like the film The Birds, only frogs.”

“Perhaps we can co-write a sequel called The Frogs?” joked Garbarla.

“Sounds good to ...” began Bear. He stopped as something half their height, but twice as long, raced past seemingly within a metre of them. “What the hell was that?” He wrinkled up his nose at the pungent “wet-dog” smell of the creature.

“According to Weari-Wyingga, it’s a bunyip,” said Garbarla.

“A bunyip? Hey, that would be an even better title for a gross-out horror film!” joked Bear. He started to laugh, but quickly stopped when he saw that Garbarla hadn’t joined in. “You are joking, aren’t you?”

“No, that’s what he says it is.”

“But bunyips are only ...” began Bear. He stopped himself from saying Aboriginal superstition, changing it to “Dream-Time legend.”

“According to Weari-Wyingga, Dream-Time legends can come to life if enough people believe in them.”

“Maybe we’d better get back,” said Bear. “The forest’s too thick with croaking bowls of lime green jelly anyway.”

On cue, the frogs began to croak in unison, almost deafening them.

“Jesus, what is this, ‘Bach’s 417th sonata for frogs and bunyips’?” cried Bear, covering his ears with his hands.

“Let’s get back!” shouted Garbarla. He started to run toward where Geraldine and the others were, but suddenly stopped.

“What is it?” asked Bear.

Stopping, he stared at the second tiny, torso-less corpse.


“Oh my God, who would be sick enough to mutilate a koala this way?” asked Geraldine, staring down at the tiny corpse.

“Exactly like the two human corpses,” said Elvis Green, quickly examining the small, grey-furred corpse. “A large adult male.” However, he was less interested in the koala than Geraldine was.

Geraldine and Elvis examined the mutilated koala for a moment, and then Geraldine asked, “Are you going to gather up the remains?”

“Of a koala?” asked Elvis. “Not likely. I’ve got two human bodies to be concerned with.”

“Then, if you have no objection, I’ll collect them,” she said.

“Be my guest. You’ll find specimen canisters in the ambulance.”

He pointed to where Glen Hartwell’s only ambulance stood, fifty metres from Errol Thomas’ Fairlane.

“Bloody frogs,” cursed one of the ambulance men as he trod on one of the amphibians, which burst with a loud pop.

As the men loaded the remains of Errol onto the stretcher, Geraldine went across to the back of the ambulance. She poked around in a storage cupboard under the stretcher bed until she found a collection of pale blue, translucent plastic, vacuum-seal bowls of various sizes.

Looking round the ambulance doors, she held up one of the plastic bowls and called to the coroner, “You mean these Tupperware bowls?”

Elvis Green laughed, then said, “They’re not Tupperware bowls, even if they look like it. But yes, they’re what I meant.”

As Geraldine returned with half a dozen of the canisters, Garbarla teased her, “Tupperware bowls, indeed!”

Geraldine stuck out her tongue at him and then said, “Well, that’s what they look like.”

She quickly placed the paws and legs of the koala in four long canisters and its head in a fifth.

“One left over,” said Geraldine, holding up the sixth canister. Looking round the frog-infested pine-and-gum forest, she said, “I might take away one of these frogs in the last one.”

“A frog?” asked Bear, mirroring Garbarla’s thoughts. “Why the hell would you want a frog?”

“Normally, I wouldn’t. But I wondered if there was any special reason for this strange frog invasion.”

“It’s because of all the rain we’ve had lately, isn’t it?” asked Garbarla.

“The rain brings out frogs,” agreed Geraldine, “but not in this kind of plague proportions.”

She reached across to scoop up one of the frogs, which leapt out of reach at the last second.

“Damn!” she cursed. “Stupid thing, why don’t you stay still?”

“Isn’t that just like a frog?” joked Garbarla. “They gladly stand there and let you step on them, but when you want to scoop one up alive, it buggers off.”

“It’s the same old story,” agreed Bear with a laugh as a second frog narrowly avoided Geraldine’s efforts to scoop it up. As he spoke, he stepped backwards, and there was a loud pop as a frog burst beneath his foot. “I think I’ve trapped one for you,” he said, almost choking from laughter.

“Thanks, you’re a great help!” she said.

While Bear did his best to wipe the squashed frog off the bottom of his shoe, Geraldine slowly crept up on another frog. Garbarla stood behind her, watching, trying his best not to snicker at her efforts.

“Shut up!” she hissed, trying to whisper, yet still get her anger across. She had almost trapped the fist-sized frog when old Weari-Wyingga suddenly raced forward from where he had been near the blue gum tree.

