CONTINENT FILE

Cryptids of Oceania

Yowies and bunyips, the thylacine and the taniwha.

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Australia5 cryptidsNew Zealand3 cryptidsPapua New Guinea1 cryptid

Cryptids of Oceania

HOMINID · Pre-colonial

Yowie

Forests of the Great Dividing Range, eastern Australia

Australia’s hairy “bush man”: a tall, ape-like figure of eastern forests, rooted in Aboriginal hairy-man stories and colonial-era newspaper tales.

WIDELY REPORTED LAKE & SEA MONSTER · Pre-colonial

Bunyip

Billabongs, swamps and rivers of south-eastern Australia

The water spirit of Aboriginal tradition said to lurk in billabongs and swamps – turned by colonial newspapers into Australia’s first great monster story.

FOLKLORE Black-and-white photograph of a pair of thylacines in an enclosure at the Beaumaris Zoo, Hobart, around 1910 DOGMAN & CANINE · 1936

Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine)

Tasmania’s north-west and south-west wilderness

A striped, dog-like marsupial officially extinct since the last one died in a Hobart zoo in 1936 – yet over a thousand people say they have seen one since.

EXTINCT ANIMAL? Space Shuttle photograph of Umboi Island, Papua New Guinea, with its large volcanic caldera FLYING · 1944

Ropen

Umboi Island and the Huon Gulf coast, Papua New Guinea

A glowing, long-tailed night flyer of Umboi that creationist explorers hoped was a living pterosaur – and scientists blame on bats, birds and planes.

REGIONAL LEGEND Carved poupou from the meeting house Hotunui showing the guardian taniwha Ureia LAKE & SEA MONSTER · Pre-colonial

Taniwha

Rivers, lakes, harbours and coastal waters of Aotearoa New Zealand

Powerful water beings of Māori tradition – guardians to some iwi, man-eaters in other tales – said to dwell in deep pools, caves and harbour mouths.

FOLKLORE A spotted-tailed (tiger) quoll, the animal Carl Lumholtz’s guides called yarri BIG CAT · 1871

Queensland tiger

Rainforests and tablelands of far north Queensland

A striped, tree-climbing “marsupial cat” of north Queensland’s rainforests, reported since 1871 and linked by some to the extinct marsupial lion.

REGIONAL LEGEND A feral cat photographed at night by a wildlife camera in an Australian national park BIG CAT · 1933

Gippsland phantom cat

Gippsland, eastern Victoria

Puma- or panther-sized cats reported across Gippsland since the 1930s, blamed on wartime mascots – yet every one examined so far has been a feral moggy.

REGIONAL LEGEND The bush-covered Moehau Range seen across the water from south of Amodeo Bay, Coromandel HOMINID · 1969

Moehau

Moehau Range, northern Coromandel Peninsula

A hairy, man-sized wild being said to roam the Coromandel’s Moehau Range – New Zealand’s answer to Bigfoot, declared “dead” by a newspaper in 1970.

LOCAL LEGEND Forested islands and calm water in Dusky Sound, Fiordland OTHER · 1773

Waitoreke

Rivers and lakes of the South Island, especially western Southland

A small, otter-like swimmer reported in South Island rivers since Captain Cook’s day, in a country whose only native land mammals are bats.

REGIONAL LEGEND