“What the Hell?” Geraldine cried as she fell over onto her backside on the wet grass as the Elder rushed past her.

As Garbarla helped her up again, Weari-Wyingga raised his sandaled left foot and stomped down hard on the frog that Geraldine had almost caught.

“No frogs! No frogs!” shouted the old man. He ran around the forest stamping upon six or eight frogs -- which each burst like a popgun shot -- in quick succession.

“Jesus, what the hell’s he doing?” said Geraldine, climbing to her feet again. She started to pat down the back of her jeans with one hand.

“Here, let me give you a hand,” said Garbarla, using it as an excuse to pat her behind.

“Hey, don’t take liberties,” she joked. But she did nothing to push his hand away.

“Elvis, give me a hand,” called Bear.

He and Elvis Green ran across to grab the old man.

“Kill frogs! Got to kill the frogs!” shrieked Weari-Wyingga, as they half-led, half-carried him across to the ambulance, which had already started up.

“Hold on, we’ve got another patient for you,” called Elvis Green. The ambulance screeched to a halt again.

“What’s up?” called the driver.

“Help me get him into the back,” Elvis said to Bear, ignoring the driver’s question.

“Got to kill frogs! Got to kill frogs!” shrieked Weari-Wyingga, as they lifted him into the back of the ambulance.

“Just calm down, old fellow,” said the attendant. “You’re all right now.” Taking over from Bear, he helped Elvis lift Weari-Wyingga into the back of the ambulance, where Elvis quickly sedated him.

“My God, what happened to him?” asked Geraldine.

“He thinks the killings are being done by a bunyip,” explained Garbarla, feeling stupid as he said it. “And that the frogs attract bunyips.” He hesitated, fearing ridicule, but finally said, “Maybe you’d better not take one of the frogs.”

“What? Whyever not?” she demanded. “Just because the old man flipped his lid? I feel sorry for him, but you can’t expect me to take any of that mumbo-jumbo seriously.” She stopped suddenly as Garbarla flushed red and she realised what she had said.

“I’m sorry,” she apologised, “I didn’t mean that how it sounded.” She stepped forward and gave him a quick hug. “But come on now, I’m a scientist and you’re a teacher. Neither of us can believe that bunyips exist, can we? How could we?”

Garbarla started to tell her what he had seen beyond his tribal village the previous day. But then he stopped himself, not wanting her to think that he had flipped his lid also. “I guess not,” he agreed reluctantly.

“Good,” she said. “Now come and help me catch one of these damn frogs. Assuming Weari-Wyingga didn’t turn them all into lime jelly.”

It took almost five minutes for them to trap one of the frogs, but finally Geraldine cried, “Eureka,” as a frog obligingly hopped into the blue bowl instead of away from it.

“Won’t it smother?” asked Garbarla as she put the lid on. He hoped the idea might make her let it go.

“No, I’ll punch a few air holes in the top,” she said, as they walked over to the ambulance to borrow a sharp knife.


Back at Glen Hartwell, Geraldine and Garbarla took the remains of the mutilated koala and the captive frog to her spare bedroom-cum-laboratory. Then, since it was early afternoon, Geraldine microwaved them some pizza for lunch.

Then, Garbarla sat on the bed in the bedroom-cum-lab and watched while Geraldine performed a plethora of scientific tests on the limbs and head of the mutilated koala.

“All I can say for sure is that the limbs were chewed off, not cut away,” said Geraldine hours later. “Other than that, it could have been killed by a bunyip for all I can tell.”

“Come on, let’s have dinner now,” suggested Garbarla. “I’ll take you out to that new fish-and-chip shop that’s just opened in Boothy Street.”

“Well, hey big spender, spend a little time with me,” said Geraldine with a laugh. Then stretching wide to relieve a crick in her back, “On second thoughts, my back’s not up to the walk. How about if I microwave us something, then we can jump straight into the sack for a marathon sex session?”

“Sounds good to me,” agreed Garbarla. He followed her to the bathroom to wash up, then to the kitchen.

They made love for nearly three hours before they both collapsed, feeling half dead but happy.

Less than half an hour later, though, they were both awakened by what sounded like an explosion in the next room.

“Oh my God, we’ve got burglars!” cried Geraldine.

“Stay here,” said Garbarla, trying to sound braver than he felt.

Ignoring his advice, Geraldine slipped on her dressing gown and followed after Garbarla as he crept across to the bedroom door. Through the door they could hear heavy footsteps and the sound of crunching glass.

“He’s not making any effort to be quiet, is he?” whispered Geraldine.

‘Maybe he doesn’t need to?’ thought Garbarla, wishing that he had some kind of weapon. He had visions of coming face-to-face with a power-lifter burglar.

When they opened the door, though, they saw ....

“Oh my God, what is it?” shrieked Geraldine.

She stared in shock at the man-sized creature with the bull-terrier head of a Tasmanian tiger, body of a kangaroo, wings of an eagle, long crocodilian tail and powerful coil-like legs of an emu.

“It’s a bunyip,” said Garbarla.

“A bunyip?” said Geraldine in disbelief.

“I’ve seen it before,” admitted Garbarla.

“So why did it smash its way into my lounge room of all places?”

“I don’t ...” began Garbarla. Then he realised, “It must have come for the frog we took.”

“The frog?” asked Geraldine, sounding puzzled.

“According to Weari-Wyingga, bunyips mainly eat frogs.”

The bunyip began swishing its large reptilian tail from side to side, thumping it into one end of the sofa, then the other. Then, as though impatient, it began flapping its wings like a clipped rooster trying to take to flight.

“He told me that if you take one of its frogs, a bunyip will pursue you -- even kill you if necessary -- to get its frog back.”

“‘No frogs! No frogs!’” quoted Geraldine, remembering the old man running around the forest stomping on frogs so she couldn’t trap one. “So he wasn’t having an attack?”

“No, he was trying to protect us from that thing.”

“Well, what can we do?”

“We have to give it back its frog,” said Garbarla. “Where is it?”

“In the lab. Just inside the door, on the table.”

“All right, wait here.” He eased into the lounge room, hoping that the bunyip would not attack him.

“Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” shrieked the bunyip, seeing him. However, it stood its ground staring at the lab door.

Garbarla returned from the lab. He held up the plastic canister with the frog inside.

Hearing his approach, the bunyip turned and raced across to Garbarla -- smashing to pieces a plaster lamp with its crocodilian tail as it turned.

“Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” the creature cried angrily. But it stopped in mid-stride when Garbarla removed the lid to reveal the sleeping frog.

“Yum, yum, nice juicy froggy,” said Garbarla, easing his way past the bunyip, toward the shattered apartment window.

The bunyip followed, seemingly transfixed by the sight of the large frog.

“Well, here goes nothing,” said Garbarla. He threw the canister, frog and all, out through the window.

For a second, it seemed that the bunyip would not react. Then it leapt up onto the back of the sofa and out through the shattered window.

“Come on,” said Garbarla. “Grab up some clothes, we’re getting out of here.”

“Where to?” asked Geraldine. She raced back into the bedroom to do as instructed.

“Back to my village,” said Garbarla, chasing after her. “Just in case that damn thing decides to come back.”


Forty minutes later, they pulled up in Geraldine’s yellow Mini Minor at the edge of the Aboriginal village outside Harpertown.

“Shush!” warned Geraldine as Garbarla slammed the passenger door. “There’s no need to wake the whole village.”

As he started after her, Garbarla smelt the fresh salt air blowing in from the forest. In the past, it had always seemed pleasant. Now it made him think that if the rains kept up, the frog invasion would never end. ‘And where there are frogs, bunyips are lurking!’ he thought. Although she was well ahead of him, Garbarla could tell by the tense way that she moved that Geraldine was thinking the same thing.


The next morning, Geraldine woke to see the attractive, pale-brown face of Debbie Bulilka, Garbarla’s mother, staring through the doorway at them.

Seeing her eyes open, Debbie asked, “Garbarla awake?”

Geraldine quickly elbowed him in the back, eliciting a sleepy-sounding, “Oh shit!” then said, “Yes, yes, he is.”

After a hasty breakfast in the front room, they set off through the village to locate old Weari-Wyingga. They walked past Aboriginal women weaving grass and cane mats, grinding grain into flour, and carving boomerangs and wooden spears.

“Let’s hope that he’s not still under sedation,” said Garbarla. He hesitated outside the old man’s hut, finally raising a fist to the door to knock.

The old man grinned widely, obviously pleased to see them. Ushering them into the front room of his corrugated-iron hut, Weari-Wyingga said, “Glad to see you escaped the bunyip.”

“Only just,” said Geraldine. On Garbarla’s instruction, she lowered herself to sit cross-legged -- looking extremely uncomfortable -- on one of the woven grass mats around a squat red-gum table, which was the only piece of furniture in the front room.

“Only just?” asked Weari-Wyingga.

Despite his great age, he managed to sit on one of the mats considerably more gracefully than either Garbarla or Geraldine.

“Yes,” agreed Garbarla. He went on to quickly relate what had happened at Geraldine’s flat the previous night. “Frankly, I’m at a loss to know what to do next.”

Weari-Wyingga pondered a few seconds, and then said, “Kuperee.”

“Huh!” said Geraldine. She looked toward Garbarla, but he only shrugged, as puzzled as she.

“Kuperee is a giant black kangaroo in Dream-Time legend,” explained the old man.

“A giant black kangaroo?” asked Geraldine. Looking back over Weari-Wyingga’s shoulder toward the large, four-paned window, she saw women and children walking past the hut. One small child carrying a toy boomerang in its right hand grinned at her, like any other child on its way to play.

“That is right,” agreed Weari-Wyingga. “The Dream-Time Heritage tells that in the time of the Dreaming, Kuperee attacked the human race and killed and ate hundreds of Aborigines, until two brothers, Indinya and Pilia, killed Kuperee with their father’s magic stone-axe.”

“Magic stone-axe?” Geraldine asked.

Garbarla knew that she was having trouble believing any of the story. ‘Jesus, I’m having trouble believing it!’ he thought. Then he remembered the eagle-winged bunyip flying through Geraldine’s lounge room window, swishing its crocodilian tail from side to side, smashing Geraldine’s furniture. ‘I suppose a giant black kangaroo and a magic stone-axe are no more improbable than that.’

“Although Kuperee killed and ate humans, his favourite food was bunyips. For that reason, Kuperee is the only thing that bunyips are terrified of.”

“So what are you suggesting?” asked Geraldine.

“I am suggesting that we must call up Kuperee,” said the old man. Then, sensing her scepticism, “I don’t mean on the telephone. I mean, we must hold a series of corroborees, over three days, to call Kuperee from the Dreaming-Time, into our reality.”

“And you want us both to take part in the corroboree?” asked Geraldine.

“The corroboree must be an all-male gathering. Garbarla may attend, but unfortunately ....”

“I may not,” she finished for him.

Weari-Wyingga held up his hands and shrugged apologetically.


Although like Geraldine, he was sceptical of the corroboree calling up Kuperee to drive away the bunyip, Garbarla decided that it was his duty to attend.

“I’m sorry,” he apologised as she prepared to leave the village. She leant away to stop him kissing her on the cheek. Blushing, he asked, “Where will you go?”

“Back to my flat,” she replied.

“But you can’t! That thing might return there.”

“Not likely, it was only after its frog, remember. Besides, I have an idea of my own how to kill this bunyip thing.”

“How?”

“Come with me, and I’ll show you,” she pleaded.

Although tempted, he watched the steady stream of Aboriginal males, mostly near-naked, wearing ceremonial ochre body-paint, and said, “I really can’t. I have to help Weari-Wyingga try it his way first.”


Garbarla sat on the hard dirt before the ceremonial fire in the circular grove of blue-gum trees. A cooling wind brought the smell of pine from the nearby forest, and the sweet smell of eucalyptus wafted like incense from the fire where four large ghost-gum logs burnt.

Around the fire sat Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla and half the males of the village. The other half danced round the fire, doing the sacred kangaroo dance: some hopping like kangaroos, their hands bent up near their chests in imitation of a kangaroo’s small front paws. Others stood or walked slowly, awkwardly, their heads cocked into the air like an old man roo -- a big boomer -- listening with his doglike ears, or sniffing at the breeze to catch the aroma of any predators lurking nearby in the native grass or behind pine or eucalypt trees.

The dance seemed to go on endlessly, monotonously, for hours around the ceremonial fire. Its repetition had almost lulled Garbarla to sleep when a hand tapping his left shoulder startled him.

Looking up, he saw the smiling, buck-toothed face of Alex Jalburgul Gul smiling down at him. “Come on,” encouraged Alex, “our turn now.”

“Do you want to lead, or shall I?” asked Garbarla, drawing another toothy grin from Alex.

‘Here comes the moment of truth!’ thought Garbarla. ‘When I finally make a fool of myself in front of the entire tribe.’ For nine years since returning to his people, in 1982, he had managed, as a “white man”, to avoid having to take part in any ceremonial dances. But due to the seriousness of the occasion, Weari-Wyingga had insisted that every male in the tribe join in the kangaroo dance.


Returning to her flat, Geraldine stared in dismay at the remains of her lounge room. ‘Oh God, my stereo is history,’ she thought, staring at the mass of broken glass and electrical equipment on the floor. Mixed in with seemingly every LP and seven-inch single in her record collection.

“Jesus Christ!” she said in frustration at the sight of her rare and virtually irreplaceable collection of U.S. blues and jazz classics reduced to rubble. Seeing the shattered black crumbs of her favourite Count Basie LP, she thought, ‘Oh well, I wanted to upgrade to the new Compact Disc format anyway!’ Then she began to cry.

When she had finished, she forced herself to sweep up the wreckage of her collection. Then after a quick meal, she headed for her spare bedroom-cum-laboratory.

There was a strong smell of cobalt and iodine as she opened the door. Looking round the racks of jars of varicoloured liquids, powders and crystals, she thought, ‘Thank God it didn’t get in here!’

Trying her best not to think of her lost record collection, Geraldine set to work mixing chemicals.


After six hours’ dancing, Garbarla’s knees felt as though they were breaking. He wished that he had some way to get in contact with Geraldine. But there was no phone in the village, and he knew that he would not be allowed to drive to nearby Harpertown midway through a three-day corroboree ceremony.


After three days, Geraldine had been on the brink of screaming when finally she found the chemical cocktail that she was looking for. ‘I hope!’ she thought, holding up the beaker of green-black liquid to eye level.

‘Now I’ve got some painting to do!’ she thought, taking off her white lab coat. “But first I’d better see how Suzanna’s painting is coming,” she said to herself.


Ten minutes later, she parked her Mini Minor in the teachers’ car park at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology. Then she headed toward the arts and crafts wing, where she hoped to find Suzanna Hoffman, the head painting instructress.

“Well, what do you think?” asked Suzanna. A tall, powerfully built, Amazonian brunette, she looked more like a builder’s labourer than the talented artist that she was.

“Fantastic,” said Geraldine, staring at the two-metre by three-metre painting. Standing well back, she fiddled with the settings of her camera and then began to take a full roll of thirty-six slides.


After three long, hard, backbreaking days, Garbarla was relieved when Weari-Wyingga announced that the corroboree was finally over.

“When will we know if the calling has worked?” Garbarla asked the old man as they prepared to leave the blue-gum grove.

Weari-Wyingga shrugged. “Could be hours? Could be days? Could be never?”

‘Oh great!’ thought Garbarla. ‘That makes the last three days all seem worthwhile.’


Although it was after 10:00 p.m., to Garbarla’s surprise, Geraldine was out when he arrived at her flat. ‘Maybe she didn’t return here after all?’ he thought, letting himself in with his key. But seeing the mess created by the bunyip had been swept up in the lounge, he knew that she had.

“Where can she be at this hour?” he wondered.

Wandering into the laboratory, he found a half-eaten slice of pizza on a plate and a large beaker of foul-smelling dark green liquid. ‘What’s this she’s concocted?’ he wondered, bending down to sniff it.

“Aaaaah! Don’t smell that!” cried Geraldine, as she raced in through the front door, which he had left open.

“Why, what’s it do?”

“It’s poison. I’m hoping to kill the bunyip by poisoning its favourite food with this.”

“You’re not going to inject some poor frogs with that stuff, are you?”

“No, that would be cruel; it would kill the frogs, too. Besides, the bunyip might not eat dead frogs. I’m going to paint the backs of a few hundred live frogs with this stuff and then hope that the bunyip eats them,” Geraldine explained.


“You’re serious?” asked Garbarla at 9:30 the next morning as Geraldine parked her Mini Minor at the edge of the forest, not far from where Errol Thomas had been killed.

“Of course, I’m serious,” she said, climbing out of the car.

Garbarla sniffed at the salt air and picked up the scent of pine and eucalyptus, plus something else, which he couldn’t quite fathom. A tart, wet-animal smell. ‘Let’s just hope it’s not the bunyip lurking nearby, ready to leap out the instant that we start painting his frogs?’ thought Garbarla.

“Come on, give me a hand,” Geraldine said. She handed him a paintbrush and a paint pot with some of the green-black liquid in it.

After half an hour, they gave up trying to paint the frogs on the ground -- since they kept hopping away at the wrong second. At Garbarla’s suggestion, they fetched the plastic specimen boxes from Geraldine’s car and trapped the frogs in the boxes. Then they dabbed a splotch of poison on each frog before releasing it again.

“See, I told you that it would be easier than it sounded,” said Geraldine as she released the last frog six hours later.

Garbarla glared at her as he clutched at his aching back. “It’s a good thing I fancy you, or I’d kill you for saying that,” he said, only half-joked.

“Oh, is that right?” asked Geraldine. She pretended to paint his nose with her poison-soaked paintbrush.

“Now what?” asked Garbarla five minutes later as Geraldine started the Mini Minor.

“Now we go home and wait to see if the killings stop. And if anyone reports finding a dead bunyip.”


The three men carefully paddled the fibreglass boat down the swollen waters of the Yannan River. While Don Blythe rowed the small boat, his brother Mark and their father Ed sat in the bow drinking from cans of Fosters Lager.

“What the hell are we supposed to do if we find this croc?” asked Ed Blythe.

“We shoot it, of course,” said Don. He pointed to the three Winchester repeating rifles at the bottom of the boat.

“Crocs are protected these days, aren’t they?” asked Ed. Although not a coward, he had more to lose than his sons: his cattle station outside Pettiwood. Don and Mark had lived off the dole for nearly a decade and were widely regarded as unemployable.

“We won’t find any crocs,” Mark assured his father. “There are no crocodiles or alligators in Victoria.”

“Oh yeah, Mr University-Education! Then just what did kill Errol Thomas and that Yankee tourist?” demanded Don.

For a moment, Mark tried to match his brother’s eye contact. But although he had the stocky frame and swarthy features of his father and brother, Mark lacked their powerful, muscular build. So, reluctantly, he looked away, afraid to antagonise his brother too much.

As he broke eye contact, Mark heard Don chortle with glee at having bested him and flushed from anger and embarrassment.

“Well, okay,” said Ed, “but how do we know those will stop a croc?” After downing the last of his beer, he threw the can into the Yannan and then grabbed another can from the Esky beneath his seat.

“A Winchester?” asked Don. He sounded as though his father had said something blasphemous. “I’ve never met anything yet that a Winchester repeater won’t stop. When I was up hunting buffalo in the Northern Territory ...” He stopped in mid-sentence, startled by the sound of heavy running footsteps on the pine needles amid the trees flanking the river.

“Jesus, what is it?” asked Ed.

“Don’t ask me,” said Don. He almost clashed heads with Mark as they both reached for their rifles. “But whatever it is, it seems to be coming this way.”

“My God, it is a croc!” cried Ed, hearing the sound of its swishing reptilian tail.

“Too fast for a croc,” pointed out Mark. He strained to catch sight of the creature through the foliage. “More like an emu.”

“Then why’s it running toward the damn boat?” demanded Don. He was determined to get a shot at the “croc” that he knew had killed Errol Thomas and Carol Black.

“Maybe it’s being chased by ...?” said Mark. He stopped in shock as the bunyip stood by the edge of the river, glaring across at them. “My God, what is it?”

“Jesus! Head of a dog, body of a roo, bird wings, croc’s tail, emu-legs!” said Ed Blythe, just before the bunyip launched itself from the bank ....

Straight at him!

“Holy shit, get it, boys!” he shrieked, wishing now that he had grabbed up the third Winchester.

Don and Mark both fired. “Got it!” they both cried in relief. But the bunyip shrieked “Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” and kept coming.

“It’s falling short of the boat!” cried Mark, hopefully. But as it looked like doing just that, the bunyip began flapping its great wings and soared across the water to land on Ed Blythe’s back.

“Jesus, get it off me! Get it off ...!” shrieked Ed. His words were cut off as the creature’s fangs tore out his throat.

“Holy shit!” cried Mark. He started crying as he saw his father’s head drop into the bottom of the boat.

“Shoot it, dammit, shoot it!” shrieked Don, unloading shot after shot into the creature. However, it ignored the rifle fire as it quickly slashed away Ed Blythe’s arms and legs.

Then, holding Ed’s torso in its jaws, the bunyip turned to glare at Don for a second. Before starting to flap its huge wings again.

“It’s taking off again!” shouted Mark.

As the bunyip launched itself into flight, Mark finally started firing at it. However, it ignored him as it flew away across the sweet-smelling pine and eucalyptus forest, taking with it the torso of Ed Blythe.

“You murdering fucker!” shrieked Don, waving his fist at it. Then, like his brother earlier, Don began to cry openly at the death of his father.

Mark stared at his brother, amazed, having never before seen him show any emotions other than lust for women, gluttony, or anger.


Geraldine and Garbarla stood by the banks of the Yannan River, staring at the head and limbs of Ed Blythe. Don and Mark had both been taken, sedated, to the local hospital.

“When did this happen?” asked Geraldine.

“Less than an hour ago,” replied Bear Ross.

She looked up at Garbarla, who thought, ‘So much for the poisoned frogs!’ It had been three days since they had spent the day painting them.

Garbarla and Geraldine exchanged a look, then Geraldine said to Bear, “There’s something we have to tell you.” She went on to tell him about their encounter with the bunyip the night she had taken one of the frogs.

“A bunyip?” asked Bear. He sounded as though he thought that he should book her a room in Queen’s Grove Sanatorium over at Westmoreland.

“We both saw it,” said Garbarla, thinking, ‘Maybe he’ll book us into adjoining rooms.’

Then, hesitantly, Geraldine told Bear of her plans to paint the wild frogs with poison.

“Aaaaah!” said Bear. “Well, I can tell you the result of that little scheme. So far, we’ve had one dead dingo turn up after eating a frog, two Queensland Heelers, and one of old Crazy Joe Frazer’s Great Danes. Which he swears died after eating a bait thrown from a UFO.”

“A UFO?” asked Geraldine.

“It’s always the same, isn’t it, with those damn dog-murdering aliens!” said Garbarla.

Geraldine and Garbarla burst into hysterical laughter. Bear Ross did his best not to join them, seeing his constable, Terry Blewett, staring in their direction.

“Unofficially, I can tell you that your bunyip story tallies with what Don and Mark told us about the death of their father,” said Bear. Leaving them, he went over to talk to Terry.

“Well, why didn’t the poisoned frogs kill the bunyip?” said Geraldine, thinking aloud.

“Maybe it knew that we had poisoned them?” suggested Garbarla. He remembered his feeling of being watched three days ago.

“Possibly, but not necessarily,” said Geraldine. “It might be simply that with this damn frog-plague going on, there are so many frogs about that it hasn’t got to the poisoned ones yet.”

“But three dogs and one dingo found them?” pointed out Garbarla.

“Yes, but there are hundreds of dogs and dozens of dingoes in this area. To the best of our knowledge, there’s only one bunyip.”

“So what are you saying?” asked Garbarla. “That we have to just trust to luck that eventually it stumbles across the poisoned frogs?” ‘Please God, don’t let her say that we have to paint every frog in the forest with poison!’ he thought. He envisaged the two of them spending days or even weeks trapping and painting wild frogs. “And then hope it doesn’t kill too many people in the meantime?”

“No,” said Geraldine, pretending to have missed the sarcasm. “I’m saying that we have to poison a second lot of frogs. But this time we have to make sure that the bunyip eats them.”

“How?”

“By taking them back to my flat, of course.”

“So that it will come after us again for stealing its frogs,” Garbarla finished for her.

“Exactly,” she said. She did her best to smile, but looked as scared as Garbarla felt at the idea of using themselves as bait to kill the bunyip.

“All right, here we go again,” said Garbarla, as they set out to catch a dozen wild frogs.


By nightfall, they had captured twelve frogs, taken them back to Geraldine’s flat and painted the frogs with the green-black poison.

“So what do we do now?” asked Garbarla.

“Now we wait,” Geraldine said.

Realising that they were both ravenous, they devoured a large microwaved pizza and then headed for the bedroom to make love.


It was nearly dawn when Garbarla suddenly awakened.

“What the Hell?” he said. For a second, he wondered where he was. Then, seeing the dark-haired figure of Geraldine, he started to snuggle against her. Until he remembered why he had spent the night at her flat.

He shook Geraldine awake roughly. “We’re supposed to be waiting for the bunyip,” he reminded her.

“Oh, God, yes,” she said, leaping out of bed.

They hurriedly dressed. Then, carrying the two canisters of six frogs each, they returned to the lounge room.

They had only just reached the lounge and clicked on the light when the bunyip crashed through the window again. And landed on Geraldine’s sofa, which smashed to kindling beneath it.

“Stand still, it’s less likely to attack if you’re not moving,” Geraldine said. “At least that’s the case with normal wild animals. God alone knows with alternative reality creatures!”

For agonising seconds, the bunyip stood on the ruins of the sofa, swishing its reptilian tail angrily out through the smashed window. Its Tasmanian tiger head glared in their direction, its great eagle wings flapping slowly as though it was about to take off again.

Although seeing its steel-coil emu legs, Garbarla was more concerned that it would charge them. ‘Pooh!’ he thought, almost gagging on the smell of the creature. In the forest, it had smelt like a wet dog, but up close indoors, it smelt more like rotting Hessian bags.

The bunyip took a small, almost kangaroo leap forward a metre or so in front of the sofa.

Its swinging tail now thump-thump-thumped into the ruined sofa, occasionally crashing against the small coffee table on the left side of the sofa, quickly reducing it to kindling.

Nervously taking the lid off her canister of six frogs, Geraldine said, “Let’s hope this works, before it smashes me out of flat and home.”

Holding up the canister, she gently tossed the frogs in the direction of the bunyip.

For a moment, the creature ignored the frogs and continued to glare toward Geraldine and Garbarla. Its swishing tail had completely demolished the coffee table and began thump-thump-thumping against the ruins of Geraldine’s hi-fi unit, which it had wrecked on its previous visit.

‘Oh my God, it’s ignoring the frogs this time!’ thought Garbarla.

Then, as the frogs began to hop toward the smashed window and freedom, the bunyip lurched sideways and began pecking them up like a chicken pecking up seeds.

“Here,” said Geraldine, handing the second canister to Garbarla. “Throw these when it’s finished the first lot.”

“Where are you going?” Garbarla asked as she headed toward her lab.

“I’ve got one last ace up my sleeve.”

“One last ace?” asked Garbarla, but she had already disappeared inside the lab. Realising that the bunyip had gone strangely quiet, Garbarla turned back and saw it glaring toward him.

The bunyip took one step toward him, and then Garbarla opened the second canister of frogs.

“Here you go boy, din-din time,” said Garbarla.

He shook out the frogs, trying to toss them back past the bunyip, so that it would retreat to the other end of the room. However, it adroitly snapped up three of the frogs in mid-air and darted about, “pecking” up the other three in only seconds.

Then it turned back to glare at Garbarla again.

“How long will that poison take to kill it?” called Garbarla.

“Lord knows,” called back Geraldine, pushing a small metal trolley toward him. “Anything from two minutes to two hours, depending upon its metabolic rate. And frankly, I don’t know much about the metabolism of bunyips.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” said Garbarla. He started to ease toward the bedroom door. The bunyip followed him with its eyes, crying “Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!”

“Stand still, dammit!” ordered Geraldine. “You don’t want to be trapped in the bedroom, do you?”

“It depends on who’s trapped me,” joked Garbarla. “If I were trapped by you, I probably wouldn’t mind.”

Geraldine laughed and then said, “Now turn off the light and let’s hope this works.”

“Turn off the lights?” echoed Garbarla. He stared, surprised as she pushed the trolley with a slide projector on it into the laboratory doorway.

“Do as I say!” she ordered.

Reluctantly, Garbarla did as instructed, reducing the room to darkness. Except for the fluorescent glow of the bunyip’s eyes staring toward them.

There was a click, then humming as Geraldine turned on the projector. Then a white square appeared on the lounge room wall. She clicked in the first slide, and a fuzzy, greyish object filled the square.

Geraldine fiddled with the controls of the projector for a moment. Finally, the image of a giant black kangaroo came into focus.

“Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” shrieked the bunyip, startled.

There was a crashing of ornaments as the creature’s crocodilian tail sent bric-a-brac flying as it turned hurriedly. Then it went racing toward the shattered window.

“Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” cried the bunyip, leaping out the window.

“There it goes!” cried Geraldine.

They raced across to the window to watch as the creature flew out over Glen Hartwell.

“Look at it go!” cried Garbarla. Despite himself, he was impressed by the speed and grace of the flying monster.

The bunyip covered the small country town in only a couple of minutes. It had almost reached the start of the surrounding forest before it let out a last shrill shriek of “Yelp! Yelp! Yelp!” then suddenly plummeted out of the sky.

“My God, it worked?” said Garbarla. “The poison killed it!”

“Yes,” said Geraldine. She sounded a little sad.

“Surely you don’t feel sorry for that monster?” asked Garbarla. But he knew even without being told that she half-regretted what they had had to do. To change the subject, he asked, “Wherever did you get that slide?”

“I got Suzanna Hoffman to paint Kuperee for me, then photographed her painting and drove over to Bob Montgomery’s general store in Harpertown to get Bob to do a priority printing job for me.”

“What did he ask for payment?” teased Garbarla.

“For God’s sake, he’s an eighty-year-old man.”

“That wouldn’t have stopped me,” teased Garbarla.

“I bet it wouldn’t,” conceded Geraldine, allowing him to lead her across to the bedroom.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia