October 3, 2018 • 64 mins
Over the years, the guys have explored stories of cryptids across the planet, but in all their podcast journeys they somehow never made it to Australia -- at least, that is, until today. Tune in as they investigate the tales of Australian cryptids with a special guest appearance by Savor cohost and frequent globetrotter Anney Reese, who for a time lived with an indigenous community on the continent.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is they call me Ben. We are joined with our
super producer Paul Decants. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Pardon that momentary pause. I was thinking
to myself, should be open by saying good day, But
that's that's kind of low brow for us. You aren't
(00:46):
taken aback by my odd introduction of myself. I was not.
I'd like to know more about what the new me. Yeah,
it's just a little more robotic. Okay, I've been assimilated
by the borg. Oh I knew it. I could tell
you have all this machinery kind of protruding from your cranium. Yeah,
(01:07):
and the big red one eye. Ben. You you did
a masterful thing just then. You didn't open by saying
good day, but you also kind of did you know.
It's like when you add just saying at the end
of a sentence, it's like having your good day and
eating it too. There we go. Well done. This micro
circuitry is doing wonders. Yeah, firing on all micro cylinders. Right,
(01:28):
So we are going, uh, we're going to travel a
bit today. We're going outside of the States. A lot
of you have written to us and said, well, I
appreciate the all the stuff you guys do on the show,
but you spend a lot of time in the US.
We're looking at the U s sides of things. And
(01:49):
earlier when we were talking off air, uh, Matt, you
and Nol were telling me a little bit about some
of the Here's where it gets crazy mail that you
found write and posts. And one of the things that
um that guys were very excited about was the concept
of cryptids, but not just all the cryptids we've covered
(02:11):
so far in the past, cryptids down under, cryptids of Australia. Right. Yeah.
We had someone named leaf Alan creed right into us
and talked to us specifically about drop bears. You want
us to cover that and a couple of other things, uh,
the what the bunyip? And lots of things like that.
Interesting conflation too, as we'll find out. So, yes, we
(02:35):
are diving into the strange and fascinating world of cryptids.
When we started this show years and years and years
and years ago, Matt Nolan, I all started diving into
these bizarre, unusual things, and the weird thing is that
more often than not we would find a grain of
truth in these stories. And crypto zoology candidly is one
(02:58):
of those fields that I had always personally thought would
be mainly smoking mirrors, you know, like a misidentified bear,
because most people nowadays haven't seen a bear in real life,
so you know, it's a scary thing, or folklore conflated
with some animal that's similar enough to scare you in
the night, like in nighttime. Yeah, or like some kind
of misinterpretation of a fossil. Yeah, good call, good call. Right,
(03:23):
that's why we used to think dragons were real for
so long? Wait? Or were we wrong? You know? Sure? Hope? So, man,
I need to believe in something. I wish the Jurassic Park,
I just every reboot they do. I wish they would
try feathers on the dinosaurs. That'd be cool, you know,
you know what, I have a pitch, go for it,
Dragon Park, Dragon Park? And how does that not happened? Yet?
(03:46):
They probably what happened all the Dragon movies that's true.
Dragon Heart slumbering just for a little bit post Lord
of the Rings dragon Heart. But they'll be back. They'll
be back in the after the last season of Game
of Thrones ends. People will have a dragon deficit. That's
where we get our dragon fixes on Game of Thrones.
They on the they run the dragon show. Yeah, but
I'm not talking about c g I dragons. We gotta
(04:08):
get some real dragons, get him in sag, get them
really working, you know, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it.
In the case of cryptozoology, though, you know, we we
are outlining several of the common things misidentification of fossils, uh,
misinterpretation of actual animals, or you know, out and out hoaxes.
(04:29):
Since we've been doing this show, at least three times,
some group of people once in Georgia have claimed to
find the corpse of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. And those folks
had not misidentified a corpse they were out now con artists. Well,
somebody maybe just misidentified the suit that they made. There
we go. Yeah, and frankly, we've delved into some questions
(04:52):
here that don't have clear, definitive answers. Sure, many of
those photos of the Lockness Monster are genuine clear hoaxes.
But then there are things that are real cryptids, like
the sailor canth, which is a tremendously disgusting looking, ugly,
ugliest sin fish that was thought to be extinct for
(05:15):
millions of years. It turns out that we just weren't
looking in the right places. But that's where we get
to the tough part about cryptids, because most stories of cryptids,
these unidentified or unacknowledged animals, come from remote and dangerous areas,
and traveling to those parts of the world can be
enormously expensive and us and yes, certainly like the deserts
(05:40):
of Mongolia where the Mongolian bloodworm is supposed to be hiding.
That's millions of dollars easily just to get a decent
team of people there. Don't do it well if you
got the money right, yes, or Buffett, if he's gonna
turn a new leaf in his elder statesman age. So
(06:02):
the institutions and governments that could support these sorts of explorations,
they often aren't going to waste millions of dollars on
what they see as a wild goose chase. And we
should mention here that wild geese are not cryptids. I
don't know why. That's it feels very important. What constitutes
(06:22):
a wild goose? I know, right, is it? Is it
just not in a zoo? Or is it acting out?
Because I used to work in an office where these
geese would just just fly in and and post up
outside the door, And as you all know, I don't
much care for birds. Yeah, so I didn't leave the
building when that happened. But it was a pretty regular
(06:43):
occurrence where those wild geese. Yeah, I mean, geese do migrate,
so yeah, there's probably was there a pond nearby, that's why. Yeah,
it wasn't for you. It was for the pond, so
they weren't out for you. A yeah, and I imagine,
without going too far into the figures speech, it's the
idea of chasing an animal that doesn't want to be caught.
(07:05):
But in all of our previous episodes, let's see, we
did we even did the math, the cryptic math on
how big a range an animal of a certain size
would need depending on stet We did that for uh
local a membe and specifically on a big foot type creature. Yes, yeah,
like antipithecus or something. Yeah. But in all of our episodes,
(07:31):
we have never explored Australia and that is why today
we are taking your suggestion and looking into one of
the most interesting continents on this planet. Confession, you know
here the facts, But confession, we use the CIA World
(07:51):
fact Book for some of the stats about Australia. Trader.
It's when he says we he says, Ben Bowling because
all the research here. Okay, it's not it's not. It's
not Nolan Matt's fault calls. I'm the one whose the
CIA World fact Book, but it has good information. So
(08:14):
Australia as continents go, it looks huge on the map,
but we all know how they're like Mercat projections versus
a globe versus other sorts of projections, and it messes
with the size. You know what's funny, our our buddy
Chuck from Stuff. You should know they just got back
from a tour of the out Back for you know,
their mega successful podcast and uh he mentioned that they
(08:37):
took a flight from Sydney to Perth and then it
was the equivalent of taking a flight from like New
York to Los Angeles. It was like a six hour flight. Yeah,
it's huge, Yeah, because I'm so bad at geography. I
was like, I had no idea. Josh, Josh and Chuck
did just return from an Australia tour, and they've got
some interesting stories about it. Josh was catching me up
on some stuff. You know who else went to Australia,
(09:00):
Scott Benjamin and he was going to take a road
trip and he was also startled by the size of
the continent. You know, this happens a lot to our
European friends when they traveled to the US. Have you
ever met somebody from Europe He's hanging out and you say, oh,
what are you gonna do while you're here for a week,
And they're like, oh, I'm you know, well, I'm in Atlanta.
I figured I would just drive on over to l A,
(09:22):
check out Hollywood, and then just drive back to the
airport before Thursday. No, no, it's not happening. It's like,
just trying to describe Texas makes us sound like lunatics.
Oh yeah, And just to give anyone who doesn't really
know what Australia looks like or you can't imagine your head,
um Perth is in the south western side of the continent,
(09:44):
and then Sydney is in kind of the southeastern corner.
Not really, Melbourne is probably closer to what that would be,
but you can kind of stay correct. Yeah, but you can.
You can see how a flight you could compare that
to a flight from New York to there we go,
that's the comparison. Yeah. It's seven million, six hundred and
(10:04):
eighty two thousand, three hundred square kilometers and land mass
and most of it is a desert. The place we
call the Outback, not to be confused with a surprisingly
popular steakhouse chain here in the US. Yes, which if
you are Australian and you're listening, we want to know
your opinions. So bad about Outback Steakhouse, Crocodile dundee, Um,
(10:29):
what what else? Foster's Beer? Um? Steve Irwin of course,
Steve Erkele, Steve Erkel as well. Yeah, I'm I think
I would be interested to know how what that was.
That that was Family matters right, Yes, I would be
interested to know Family Matters made it. I'm sure they
had a huge we we even have listeners in Australia
Shirley family matters, dude, that's a very way to put
(10:52):
it in perspective. Yeah, and just so you know, I
have an understanding of these deserts. If you're looking like
at the top of Australia, it is really every where,
everything from the Stress Blacky Desert, which sounds very odd
when I say that s t R Z B L
E c k I Desert, to the Great Sandy Desert,
to the Little Sandy Desert, to the Gibson Desert and
(11:13):
the Great Victoria Desert and the Tanami Desert. They're everywhere,
and they're huge, right, yeah, they're the majority of the continent. Now,
that's not to say that the whole thing is a desert,
which I think is um a common mistake. A lot
of Americans make the southeast and southwest corners that you
had mentioned earlier, Matt have temperate climates, you know what
(11:34):
I mean, And the northern area and part of the
eastern side of the continent are in what again might
surprise a lot of us in the US, actually tropical
and subtropical climates. Australia has a rainforest. I know, aussee listeners.
I know that we probably sound kind of like nincompoops here,
but I don't think a lot of Americans know that. No,
I think we've been corrected before and it's it's ausy.
(12:01):
In terms of human population of ozzies. The first azzies
may have arrived on the continent as far back as
sixty five thousand years ago. That's a long time. Are
we going to talk about it's a history as a
prison colony at all, because that's always fascinated me. Yeah,
this is I mean, this is before it was a prison.
But yeah, no, no, I know, yeah, I don't know.
Maybe that's two in the weeds. We should probably get
(12:22):
to the cryptids. That's how we came here for right, Yeah,
So continue with the facts. This ancient migration sixty five
thousand years ago makes the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians the
first human beings ever to migrate out of what's called
the Afro Asia sphere. That's according to a historian you've all,
(12:42):
Noah Harari, who wrote, who writes excellent books, Homodaeus Sapiens,
uh Mole's Roommate. Now I go back and forth for
hours about this stuff. But as of July, Australia was
the fifty six most populous country, the population of twenty
three million, two thirty two thousand, four hundred and thirteen people.
(13:04):
Many of whom to your point, Noel, Yes, we're descended
from prisoners, because for a time Australia was treated as
a dumping ground for undesirables the whole continent. They started
a prison colony, but they weren't bothering to protect the
native people, that's right. So then it just kind of
(13:26):
the folks that were there just spread and put down
their roots, like you do a lot of a lot
of a lot of room to put down roots there. Yeah, well,
but here's the thing. There are only certain little kind
of spaces, they're really fairly small spaces within this huge
continent where you can put down roots at least safely.
In other words, habitable areas, right areas, Yeah, where you're
(13:47):
going to have enough enough other humans to have a
large enough civilization to you know, have enough commerce and
things like that. Right. So so in those places that
we we talked about, what is it or eighty six
percent of the humans live in these largely populated areas
and the rest is what just the bush. The rest
(14:07):
is wilderness, even the bush right out back. But then
also you know the forest, the jungles. Yeah, the crowded
places are very crowded. But then like the largest city
is Sydney and the population there's only four point seven
nine two millions. Wait a minute, I think I see
what you're getting at, Ben, in discussing cryptids. Our whole
(14:30):
thing has always been but how come like there's not
just an infinite amount of space for these things to hide,
right right? But in Australia they're kind of is We
got lots of it? Yeah, yeah, and not infinite, but
a lot. Because in addition to that, it's it's not
just geographically isolated, it's what we would call ecologically isolated.
(14:53):
That makes it unique amongst all the other human occupied continents.
And sorry, listeners in Antarcha, go, we're not counting you
for this part. Yeah, I'm sorry. Just yeah, but just
from the fact that it is an isolated continent, it's
into itself, there's no land connecting it to anything else.
If anything gets to Australia, that's not by a ship
(15:15):
or a plane, at least as since those technologies have
been available. It's been by flying there or swimming there
and that's it, yeah, or floating there and then just
some through some miraculous event not dying. That's what happened
to the ancestors of a lot of Australian animals, but
the door since the land bridge was there at a
certain time, or since it broke off of the super continent.
(15:38):
So according to professors like Rick Shine, Australia has a
unique fauna because it was isolated from the rest of
the world for very long periods, Like you said, Matt,
surrounded by the ocean for millions of years. The and
he calls it a life raft of sorts more than
the continent. So these plants and animals were very different.
Ecological pressures evolve in different ways. So if we imagine
(16:01):
ourselves as the very first people to go into Australia,
the stuff we see is insane giant wombats who have
no fear of humans because they have never seen us.
They don't know that we can make spears, and they
don't care. I don't want that, I know. Chuck cuddled
with a tiny cute Koala baby. Oh yeah, yeah. He
(16:23):
made a joke cut today when we recorded many Crush
that they present you one as soon as you get
off the plane, and I asked if you had to
return it when you get plane back home. Oh well,
I hope it was a nice koala bear, because this
is this is what end upset. Quali bear sounds like, man,
I can't believe you've played that. They're just so adorable.
(16:46):
That did not sound adorable. That sounded horrific. It's disturbing.
It reminds me a more sinister version of that moment
in Dumb and Dumber where they say yeah, where they
say what's the most annoying and south Okay, I thought
you were going to do the bit where you continue
to interrupt this with thank you for not doing that.
(17:07):
They had to get on the fun. Yeah, well we
appreciate you. Um still listening to both of you. Yeah,
It's it's strange though, because there's a really good question,
could a koala bear have evolved anywhere else? The answer
is probably no, or it's much less likely that it would.
(17:27):
And the isolation historically of Australia carries over to the
modern day. That's why it's home to so many animals.
They are found nowhere else in the world. Koala bears, kangaroos, dingoes, wombats, coals,
Tasmanian devils, which in person are way less cool than
their name would imply. Yeah, and so on. So so
(17:48):
we have several things here that add up to uh
to create a unique situation, a perfect storm of crypto zoology. It's,
as we said, sparsely populated, enormous stretch of desert as
you as you mentioned, and home to unique animals found
nowhere else in the world. Could it be possible that
there are even stranger animals in the Australian outback. Yes,
(18:13):
it could definitely be possible. Is it true though, and
what will we find? We'll talk about it right after
a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
It's true Australia is home to a ton of alleged cryptods,
even maybe even more than the US on balance. And
(18:38):
these often fall into a few types of categories. They
might be urban legends, right, things that came about in
modern folklore. But you can make a pretty interesting argument
that maybe slender Man itself is a form of a cryptod.
Absolutely it's humanoid but not human. Yeah. You're also going
to find some that are basically the Australian version of
(18:59):
a crypto that exists pretty much every everywhere else in
the world, like a certain type of sasquatch. Yeah. Yeah,
And then they are unique versions of cryptids creatures that
are solely believed to exist or have existed in Australia
and possibly some nearby islands like Tasmania, New Zealand and
so on. Um, there's there's a very important aspect of
(19:21):
Australian culture that influences the idea of cryptids here and
that is the fascinating I would call it cognitive technology
known as the dream time. Yeah. See, this is the
part that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. And
we talked about this on the Here's where It Gets
Crazy episode, So I am looking forward to this discussion. Yeah. Um, well,
(19:42):
none of us have participated in the culture, right, we
have to be clear about that for sure. But our
colleague Annie Reese has Oh holy smokes, was that a didred?
I don't know? And then a puff of smoke and
(20:02):
Reese has has appeared before our very eyes. Yeah, we're
spoiling the lead here. There was a portal that just
opened up. That's how I always get to work. I
guess you guys have never noticed gets to travel. We
spent a lot of time bunkered up in the studio here,
but we appreciate you joining us for a little bit
because first off. That portal thing is very cool. Um,
(20:25):
as people know or may or may not know. Uh,
the five of us counting Paul, have worked together closely
for a number of years, and you are somewhat of
a legend in our office. Uh, not just for hosting saver,
not just for hosting stuff Mom never told you, but
for going on adventures in different areas of the world,
some very remote places. Yes, I I do like to travel.
(20:48):
And thank you for saying that, Thank you for having me.
You all are legends as well. Go ahead and just
go ahead and portal out of here. Now that was
all your one, and that's what I suspected. Um, yeah,
I I from what I understand, I certainly hope. So
you guys are talking about Australia today. Yes, yeah, that's true. Specifically,
(21:11):
concept that we've run into in this episode is the
idea of something called the dream Time. Yes. I spent
about four months in what Air, which is in the
northern called the top End Northern Territory. Um, it's really
hard to get to. You have to take a plane
(21:31):
because it's usually flooded, and if if it's the dry season,
you can drive out there. But it's really rough. It's
like three miles per hour rough. Um, they don't get
any visitors. Uh, so it's pretty remote, is what I'm
trying to say. Yes, And I was there specifically to
try to save their language, save their language, to document
(21:53):
one of their languages because, um, a lot of the
dialects of Marine Patza are other Aboriginal dialects are dying
out very very quickly. And um part of that was
learning about the dream time and the dreaming. And one
of the big things I tried to do when I
was there was, um, just listen, just listen to people
(22:15):
when they when they spoke. And one of the first
pieces of advice someone gave me was to just sit
in a place for a long time and someone will
come up to you and tell you, tell you their stories.
Because they're a society that depends a lot on oral
tradition and passing things down orally. So I did get
to learn about the dreaming. Um, it's it's the pretty
(22:39):
much their creation story. Um. And it all started where
they have these ancestors wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait back Um that that sleep underground, but they came
above ground and pretty much created everything, the everywhere and
every when as they say, and it's not a flat timeline.
(23:01):
It's like a cycle. Everyone and the Aboriginal society can
recall the dreaming, the dream time. They can remember this
and they go through these these re enactments, these rituals
that are very repetitive to to sort of put yourself
in the in the state of mind where you can
(23:22):
remember it and I'll capture yeah and pass it to
pass it along. And so I got to see I
got to see some of these um is really powerful
chancing and dancing. Did you do um? And they draw
shapes in the sand, they paint on their faces and
their bodies, and it's really cool because um, in Australia,
(23:44):
you can see the Milky Way, especially out there because
there's nothing out there, This is nothing, so you can
see that kind of milky whiteness in the sky. And
then all these shooting stars go across. And it did
feel I felt something like that I hadn't felt before.
And um, that probably sounds really cliche and cheesy, but
it is true. I can totally imagine that some in
(24:07):
a in a different version of time, almost right. Yeah,
you just you feel as though you were a part
of something. Honestly, It really felt powerful, and I was
really fortunate because they were open and happy to share.
They wanted to share, and uh I I appreciated that
(24:29):
they were. They opened up to me in that way. Yeah,
and you still do it there for four months? How
what what level of interaction did you get in terms
of the communities, like group rituals. I um, I got
a lot, mostly because I was like, I took that
(24:51):
advice and I sat in the spot and people would
come up to me, and they really did want to
include me and those things. Um I think because is
I suppose if if they had encountered foreigners before, they
had been much more like you're doing things this way.
And I just wanted to learn, and they did honorarily
(25:16):
accept me into their tribe. They gave me a spirit name,
a spirit animal, which was starfish means lost treasure. So
it's cooler than that adorable fantastic. I think that's wonderful. Yeah,
it was nice. And they they made me this did
you due? Which is great for audio because no one
can see it. Annie gestures to her right, campaigned, did
(25:39):
you dude, that's quite colorful. That's the thing that was
making so much noise when she portled in. It's the
only way to open the portal through circular breathing. Yeah.
I wanted to bring it because it illustrates UM just
their art, which I assume you'll probably talked about, but
this is x ray art. It shows their inside, it's
(26:00):
insides of animals and humans, and also how they tell stories.
When they tell stories, the journey is the most important part,
so they always show the stops. So this is my journey.
I flew there, this is the town, the village, this
is I then went on land to Sydney. Yeah, and
this is This means journey's end. It's like a cool
(26:23):
circle things. Would you be okay with us posting some
photos of the didre do uh and some of the
other stuff you have brought on our facebook page? Yeah? Absolutely,
that would be more helpful than me kind of vaguely
doesn't happen. No, I think it's great. Watch rewind and
watch along. Annie. You have also brought a boomerang. I
have auto boomerang. Um. This was more just for fun.
(26:46):
They are kind of dangerous. They I always assumed they
were just silly, to be honest, but they're used for
hunting UM and they are seen as weapons and you
can't have them on planes and you carry on really yeah?
Hold yeah, how would you use a playing We did
have our training today about like office awareness. Yeah. I
(27:07):
was just wondering if I get disarm someone. We didn't.
We didn't get taught how to disarm someone, didn't. That's
gonna come back, come back. Well, Annie, thank you so
much for taking the time to explain the dream time.
It's a fascinating concept and it's something that I think
(27:28):
the three of us heard about but hadn't done much
investigation into beforehand. Uh So hopefully we can talk to
you into coming back in the future as a guest
on a full episode to have more adventures. What do
you think, guys? Please? Yeah? I love it? All right,
Well we're I guess we're gonna sit here and watch
(27:50):
you did you do through portal? I'm ready? Let's see.
It's weird because there's a door in the studio. I mean, whatever,
that's true. That's fascinating stuff. Yeah, and you can catch
any right now. On Savor, it's a podcast about food
(28:12):
and why we like the things we like. It's got
a lot of science and history to it. It's super cool.
She's also on stuff Mom Never told You. Yes, so
do check it out, friend of the show. We're also
we're also big fans of food stuff, stuff Mom Never
Told You and Anning Reese in general. So let's let's
look at some of the cryptids that occur in Australia
(28:38):
and we can we can stop along the way if
we want to see what types of cryptos these are,
what categories that would fall in. By far, the most
famous the breakout single the Real Banger off the Cryptozoology
Mixtape of Australia is something called the Bunyip. The bun Yip,
it is a strange look thing. If you've ever seen
(29:02):
a picture of it online, I would encourage you to
search for images of it. Uh. It's funky. M It's
kind of like a snake, kind of like a plant,
kind of like an aquatic creature. When I just read
the descriptions in the text years ago, my first question was,
(29:22):
is this a platypus? Are you just describing a platypus?
Because it sounds like they just threw all the leftover
stuff in there, you know. But it's interesting to bring
up the the idea of the appearance, right. The only
really consistent stuff about the bun. Yet which does is
mentioned in Dreamtime is that it is a creature that
(29:44):
lives in or near bodies of water like creeks, pools, swamps.
And it's so ubiquitous that there are nine regional variations
of this that are presented and described differently in different
traditions and different threads of folklore. And at this point
there's no real consensus about what this thing looks like.
(30:07):
We it has some common characteristics, yes, indeed there are,
and these include things like tusks, flippers. Always wanted a
flipper only it's sort of like a either either you
get feet or you get a flipper. Yeah, wait, you
really want to classics? Oh that's true. I guess I'm
thinking of like a fin. It could be cool. Well, no,
what does a mermaid have? Is that a flipper or
(30:28):
a fin? Now that is a question for the ages,
and that really a tail? Okay, alright, Ben, also speaking
of which a horse like tail um and and of
course you know, possibly a mermaid like tail um. And
then there's also this belief that they come out at
night to feast on animals and of course young children,
(30:49):
you know, because they're savory and delicious. Weakest in the
herd and women. Yeah and here, Well, we'll get into
it a little later. Let's let's keep going on with it.
But I have some my ideas of about this creature
um with regards to storytelling and safeguarding of the young
in a but let's let's keep going. So. They also
(31:11):
have a characteristic noise that they are notorious for making
when they approach. I just found it described as a
loud bellow. Yeah. Yeah, and it can be heard from
like miles away, from very very far away. You'll always
know the bunyip yell. When you hear it for the
first time, you're like, oh, that was a bunyip. Ah
(31:32):
the yellow the bunyap. Come. Well, I mean I like that.
That's a good catchphrase for a T shirt. That really
is like his one string, Ah the yellow the bunny up. Okay,
t public, here's looking at you. Hopefully hopefully you're listening,
you guys, look at it. You. But I think we
have to fill out a form or something, all right
(31:52):
or no, you're right, we have to fill out a form.
We have to ask nicely. But let us know if
you think that's a good idea for a T shirt.
But that's it sounds like the Sasquatch yells and some
of the communications that we've heard about where you it's
tough to nail down exactly what it sounds like, but
if you hear it, you'll know that that's what it is. Um.
Some some recordings have been made over the years of
(32:14):
supposed Sasquatch sounds. UM, And I wonder I haven't dug
too deep into the bunyip yell or the shriek or
whatever you might call it, but I haven't found a
good recording of something like that says that's what it
is that I would at least say, hey, let's play
that right now. Yeah, yeah, I I see what you mean.
(32:35):
And even with even with very well established or well
known cryptids such as big Foot or Sasquatch, it's still
it's such an audio rorschach test, you know what I mean,
Really will hear things that they want to hear unfortunately,
you know, But that's the that's the thing with a bunyip,
(32:58):
it's supposed to be a very distinctive characteristic fellow. We
have not found a definitive recording of that. We did
find the earliest published reference to the bunny upper one
of them, which was a pamphlet published in eighteen twelve
by a guy named James Ives, and he refers to
it as a black seal like creature that has a
(33:19):
terrifying voice. I have chills. Chills, knoll, I have chills.
It's probably like that, but like a lot more sinister.
So it's kind of a sinister it's like an arch
that's that's to Scooby dooish. That is, it has to
be lower like a like a like more of a
(33:41):
death metal seal. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah, like
a death like the seal has corpse paint on. That's
that that would that would spook me. We've solved it, folks.
You heard it here first the bunyup. So this this
black seal like creature, right, that's that's one of the
that's one of the descriptions. Other accounts, also in the
eighteen hundreds, called it a dog like amphibious animal or
(34:05):
a calf size, shaggy haired or main quadruped sometimes seen
on land, but mostly amphibious. So what what does that mean?
You know, originally in the Aboriginal dream time, which you know,
early anthropologists created this word to describe that worldview. But
(34:25):
we'll go with it. In the dreamtime, bunyips were very
nasty creatures. They were punishing spirits. They were like forces
of uh righteous punishment that you did not want to
run into. But now they're they're pretty toned down. Yeah,
you can find them in commercials now and they're like
kids commercials like as in it, look at this thing.
(34:48):
It's a bunny. It's fine, it's silly, it's uh, it's
gonna bring your cereal to you. I honestly don't know
if it's been using this series to be fair bunny
it's it'. It sounds a lot like bunny to me,
so it makes me think of something cute and malleable.
It doesn't feel like a scary word to me either.
(35:09):
But there's a long list of supposed sightings of these creatures,
and some of the most recent ones were during the
midst of the depression, during the nineteen thirties. I wonder
what correlation there is there. I wonder why, Yeah, I
wonder why as well. M It was the thirties, the
economic depression that that rack to the world did drive
(35:32):
a lot of people to pursue alternative viewpoints. I mean
economic and cultural and spiritual that they ordinarily wouldn't have done. Yeah,
and probably alternative like living like places to live and
trying to save money and live off the land in
different ways. And maybe there's something there. Well, what about
(35:53):
what I mean, if they were something, would they be
a relic population of an animal that we thought went
extinct before? There's that possibility. What is this thing called
the die protodon? De protodon? The de protodon? Oh, yes,
the the old de protodon. This is a fascinating looking creature.
(36:14):
It's this I don't know, it looks kind of like
a bear, but if you mixed like the head of
a hippo or something in with it or kind of
melded that into the creature walks on all fours and
it's a marsupial and it's pretty dang huge. Yeah. And
(36:36):
some Aboriginal tribes have identified bones of this creature, fossils
of it as bunyant bones, so that might be the
grain of truth there. Well. And you know what, This
Deprotodon went extinct roughly forty six thousand years ago, so
after humans had crossed over into Australia, right, um, so
(36:58):
they would have coexisted with this thing for thousands of years.
Maybe it's the name that was given at the time
to these things. So is it then? Is it then
a relic from oral history perhaps right, some kind of
memory carried over. You could say the same thing about
another candidate for the bunyip tail, which is the polar
(37:21):
chest Days, which means ancient leaper or dancer. And this
thing when extinct eleven thousand years ago, so it has
even more of an overlap with human settlements, no occupation.
It looks crazy. It's like a tape air looking creature
about the size of a horse. Yeah, that's like again,
(37:44):
if you're going if you look at the de Prodoton,
it's gonna stand over six and a half feet tall generally,
so taller than you. And that's walking on all fours.
And I mean that it would be It would be
pretty pretty creepy. And I bet it could make a
fellow that you would here for a long way away,
as well as what was the other one, oh, the
(38:05):
parlo chests. Yeah, I bet, I bet both of those
could make a sound that you would notice. So here's
the question, then, is this real? Is there a grain
of truth to it? The thing is there's a solid
core of reasonably good anatomically consistent accounts of the bunyip.
Despite those regional variations, the most common one is a
(38:25):
dark furred dog headed quote seal dog. So is it
a Is it a seal that swam out of place
and somehow got to a river or a swamp swamp
or something, or maybe a small population of them that
started living in existing in a different environment than they
(38:49):
normally would over the course of you know, a couple
of thousand years, right, Maybe they found a place that
didn't have some of the natural privations they had have
to combat, so maybe the living was easy. I don't know,
it's just that keep going back to the bellow like no,
like you did with the seal sounds, that seems like
that would be loud enough, you know, Yeah, I mean
(39:11):
it's a bark. Yeah, they're inherently that they carrying, right.
So that's that's our case on the bunyip. Let us know,
if you listen to your opinion of it. Do you
think it's just folklore? Do you think it's an animal
that went extinct at some time but maybe not as
long ago as we think. Um, you do want to
(39:32):
do a lighter cryptod well, but yes, But first I
want to talk about what we were discussing at the
very top of of talking about the bunyips, that idea
that they will hunt usually or at least in the
stories that are told about them, they'll hunt children, they'll
hunt women, to keep you away from bodies of water
or you know, the existing bodies of water. And my
(39:53):
thought is, perhaps it's an oral tradition to try and
safeguard the the young of of a community, and perhaps
um safeguard them from not only bodies of water, which
can be very dangerous, and there can be animals close
to water or in water that are you know, would
would probably be carnivorous or could be carnivorous and attack
(40:13):
a small child. Yeah, a boogeyman story to safeguard I
don't know that. In my mind, that makes a whole
lot of sense. I can see that. I can see that.
And also kind of the extrapolation from this is using
that the dream time, the oral tradition of the dream time,
because a lot of UM in many cases stories from
(40:35):
the dream time are used as kind of an allegory
to teach a lesson or to have something that you
need to learn. So there's like one place that you
could go to or one set of stories you could
tell that would give a person living in your community
everything they would need to know to survive. There a
lot of just that's part of folklore and that's part
(40:55):
of history learning those things. I just gotta put that
out there. Absolutely. Would you, I mean, would you say,
coming back to the boogeyman thing, would you say that
the next animal or a list is also a boogy
bad the drop bear, the drop bear, drop bears? No,
what you know about them? Well, it's a delicious gummy
(41:17):
treat with a marshmallowed tummy. Oh how much th hc
per um per milligram? Isn't there? Um? Okay, it takes
you right to the dream time? Right? No, but seriously,
it's like a terrifying carnivorous marsupial that drops down upon
(41:40):
you from the trees. At least legend would have it. Yes, Yes,
it's got giant fangs, right, yeah, it's got giant jagged fangs, claws,
I'm sure, claws, and it it uses these fangs and
claws to rip chunks of flesh from the neck, head,
and back of unsuspecting tourists. Because like if it comes
down on you and gets you on the back. It
(42:00):
probably immediately jaws right down on the back of your neck,
right right, gets artery or vein to pay on the
side of the neck, maybe paralyzes you. That's a drop bear, folks.
Luckily it's taken about as seriously as the idea of
a jackal loope, which do people if you if you're
not familiar with jackalope, google it. It's this weird American
in joke. Isn't it just really a taxidermy joke? Yeah,
(42:24):
I feel like it's it's a taxidermy joke, is very American.
I feel like nobody really believed in the jackalope, but
maybe maybe they did, just so anyone who doesn't know
it's it's a jack rabbit or a larger rabbit and
or a hair and it's got antlers, right, that's the
whole point of it. Yeah, there you go, jackalope. So
(42:49):
it's it's been uh acquiring to folklore. That belief has
been around since colonial days, but the belief in the
drop bear is a little bit more recent. We don't
know exactly when it occurred, but it's it's like an
in joke for Australians. Yeah, it's fun. You tell the tourists, hey,
watch out for drop bass. Yeah right right, Well but
(43:11):
again and there's a there's this delightful commercial that you
can find on YouTube right now. It's for this company
called Bundaberg or Bundy rum uh and Cola. That's a
whole thing. It's at least one of their products, and
it features this drop bear where there's a group of
these camping blokes I'm gonna call them blokes in this instance, Um,
they're accompanied by a polar bear who's just hanging out
(43:32):
by the trunk of their car, the boot or whatever
you call it. There, uh and there. The whole point
is they're trying to convince this separate group of Sheila's
in this case, see what we're doing here. Um. Yeah,
they're trying to convince the ladies to join them in
camp with them, because they're like, oh, you guys are
camping over there, we're camping over here, we should get together. Well,
the polar bear understands what's happening here, So the polar
(43:55):
bear sneakily climbs up to this tree that's hanging over
the ladies tent right right, and then the lads. They
go to the Sheila's and they're like, hey, you gotta
be careful them drop bears. We got drop bears around here,
and they're like drop bears? What are those? And then
the polar bear drops down onto the tent and they scream,
and then they all camped together and they drink. I
guess the bear doesn't like dismember them, and then drinks
(44:20):
mumming coke. No. No, the bear falls on the tent
and then gives him a nice little like winking like
why why is the bear want to help out these blokes?
I don't understand that. The motivation there. He is certainly
in with that group, so he's either, uh, he's one
of the gangs. His motivation is to maintain that group
of friends. So he's an anthropomorphic pervy bear. He's a
polar bear, and he's also on the bunderberg Rum. He's
(44:44):
like part of their logo. Oka. He's like they're two
can sam oh I get it? Or he's like there
coke polar bear. I guess I don't like it. Well,
it's it is, it is, but hey, I don't know.
It's like high jinks. It wasn't aiding a crime. Right, Well,
well we've only seen a snippet of this bear's life. Yeah,
and we we only know how the nights started. That
(45:05):
is also true. And while we're overthinking animal commercials, uh,
you guys know about panda cheese, right, I'm sure when
ad nausea and panda cheese, what the hell is that? Oh? Okay,
so we're gonna have to hang out for a second
after we record and will post this. And here's where
it gets crazy when this episode comes out. There's an
(45:28):
Egyptian cheese company named Panda and they put out a
number of years ago a series of advertisements about this
evil panda that would appear if you turned down Panda cheese,
it would appear and ruin your life. What's an increasingly
dark and sinister ways. Okay, there's a YouTube video called
(45:49):
top seven Panda Cheese commercials. We don't have time to
do it now, but he's doing a slow clap in
this one, but they're worth it. There were is a
creature pure evil. So I would take the Bundy rum
guy over this one. But you know what we should
also take at this point a break. Yes, yeah, you
just need to set them up and I knock them
(46:10):
down there and we're back. So we talked about the bunny,
if we explored the drought bear just for fun. Now
it's time to dive into this story of what I
would call the most likely to be real cryptid here
(46:33):
in this case, and that is the Thila scene or
Tasmanian tiger, one of the most fascinating alleged cryptids in
the region. Also known as the Tasmanian tiger um, this
creature technically went extinct in Tasmanian the nineteen thirties with
the last Thila scene, which was a male named Benjamin.
(46:55):
It's like, it's like your name. They have a weird
they have they have a weird story about Benjamin. Well,
let's get to it. So Benjamin died in a zoo
in ninety six, and for years and years after there
was this controversy because they didn't know the gender of
the animal. So there were some people who went back
and obsessively watched video this one short clip of the
(47:17):
animal walking frame by frame by frame, enhancing the crap
out of it until they could see one testicle. So
a lot of science went into that. Wouldn't you just
couldn't they have just said, oh, its name is Benjamin.
I don't know, one would think obviously, so last one
(47:38):
dies in nineteen thirty six. As you were saying, no, right,
it's a fascinating looking creature, it really is. Yeah, and
over there it's it's true. And over the years there
have been numerous residents of Tasmania have claimed to see
uh encounter even this carnivorous marsupial. So it's a lot
like the drop bear in that respect. Um. So the
Tasmanian tiger can grow to six ft long if you
(48:00):
count the tail and um. Folks like Andrew Orchard who
have investigated this cryptid claim to have seen the creature
multiple times. And often people hunt these um much with
the same dedication that we attached to bigfoot hunters here
in the United States. So maybe we could interview uh
(48:21):
devil hunter. Also, that sounds really cool, Yeah, the devil hunter. Well,
it looks it's a fascinating looking animal. It looks kind
of like the head of a canine almost in a way. Um,
but then its tail is very rodent or marsupial like,
but again it's large, and then its body has the
stripes of gosh, I don't even know. Almost some African
(48:45):
animals that you can find just to have the stripes
of this kind Almo not tiger stripes, but they're very
their lines, they're not like some kind of jagged shape
or any kind of they're not even really swooping or anything.
And they start on the upper back and then they
expand as they go down towards the haunches. It's a
(49:08):
very very strange placement. It looks like somebody customized the
creature in a video game of some sort. So it
was it was common in Australia for some time as well,
but it went extinct in Australia first and then later
extinct in Tasmania at least officially. And as as you
(49:31):
pointed out, role there are a ton of people in
Tasmania who are certain they have seen this thing, you know.
And the Australia Rare Fund of Research Association has almost
four thousand reports of Tasmanian tigers in Australia since ninety six,
(49:52):
like observations or sightings of some sort. Right, And if
you look at the silhouette or the profile of the thing,
it looks different enough from a dog or dingo, even
because that tail sticks straight out like like a kangaroo tail. Absolutely,
if you saw it at night, I can see how
you would mix this up with a few things, with
the exception of the tail, if you're like seeing it
(50:13):
with a flashlight night or headlights or something. You know.
The most popular, uh, I guess misidentified animal we have
here in Atlanta now? Is a coyote? You yet I have?
Actually yeah, me too, and some foxes. I've got them
mixed up initially. Really yeah. I saw in a neighborhood
outside of Atlanta, fears Back. I saw a lost dog
(50:38):
poster and someone's like, have you lost your dog? I've
been seeing this one around. I haven't caught him. He's
kind of shy. It's totally a coyote. Yeah, kilch and cats.
But um, but look, people who think that the Tasmanian
tiger survives, I think that it survives most likely in
(50:58):
a remote part of Tasman you know, the island off
of Australia, or in a very remote part of the
Australian not quite the outback the bush. Like you said, no,
I'm blissy, don't let the game boy machine head. Did
(51:22):
you know he played the bad one of the bad
guys in Constantine? Yes, he did, and he was fantastic
at it. Very wasn't anything else. Um, there are the Australian, British,
British and take the trip. Damn. It would have been
a good a good transition, not a transition, at least
a better non sequitor. Well uh speaking of fantastic segways, Yeah,
(51:50):
sequitors and segways which is another name of a different
podcast will probably do one day. What about large cats?
This is when it gets me. Every place that we
have ever investigated in terms of cryptozoology, they always have
at least a few large cats. Like every state in
(52:10):
the US has its own alleged cryptid large cat. Even
states that have mountain lions say they have a large
cryptic cat. But it's different. Yeah, it's different from mountain lion. However,
mountain lions are terrifying. If you've ever seen one in
the wild or maybe on your property, uh be where
(52:31):
that's a mountain lion, it will take your dog and
or maybe you. Yeah they're not they didn't come to
play with you. But it feels like the reports of
large cats in Australia have a little bit more credibility. Yeah,
there's one, I guess the most famous sighting is the
Gippsland phantom cat. It's been spotted all over the place,
(52:53):
repeatedly in the Grampians. Grampians, I don't know how to
say that correctly, Australians. I'm sorry, uh it since the
nineteen seventies. Are Grampians like geriatric champions, Yes, just like that.
It's a it's a region or a little an area,
and experts and skeptics believe these are maybe perhaps the
feral descendants of just you know, plain old house cats,
(53:16):
but maybe a little bigger, maybe a little more feral. Yeah.
So this National Park is is huge. It's sixty six
square miles and it's a nature reserve, so it's taking
a lot of the boxes for us. It's not heavily populated,
and it's remote. There you go. Maybe it's a different
(53:38):
species that we just haven't cataloged yet. And where it's
located plays a role in its credibility too, because there's
this long standing theory or somewhat of an urban I
don't want to call it a myth, but there's a tail.
There's a story. At least it says when US soldiers
were stationed in Victorian World War two, they had a
(53:59):
pair of pumas that were mascots, and after the war,
when they were going back home to the States, they
release these cats into the wild. Pumas, pumas. You gonna say,
which is the same. It's just a cougar, A cougar, Yeah,
but it looks I mean, it's just a large it's
a large cat. It's another word for mountain lion. Two
(54:22):
to three feet in height. So maybe not as intimidating
as a gigantic wombat, but it is carnivorous. It can
run fifty miles per hour, and if you piss it off,
it will it will attack you. Right, most animals in
the wild, It's pretty much true everywhere, if they have
(54:48):
the option to avoid a human versus confronting them, the
majority of animals would rather avoid a human being, right, Yeah,
the majority of human beings would rather avoid human beings.
It's true. That's true. Um In in Victoria, however, these
reports of large and identified cats were taken very seriously,
(55:08):
so much so that the state government investigated the sightings
and they released a report that said there was no
evidence to back these concerns. Don't ask us how much
it costs to do this. Investigation, which became another sticking
point for the local government. But the stories continued, and
they continued today in eighteen and there was um. There
(55:32):
was at least one case where somebody caught an unidentified cat. Yeah.
This was a fellow by the name of Kurt Angle.
He shot a that said an identified cat which had
a twenty six inch tail. It's huge, And tests on
the cat showed that it was at least partially a
common domestic cat. Yes, they had a mitochondrial DNA test,
(55:57):
which means they can only trace the matrilineal side in
the mother's side of it. So the official conclusion was,
like you said, partially regular common cat, Yeah, but the
other parts are just monster. Doesn't twenty six inches seem
cartoonishly long for your tail? It really does. Why would
(56:18):
you ever need that from an evolutionary perspective unless you're
like hanging from it or I don't know, getting objects
out of the water with it. Seems like it'd be
a liability. Maybe you can go fishing with it. Maybe
I bet you could deep sea fishing. Well, unfortunately, don't
know because he discarded the body was dumb. Thanks Kurt Angle.
(56:41):
One point six meters long although he says two meters
you can see a picture of um of the cat
hanging up where he caught it. But destroying the body
really hurt his credibility, you know what I mean. But
then there's other there are other video clips you can find,
(57:02):
and there's a wealth of stuff out there. The problem
is that people are skeptical about this stuff, will say
it's inconclusive. They're also rumors that there are large essentially
komodo dragons wandering the outback. Yeah, I can see that.
We didn't dig too deep by that. That's just one
(57:22):
of those where I think I could also see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you know, you think there'd be more than just
a few sightings if there was a large enough population
of them out there, But who knows, maybe they're that isolated. Well,
but the best one, my favorite one. Yeah, yeah, what
is it anything walking around on two legs up in
this piece? I'm so glad you asked, Matt. Yes, there
(57:44):
are not one, but at least two types of big
Foot esque creatures in the world of Australian cryptozoology. The
first is the moon how of New Zealand. According to reports,
they're about the size of a normal person, normal guy,
but they have any blank face, long shaggy hair, and
really long fingers with sharp fingernails or claws. I don't
(58:05):
like that. Those with you until you get to the
long and started acting it out. Yeah, you crossed the
table towards you. They're thought to be responsible for two
deaths in two a prospector and a woman who was
found nearby. She'd been abducted from her home. Someone had
broken her neck. The prospector had been partially eaten. No
(58:28):
one knows what happened. Yeah did they Well, yeah, it
just makes you wonder if they found, you know, any
long scratches or strange creepy things. But it's contagious. Now
you're acting I know, and I'm not liking me doing
it even And then there's the Yahwi, which probably has
one of the more fun names cryptids. Oh yeah, I
mean this is this is your big foot. This is
(58:50):
your Australian bigfoot. Essentially, it lives deep within the wilderness.
It avoids contact with humans. You might be able to
hear uh a yahwe if you know, if you're walking
around the woods, you're maybe you're camping or something. You're
just exploring or hiking where you're on the like the
outskirts of the woods. Yeah, yeah, He's Alley, isn't that
(59:14):
a That's wow, He's Alley. It's a Pavement album. Ah.
But here's the thing, all, there might be some confusion
here because within the oral storytelling over the years them
and within the Aboriginal communities, the term yawi is also
a regional term, uh for the bunyip creature. So there's
(59:34):
some conflation and confusion there exactly. So maybe it just
wanted the same or at least originally was, and then
it just became its own separate set of stories. Yeah. Well,
if I have become persuaded in this episode about one
thing and one thing only, it's the Pavement should do
an album that is entirely about the awe and it's
called Yahwe's Ali. Well, first we got to get him
(59:57):
back together. Okay. Well, look, everything it's a journey of
of a thousand miles starts with a single step. So
members of Pavement forward, members of Pavement, if you're listening
right to us, do this for us. Please. Do you
know a member of Pavement will send them this podcast,
make them listen to the entire thing against their will.
Don't send them just the end and then hopefully they'll
(01:00:20):
they'll hear this, well it does. You know. We do
have to wrap up today. But we've explored, at least
on a cursory level, some of the most popular and
strangest cryptids in Australia. But there's much more to this
story because Australia has its own rich history of these sightings,
and although many of them share tropes and themes with
(01:00:41):
stories and other areas of the world, these are very different.
Found one big twist to the to the entire cryptid
story here, and it's that of all the cryptids in Australia,
at least once we encounter while working on the show,
large cats and the Tasmanian tiger are the most likely
(01:01:02):
to be quote unquote real right, rather than purposeful hoaxes
or being misidentified. But the big twist is we might
find Tasmanian tigers sooner than we think, and we might
not do it by searching the remote reaches of Australia
and Tasmania. In the past few years, scientists have successfully
(01:01:23):
drafted the DNA sequence of the Thighla scene. This means
that in the future we not all of us listening. Maybe,
but our species may be able to create our own hybrids,
just like the work on the wooly mammoth. We may
be able to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the grave.
The Philacene Park will be born. We will get the
(01:01:45):
the blood from ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber and the
great Outback. Oh wait what, I don't even know what
you'd find in the outback where you would get DNA
like that. Maybe maybe it will be huge. Australian mosquito
was unbeknownst to demand before this time, and we'll we'll
take that DNA and we'll book the whomever. The Jeff
(01:02:06):
Goldbloom of Australia, D Jerry and Malcolm will be there
and he will say, this is chaos and it's chaos
that we want you to be a part of. So
let us know what you thought about this episode. And hey,
if you're in Australia, let us know. Let us know
if any of these cryptics are taken seriously on the
ground where you live. You know, have you ever used
(01:02:29):
drop bears to um get a group of blokes or
Sheila's to hang out with you? Is it? Is it
all just sort of a dad joke. You know what
I mean, drop bears, we'd like we'd like to hear
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Here's where it gets crazy Panda chiese. Everybody, we are
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We want to see you. Yes, please, we need you
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(01:03:12):
Speaking of shout out to Michael Shelby. I he if
you're listening to Michael, I kept my word, said one
of the Shelby brothers. Huh anybody anybody get that? Anybody
watching peeky Blinders? Okay? Never right? All right? Uh Thomas
Shelby hit me up if you're listening to this. Okay,
(01:03:32):
so uh, yes, we're going into our go to stuff
they don't want you to know. Dot com click on
the live shows tab you can check out all the
cities will be in when we'll be there. You can
get your tickets from there. Uh and you know, really
please come hang up. We don't want to give you
too many spoilers, but we can promise it will be
weird and more than worth your time. And if you
don't want to do any of that stuff all you
(01:03:53):
and you still want to talk to us and give
us a suggestion for what we cover in the future
or comment. Keep the criticisms light, but will we accept
You can write us a good old fashioned email. We
are Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is they call me Ben. We are joined with our
super producer Paul Decants. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want
you to know. Pardon that momentary pause. I was thinking
to myself, should be open by saying good day, But
that's that's kind of low brow for us. You aren't
(00:46):
taken aback by my odd introduction of myself. I was not.
I'd like to know more about what the new me. Yeah,
it's just a little more robotic. Okay, I've been assimilated
by the borg. Oh I knew it. I could tell
you have all this machinery kind of protruding from your cranium. Yeah,
(01:07):
and the big red one eye. Ben. You you did
a masterful thing just then. You didn't open by saying
good day, but you also kind of did you know.
It's like when you add just saying at the end
of a sentence, it's like having your good day and
eating it too. There we go. Well done. This micro
circuitry is doing wonders. Yeah, firing on all micro cylinders. Right,
(01:28):
So we are going, uh, we're going to travel a
bit today. We're going outside of the States. A lot
of you have written to us and said, well, I
appreciate the all the stuff you guys do on the show,
but you spend a lot of time in the US.
We're looking at the U s sides of things. And
(01:49):
earlier when we were talking off air, uh, Matt, you
and Nol were telling me a little bit about some
of the Here's where it gets crazy mail that you
found write and posts. And one of the things that
um that guys were very excited about was the concept
of cryptids, but not just all the cryptids we've covered
(02:11):
so far in the past, cryptids down under, cryptids of Australia. Right. Yeah.
We had someone named leaf Alan creed right into us
and talked to us specifically about drop bears. You want
us to cover that and a couple of other things, uh,
the what the bunyip? And lots of things like that.
Interesting conflation too, as we'll find out. So, yes, we
(02:35):
are diving into the strange and fascinating world of cryptids.
When we started this show years and years and years
and years ago, Matt Nolan, I all started diving into
these bizarre, unusual things, and the weird thing is that
more often than not we would find a grain of
truth in these stories. And crypto zoology candidly is one
(02:58):
of those fields that I had always personally thought would
be mainly smoking mirrors, you know, like a misidentified bear,
because most people nowadays haven't seen a bear in real life,
so you know, it's a scary thing, or folklore conflated
with some animal that's similar enough to scare you in
the night, like in nighttime. Yeah, or like some kind
of misinterpretation of a fossil. Yeah, good call, good call. Right,
(03:23):
that's why we used to think dragons were real for
so long? Wait? Or were we wrong? You know? Sure? Hope? So, man,
I need to believe in something. I wish the Jurassic Park,
I just every reboot they do. I wish they would
try feathers on the dinosaurs. That'd be cool, you know,
you know what, I have a pitch, go for it,
Dragon Park, Dragon Park? And how does that not happened? Yet?
(03:46):
They probably what happened all the Dragon movies that's true.
Dragon Heart slumbering just for a little bit post Lord
of the Rings dragon Heart. But they'll be back. They'll
be back in the after the last season of Game
of Thrones ends. People will have a dragon deficit. That's
where we get our dragon fixes on Game of Thrones.
They on the they run the dragon show. Yeah, but
I'm not talking about c g I dragons. We gotta
(04:08):
get some real dragons, get him in sag, get them
really working, you know, let's do it. Yeah, let's do it.
In the case of cryptozoology, though, you know, we we
are outlining several of the common things misidentification of fossils, uh,
misinterpretation of actual animals, or you know, out and out hoaxes.
(04:29):
Since we've been doing this show, at least three times,
some group of people once in Georgia have claimed to
find the corpse of Sasquatch or Bigfoot. And those folks
had not misidentified a corpse they were out now con artists. Well,
somebody maybe just misidentified the suit that they made. There
we go. Yeah, and frankly, we've delved into some questions
(04:52):
here that don't have clear, definitive answers. Sure, many of
those photos of the Lockness Monster are genuine clear hoaxes.
But then there are things that are real cryptids, like
the sailor canth, which is a tremendously disgusting looking, ugly,
ugliest sin fish that was thought to be extinct for
(05:15):
millions of years. It turns out that we just weren't
looking in the right places. But that's where we get
to the tough part about cryptids, because most stories of cryptids,
these unidentified or unacknowledged animals, come from remote and dangerous areas,
and traveling to those parts of the world can be
enormously expensive and us and yes, certainly like the deserts
(05:40):
of Mongolia where the Mongolian bloodworm is supposed to be hiding.
That's millions of dollars easily just to get a decent
team of people there. Don't do it well if you
got the money right, yes, or Buffett, if he's gonna
turn a new leaf in his elder statesman age. So
(06:02):
the institutions and governments that could support these sorts of explorations,
they often aren't going to waste millions of dollars on
what they see as a wild goose chase. And we
should mention here that wild geese are not cryptids. I
don't know why. That's it feels very important. What constitutes
(06:22):
a wild goose? I know, right, is it? Is it
just not in a zoo? Or is it acting out?
Because I used to work in an office where these
geese would just just fly in and and post up
outside the door, And as you all know, I don't
much care for birds. Yeah, so I didn't leave the
building when that happened. But it was a pretty regular
(06:43):
occurrence where those wild geese. Yeah, I mean, geese do migrate,
so yeah, there's probably was there a pond nearby, that's why. Yeah,
it wasn't for you. It was for the pond, so
they weren't out for you. A yeah, and I imagine,
without going too far into the figures speech, it's the
idea of chasing an animal that doesn't want to be caught.
(07:05):
But in all of our previous episodes, let's see, we
did we even did the math, the cryptic math on
how big a range an animal of a certain size
would need depending on stet We did that for uh
local a membe and specifically on a big foot type creature. Yes, yeah,
like antipithecus or something. Yeah. But in all of our episodes,
(07:31):
we have never explored Australia and that is why today
we are taking your suggestion and looking into one of
the most interesting continents on this planet. Confession, you know
here the facts, But confession, we use the CIA World
(07:51):
fact Book for some of the stats about Australia. Trader.
It's when he says we he says, Ben Bowling because
all the research here. Okay, it's not it's not. It's
not Nolan Matt's fault calls. I'm the one whose the
CIA World fact Book, but it has good information. So
(08:14):
Australia as continents go, it looks huge on the map,
but we all know how they're like Mercat projections versus
a globe versus other sorts of projections, and it messes
with the size. You know what's funny, our our buddy
Chuck from Stuff. You should know they just got back
from a tour of the out Back for you know,
their mega successful podcast and uh he mentioned that they
(08:37):
took a flight from Sydney to Perth and then it
was the equivalent of taking a flight from like New
York to Los Angeles. It was like a six hour flight. Yeah,
it's huge, Yeah, because I'm so bad at geography. I
was like, I had no idea. Josh, Josh and Chuck
did just return from an Australia tour, and they've got
some interesting stories about it. Josh was catching me up
on some stuff. You know who else went to Australia,
(09:00):
Scott Benjamin and he was going to take a road
trip and he was also startled by the size of
the continent. You know, this happens a lot to our
European friends when they traveled to the US. Have you
ever met somebody from Europe He's hanging out and you say, oh,
what are you gonna do while you're here for a week,
And they're like, oh, I'm you know, well, I'm in Atlanta.
I figured I would just drive on over to l A,
(09:22):
check out Hollywood, and then just drive back to the
airport before Thursday. No, no, it's not happening. It's like,
just trying to describe Texas makes us sound like lunatics.
Oh yeah, And just to give anyone who doesn't really
know what Australia looks like or you can't imagine your head,
um Perth is in the south western side of the continent,
(09:44):
and then Sydney is in kind of the southeastern corner.
Not really, Melbourne is probably closer to what that would be,
but you can kind of stay correct. Yeah, but you can.
You can see how a flight you could compare that
to a flight from New York to there we go,
that's the comparison. Yeah. It's seven million, six hundred and
(10:04):
eighty two thousand, three hundred square kilometers and land mass
and most of it is a desert. The place we
call the Outback, not to be confused with a surprisingly
popular steakhouse chain here in the US. Yes, which if
you are Australian and you're listening, we want to know
your opinions. So bad about Outback Steakhouse, Crocodile dundee, Um,
(10:29):
what what else? Foster's Beer? Um? Steve Irwin of course,
Steve Erkele, Steve Erkel as well. Yeah, I'm I think
I would be interested to know how what that was.
That that was Family matters right, Yes, I would be
interested to know Family Matters made it. I'm sure they
had a huge we we even have listeners in Australia
Shirley family matters, dude, that's a very way to put
(10:52):
it in perspective. Yeah, and just so you know, I
have an understanding of these deserts. If you're looking like
at the top of Australia, it is really every where,
everything from the Stress Blacky Desert, which sounds very odd
when I say that s t R Z B L
E c k I Desert, to the Great Sandy Desert,
to the Little Sandy Desert, to the Gibson Desert and
(11:13):
the Great Victoria Desert and the Tanami Desert. They're everywhere,
and they're huge, right, yeah, they're the majority of the continent. Now,
that's not to say that the whole thing is a desert,
which I think is um a common mistake. A lot
of Americans make the southeast and southwest corners that you
had mentioned earlier, Matt have temperate climates, you know what
(11:34):
I mean, And the northern area and part of the
eastern side of the continent are in what again might
surprise a lot of us in the US, actually tropical
and subtropical climates. Australia has a rainforest. I know, aussee listeners.
I know that we probably sound kind of like nincompoops here,
but I don't think a lot of Americans know that. No,
I think we've been corrected before and it's it's ausy.
(12:01):
In terms of human population of ozzies. The first azzies
may have arrived on the continent as far back as
sixty five thousand years ago. That's a long time. Are
we going to talk about it's a history as a
prison colony at all, because that's always fascinated me. Yeah,
this is I mean, this is before it was a prison.
But yeah, no, no, I know, yeah, I don't know.
Maybe that's two in the weeds. We should probably get
(12:22):
to the cryptids. That's how we came here for right, Yeah,
So continue with the facts. This ancient migration sixty five
thousand years ago makes the ancestors of Aboriginal Australians the
first human beings ever to migrate out of what's called
the Afro Asia sphere. That's according to a historian you've all,
(12:42):
Noah Harari, who wrote, who writes excellent books, Homodaeus Sapiens,
uh Mole's Roommate. Now I go back and forth for
hours about this stuff. But as of July, Australia was
the fifty six most populous country, the population of twenty
three million, two thirty two thousand, four hundred and thirteen people.
(13:04):
Many of whom to your point, Noel, Yes, we're descended
from prisoners, because for a time Australia was treated as
a dumping ground for undesirables the whole continent. They started
a prison colony, but they weren't bothering to protect the
native people, that's right. So then it just kind of
(13:26):
the folks that were there just spread and put down
their roots, like you do a lot of a lot
of a lot of room to put down roots there. Yeah, well,
but here's the thing. There are only certain little kind
of spaces, they're really fairly small spaces within this huge
continent where you can put down roots at least safely.
In other words, habitable areas, right areas, Yeah, where you're
(13:47):
going to have enough enough other humans to have a
large enough civilization to you know, have enough commerce and
things like that. Right. So so in those places that
we we talked about, what is it or eighty six
percent of the humans live in these largely populated areas
and the rest is what just the bush. The rest
(14:07):
is wilderness, even the bush right out back. But then
also you know the forest, the jungles. Yeah, the crowded
places are very crowded. But then like the largest city
is Sydney and the population there's only four point seven
nine two millions. Wait a minute, I think I see
what you're getting at, Ben, in discussing cryptids. Our whole
(14:30):
thing has always been but how come like there's not
just an infinite amount of space for these things to hide,
right right? But in Australia they're kind of is We
got lots of it? Yeah, yeah, and not infinite, but
a lot. Because in addition to that, it's it's not
just geographically isolated, it's what we would call ecologically isolated.
(14:53):
That makes it unique amongst all the other human occupied continents.
And sorry, listeners in Antarcha, go, we're not counting you
for this part. Yeah, I'm sorry. Just yeah, but just
from the fact that it is an isolated continent, it's
into itself, there's no land connecting it to anything else.
If anything gets to Australia, that's not by a ship
(15:15):
or a plane, at least as since those technologies have
been available. It's been by flying there or swimming there
and that's it, yeah, or floating there and then just
some through some miraculous event not dying. That's what happened
to the ancestors of a lot of Australian animals, but
the door since the land bridge was there at a
certain time, or since it broke off of the super continent.
(15:38):
So according to professors like Rick Shine, Australia has a
unique fauna because it was isolated from the rest of
the world for very long periods, Like you said, Matt,
surrounded by the ocean for millions of years. The and
he calls it a life raft of sorts more than
the continent. So these plants and animals were very different.
Ecological pressures evolve in different ways. So if we imagine
(16:01):
ourselves as the very first people to go into Australia,
the stuff we see is insane giant wombats who have
no fear of humans because they have never seen us.
They don't know that we can make spears, and they
don't care. I don't want that, I know. Chuck cuddled
with a tiny cute Koala baby. Oh yeah, yeah. He
(16:23):
made a joke cut today when we recorded many Crush
that they present you one as soon as you get
off the plane, and I asked if you had to
return it when you get plane back home. Oh well,
I hope it was a nice koala bear, because this
is this is what end upset. Quali bear sounds like, man,
I can't believe you've played that. They're just so adorable.
(16:46):
That did not sound adorable. That sounded horrific. It's disturbing.
It reminds me a more sinister version of that moment
in Dumb and Dumber where they say yeah, where they
say what's the most annoying and south Okay, I thought
you were going to do the bit where you continue
to interrupt this with thank you for not doing that.
(17:07):
They had to get on the fun. Yeah, well we
appreciate you. Um still listening to both of you. Yeah,
It's it's strange though, because there's a really good question,
could a koala bear have evolved anywhere else? The answer
is probably no, or it's much less likely that it would.
(17:27):
And the isolation historically of Australia carries over to the
modern day. That's why it's home to so many animals.
They are found nowhere else in the world. Koala bears, kangaroos, dingoes, wombats, coals,
Tasmanian devils, which in person are way less cool than
their name would imply. Yeah, and so on. So so
(17:48):
we have several things here that add up to uh
to create a unique situation, a perfect storm of crypto zoology. It's,
as we said, sparsely populated, enormous stretch of desert as
you as you mentioned, and home to unique animals found
nowhere else in the world. Could it be possible that
there are even stranger animals in the Australian outback. Yes,
(18:13):
it could definitely be possible. Is it true though, and
what will we find? We'll talk about it right after
a quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
It's true Australia is home to a ton of alleged cryptods,
even maybe even more than the US on balance. And
(18:38):
these often fall into a few types of categories. They
might be urban legends, right, things that came about in
modern folklore. But you can make a pretty interesting argument
that maybe slender Man itself is a form of a cryptod.
Absolutely it's humanoid but not human. Yeah. You're also going
to find some that are basically the Australian version of
(18:59):
a crypto that exists pretty much every everywhere else in
the world, like a certain type of sasquatch. Yeah. Yeah,
And then they are unique versions of cryptids creatures that
are solely believed to exist or have existed in Australia
and possibly some nearby islands like Tasmania, New Zealand and
so on. Um, there's there's a very important aspect of
(19:21):
Australian culture that influences the idea of cryptids here and
that is the fascinating I would call it cognitive technology
known as the dream time. Yeah. See, this is the
part that I couldn't quite wrap my head around. And
we talked about this on the Here's where It Gets
Crazy episode, So I am looking forward to this discussion. Yeah. Um, well,
(19:42):
none of us have participated in the culture, right, we
have to be clear about that for sure. But our
colleague Annie Reese has Oh holy smokes, was that a didred?
I don't know? And then a puff of smoke and
(20:02):
Reese has has appeared before our very eyes. Yeah, we're
spoiling the lead here. There was a portal that just
opened up. That's how I always get to work. I
guess you guys have never noticed gets to travel. We
spent a lot of time bunkered up in the studio here,
but we appreciate you joining us for a little bit
because first off. That portal thing is very cool. Um,
(20:25):
as people know or may or may not know. Uh,
the five of us counting Paul, have worked together closely
for a number of years, and you are somewhat of
a legend in our office. Uh, not just for hosting saver,
not just for hosting stuff Mom never told you, but
for going on adventures in different areas of the world,
some very remote places. Yes, I I do like to travel.
(20:48):
And thank you for saying that, Thank you for having me.
You all are legends as well. Go ahead and just
go ahead and portal out of here. Now that was
all your one, and that's what I suspected. Um, yeah,
I I from what I understand, I certainly hope. So
you guys are talking about Australia today. Yes, yeah, that's true. Specifically,
(21:11):
concept that we've run into in this episode is the
idea of something called the dream Time. Yes. I spent
about four months in what Air, which is in the
northern called the top End Northern Territory. Um, it's really
hard to get to. You have to take a plane
(21:31):
because it's usually flooded, and if if it's the dry season,
you can drive out there. But it's really rough. It's
like three miles per hour rough. Um, they don't get
any visitors. Uh, so it's pretty remote, is what I'm
trying to say. Yes, And I was there specifically to
try to save their language, save their language, to document
(21:53):
one of their languages because, um, a lot of the
dialects of Marine Patza are other Aboriginal dialects are dying
out very very quickly. And um part of that was
learning about the dream time and the dreaming. And one
of the big things I tried to do when I
was there was, um, just listen, just listen to people
(22:15):
when they when they spoke. And one of the first
pieces of advice someone gave me was to just sit
in a place for a long time and someone will
come up to you and tell you, tell you their stories.
Because they're a society that depends a lot on oral
tradition and passing things down orally. So I did get
to learn about the dreaming. Um, it's it's the pretty
(22:39):
much their creation story. Um. And it all started where
they have these ancestors wait wait wait wait wait wait
wait back Um that that sleep underground, but they came
above ground and pretty much created everything, the everywhere and
every when as they say, and it's not a flat timeline.
(23:01):
It's like a cycle. Everyone and the Aboriginal society can
recall the dreaming, the dream time. They can remember this
and they go through these these re enactments, these rituals
that are very repetitive to to sort of put yourself
in the in the state of mind where you can
(23:22):
remember it and I'll capture yeah and pass it to
pass it along. And so I got to see I
got to see some of these um is really powerful
chancing and dancing. Did you do um? And they draw
shapes in the sand, they paint on their faces and
their bodies, and it's really cool because um, in Australia,
(23:44):
you can see the Milky Way, especially out there because
there's nothing out there, This is nothing, so you can
see that kind of milky whiteness in the sky. And
then all these shooting stars go across. And it did
feel I felt something like that I hadn't felt before.
And um, that probably sounds really cliche and cheesy, but
it is true. I can totally imagine that some in
(24:07):
a in a different version of time, almost right. Yeah,
you just you feel as though you were a part
of something. Honestly, It really felt powerful, and I was
really fortunate because they were open and happy to share.
They wanted to share, and uh I I appreciated that
(24:29):
they were. They opened up to me in that way. Yeah,
and you still do it there for four months? How
what what level of interaction did you get in terms
of the communities, like group rituals. I um, I got
a lot, mostly because I was like, I took that
(24:51):
advice and I sat in the spot and people would
come up to me, and they really did want to
include me and those things. Um I think because is
I suppose if if they had encountered foreigners before, they
had been much more like you're doing things this way.
And I just wanted to learn, and they did honorarily
(25:16):
accept me into their tribe. They gave me a spirit name,
a spirit animal, which was starfish means lost treasure. So
it's cooler than that adorable fantastic. I think that's wonderful. Yeah,
it was nice. And they they made me this did
you due? Which is great for audio because no one
can see it. Annie gestures to her right, campaigned, did
(25:39):
you dude, that's quite colorful. That's the thing that was
making so much noise when she portled in. It's the
only way to open the portal through circular breathing. Yeah.
I wanted to bring it because it illustrates UM just
their art, which I assume you'll probably talked about, but
this is x ray art. It shows their inside, it's
(26:00):
insides of animals and humans, and also how they tell stories.
When they tell stories, the journey is the most important part,
so they always show the stops. So this is my journey.
I flew there, this is the town, the village, this
is I then went on land to Sydney. Yeah, and
this is This means journey's end. It's like a cool
(26:23):
circle things. Would you be okay with us posting some
photos of the didre do uh and some of the
other stuff you have brought on our facebook page? Yeah? Absolutely,
that would be more helpful than me kind of vaguely
doesn't happen. No, I think it's great. Watch rewind and
watch along. Annie. You have also brought a boomerang. I
have auto boomerang. Um. This was more just for fun.
(26:46):
They are kind of dangerous. They I always assumed they
were just silly, to be honest, but they're used for
hunting UM and they are seen as weapons and you
can't have them on planes and you carry on really yeah?
Hold yeah, how would you use a playing We did
have our training today about like office awareness. Yeah. I
(27:07):
was just wondering if I get disarm someone. We didn't.
We didn't get taught how to disarm someone, didn't. That's
gonna come back, come back. Well, Annie, thank you so
much for taking the time to explain the dream time.
It's a fascinating concept and it's something that I think
(27:28):
the three of us heard about but hadn't done much
investigation into beforehand. Uh So hopefully we can talk to
you into coming back in the future as a guest
on a full episode to have more adventures. What do
you think, guys? Please? Yeah? I love it? All right,
Well we're I guess we're gonna sit here and watch
(27:50):
you did you do through portal? I'm ready? Let's see.
It's weird because there's a door in the studio. I mean, whatever,
that's true. That's fascinating stuff. Yeah, and you can catch
any right now. On Savor, it's a podcast about food
(28:12):
and why we like the things we like. It's got
a lot of science and history to it. It's super cool.
She's also on stuff Mom Never told You. Yes, so
do check it out, friend of the show. We're also
we're also big fans of food stuff, stuff Mom Never
Told You and Anning Reese in general. So let's let's
look at some of the cryptids that occur in Australia
(28:38):
and we can we can stop along the way if
we want to see what types of cryptos these are,
what categories that would fall in. By far, the most
famous the breakout single the Real Banger off the Cryptozoology
Mixtape of Australia is something called the Bunyip. The bun Yip,
it is a strange look thing. If you've ever seen
(29:02):
a picture of it online, I would encourage you to
search for images of it. Uh. It's funky. M It's
kind of like a snake, kind of like a plant,
kind of like an aquatic creature. When I just read
the descriptions in the text years ago, my first question was,
(29:22):
is this a platypus? Are you just describing a platypus?
Because it sounds like they just threw all the leftover
stuff in there, you know. But it's interesting to bring
up the the idea of the appearance, right. The only
really consistent stuff about the bun. Yet which does is
mentioned in Dreamtime is that it is a creature that
(29:44):
lives in or near bodies of water like creeks, pools, swamps.
And it's so ubiquitous that there are nine regional variations
of this that are presented and described differently in different
traditions and different threads of folklore. And at this point
there's no real consensus about what this thing looks like.
(30:07):
We it has some common characteristics, yes, indeed there are,
and these include things like tusks, flippers. Always wanted a
flipper only it's sort of like a either either you
get feet or you get a flipper. Yeah, wait, you
really want to classics? Oh that's true. I guess I'm
thinking of like a fin. It could be cool. Well, no,
what does a mermaid have? Is that a flipper or
(30:28):
a fin? Now that is a question for the ages,
and that really a tail? Okay, alright, Ben, also speaking
of which a horse like tail um and and of
course you know, possibly a mermaid like tail um. And
then there's also this belief that they come out at
night to feast on animals and of course young children,
(30:49):
you know, because they're savory and delicious. Weakest in the
herd and women. Yeah and here, Well, we'll get into
it a little later. Let's let's keep going on with it.
But I have some my ideas of about this creature
um with regards to storytelling and safeguarding of the young
in a but let's let's keep going. So. They also
(31:11):
have a characteristic noise that they are notorious for making
when they approach. I just found it described as a
loud bellow. Yeah. Yeah, and it can be heard from
like miles away, from very very far away. You'll always
know the bunyip yell. When you hear it for the
first time, you're like, oh, that was a bunyip. Ah
(31:32):
the yellow the bunyap. Come. Well, I mean I like that.
That's a good catchphrase for a T shirt. That really
is like his one string, Ah the yellow the bunny up. Okay,
t public, here's looking at you. Hopefully hopefully you're listening,
you guys, look at it. You. But I think we
have to fill out a form or something, all right
(31:52):
or no, you're right, we have to fill out a form.
We have to ask nicely. But let us know if
you think that's a good idea for a T shirt.
But that's it sounds like the Sasquatch yells and some
of the communications that we've heard about where you it's
tough to nail down exactly what it sounds like, but
if you hear it, you'll know that that's what it is. Um.
Some some recordings have been made over the years of
(32:14):
supposed Sasquatch sounds. UM, And I wonder I haven't dug
too deep into the bunyip yell or the shriek or
whatever you might call it, but I haven't found a
good recording of something like that says that's what it
is that I would at least say, hey, let's play
that right now. Yeah, yeah, I I see what you mean.
(32:35):
And even with even with very well established or well
known cryptids such as big Foot or Sasquatch, it's still
it's such an audio rorschach test, you know what I mean,
Really will hear things that they want to hear unfortunately,
you know, But that's the that's the thing with a bunyip,
(32:58):
it's supposed to be a very distinctive characteristic fellow. We
have not found a definitive recording of that. We did
find the earliest published reference to the bunny upper one
of them, which was a pamphlet published in eighteen twelve
by a guy named James Ives, and he refers to
it as a black seal like creature that has a
(33:19):
terrifying voice. I have chills. Chills, knoll, I have chills.
It's probably like that, but like a lot more sinister.
So it's kind of a sinister it's like an arch
that's that's to Scooby dooish. That is, it has to
be lower like a like a like more of a
(33:41):
death metal seal. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah, like
a death like the seal has corpse paint on. That's
that that would that would spook me. We've solved it, folks.
You heard it here first the bunyup. So this this
black seal like creature, right, that's that's one of the
that's one of the descriptions. Other accounts, also in the
eighteen hundreds, called it a dog like amphibious animal or
(34:05):
a calf size, shaggy haired or main quadruped sometimes seen
on land, but mostly amphibious. So what what does that mean?
You know, originally in the Aboriginal dream time, which you know,
early anthropologists created this word to describe that worldview. But
(34:25):
we'll go with it. In the dreamtime, bunyips were very
nasty creatures. They were punishing spirits. They were like forces
of uh righteous punishment that you did not want to
run into. But now they're they're pretty toned down. Yeah,
you can find them in commercials now and they're like
kids commercials like as in it, look at this thing.
(34:48):
It's a bunny. It's fine, it's silly, it's uh, it's
gonna bring your cereal to you. I honestly don't know
if it's been using this series to be fair bunny
it's it'. It sounds a lot like bunny to me,
so it makes me think of something cute and malleable.
It doesn't feel like a scary word to me either.
(35:09):
But there's a long list of supposed sightings of these creatures,
and some of the most recent ones were during the
midst of the depression, during the nineteen thirties. I wonder
what correlation there is there. I wonder why, Yeah, I
wonder why as well. M It was the thirties, the
economic depression that that rack to the world did drive
(35:32):
a lot of people to pursue alternative viewpoints. I mean
economic and cultural and spiritual that they ordinarily wouldn't have done. Yeah,
and probably alternative like living like places to live and
trying to save money and live off the land in
different ways. And maybe there's something there. Well, what about
(35:53):
what I mean, if they were something, would they be
a relic population of an animal that we thought went
extinct before? There's that possibility. What is this thing called
the die protodon? De protodon? The de protodon? Oh, yes,
the the old de protodon. This is a fascinating looking creature.
(36:14):
It's this I don't know, it looks kind of like
a bear, but if you mixed like the head of
a hippo or something in with it or kind of
melded that into the creature walks on all fours and
it's a marsupial and it's pretty dang huge. Yeah. And
(36:36):
some Aboriginal tribes have identified bones of this creature, fossils
of it as bunyant bones, so that might be the
grain of truth there. Well. And you know what, This
Deprotodon went extinct roughly forty six thousand years ago, so
after humans had crossed over into Australia, right, um, so
(36:58):
they would have coexisted with this thing for thousands of years.
Maybe it's the name that was given at the time
to these things. So is it then? Is it then
a relic from oral history perhaps right, some kind of
memory carried over. You could say the same thing about
another candidate for the bunyip tail, which is the polar
(37:21):
chest Days, which means ancient leaper or dancer. And this
thing when extinct eleven thousand years ago, so it has
even more of an overlap with human settlements, no occupation.
It looks crazy. It's like a tape air looking creature
about the size of a horse. Yeah, that's like again,
(37:44):
if you're going if you look at the de Prodoton,
it's gonna stand over six and a half feet tall generally,
so taller than you. And that's walking on all fours.
And I mean that it would be It would be
pretty pretty creepy. And I bet it could make a
fellow that you would here for a long way away,
as well as what was the other one, oh, the
(38:05):
parlo chests. Yeah, I bet, I bet both of those
could make a sound that you would notice. So here's
the question, then, is this real? Is there a grain
of truth to it? The thing is there's a solid
core of reasonably good anatomically consistent accounts of the bunyip.
Despite those regional variations, the most common one is a
(38:25):
dark furred dog headed quote seal dog. So is it
a Is it a seal that swam out of place
and somehow got to a river or a swamp swamp
or something, or maybe a small population of them that
started living in existing in a different environment than they
(38:49):
normally would over the course of you know, a couple
of thousand years, right, Maybe they found a place that
didn't have some of the natural privations they had have
to combat, so maybe the living was easy. I don't know,
it's just that keep going back to the bellow like no,
like you did with the seal sounds, that seems like
that would be loud enough, you know, Yeah, I mean
(39:11):
it's a bark. Yeah, they're inherently that they carrying, right.
So that's that's our case on the bunyip. Let us know,
if you listen to your opinion of it. Do you
think it's just folklore? Do you think it's an animal
that went extinct at some time but maybe not as
long ago as we think. Um, you do want to
(39:32):
do a lighter cryptod well, but yes, But first I
want to talk about what we were discussing at the
very top of of talking about the bunyips, that idea
that they will hunt usually or at least in the
stories that are told about them, they'll hunt children, they'll
hunt women, to keep you away from bodies of water
or you know, the existing bodies of water. And my
(39:53):
thought is, perhaps it's an oral tradition to try and
safeguard the the young of of a community, and perhaps
um safeguard them from not only bodies of water, which
can be very dangerous, and there can be animals close
to water or in water that are you know, would
would probably be carnivorous or could be carnivorous and attack
(40:13):
a small child. Yeah, a boogeyman story to safeguard I
don't know that. In my mind, that makes a whole
lot of sense. I can see that. I can see that.
And also kind of the extrapolation from this is using
that the dream time, the oral tradition of the dream time,
because a lot of UM in many cases stories from
(40:35):
the dream time are used as kind of an allegory
to teach a lesson or to have something that you
need to learn. So there's like one place that you
could go to or one set of stories you could
tell that would give a person living in your community
everything they would need to know to survive. There a
lot of just that's part of folklore and that's part
(40:55):
of history learning those things. I just gotta put that
out there. Absolutely. Would you, I mean, would you say,
coming back to the boogeyman thing, would you say that
the next animal or a list is also a boogy
bad the drop bear, the drop bear, drop bears? No,
what you know about them? Well, it's a delicious gummy
(41:17):
treat with a marshmallowed tummy. Oh how much th hc
per um per milligram? Isn't there? Um? Okay, it takes
you right to the dream time? Right? No, but seriously,
it's like a terrifying carnivorous marsupial that drops down upon
(41:40):
you from the trees. At least legend would have it. Yes, Yes,
it's got giant fangs, right, yeah, it's got giant jagged fangs, claws,
I'm sure, claws, and it it uses these fangs and
claws to rip chunks of flesh from the neck, head,
and back of unsuspecting tourists. Because like if it comes
down on you and gets you on the back. It
(42:00):
probably immediately jaws right down on the back of your neck,
right right, gets artery or vein to pay on the
side of the neck, maybe paralyzes you. That's a drop bear, folks.
Luckily it's taken about as seriously as the idea of
a jackal loope, which do people if you if you're
not familiar with jackalope, google it. It's this weird American
in joke. Isn't it just really a taxidermy joke? Yeah,
(42:24):
I feel like it's it's a taxidermy joke, is very American.
I feel like nobody really believed in the jackalope, but
maybe maybe they did, just so anyone who doesn't know
it's it's a jack rabbit or a larger rabbit and
or a hair and it's got antlers, right, that's the
whole point of it. Yeah, there you go, jackalope. So
(42:49):
it's it's been uh acquiring to folklore. That belief has
been around since colonial days, but the belief in the
drop bear is a little bit more recent. We don't
know exactly when it occurred, but it's it's like an
in joke for Australians. Yeah, it's fun. You tell the tourists, hey,
watch out for drop bass. Yeah right right, Well but
(43:11):
again and there's a there's this delightful commercial that you
can find on YouTube right now. It's for this company
called Bundaberg or Bundy rum uh and Cola. That's a
whole thing. It's at least one of their products, and
it features this drop bear where there's a group of
these camping blokes I'm gonna call them blokes in this instance, Um,
they're accompanied by a polar bear who's just hanging out
(43:32):
by the trunk of their car, the boot or whatever
you call it. There, uh and there. The whole point
is they're trying to convince this separate group of Sheila's
in this case, see what we're doing here. Um. Yeah,
they're trying to convince the ladies to join them in
camp with them, because they're like, oh, you guys are
camping over there, we're camping over here, we should get together. Well,
the polar bear understands what's happening here, So the polar
(43:55):
bear sneakily climbs up to this tree that's hanging over
the ladies tent right right, and then the lads. They
go to the Sheila's and they're like, hey, you gotta
be careful them drop bears. We got drop bears around here,
and they're like drop bears? What are those? And then
the polar bear drops down onto the tent and they scream,
and then they all camped together and they drink. I
guess the bear doesn't like dismember them, and then drinks
(44:20):
mumming coke. No. No, the bear falls on the tent
and then gives him a nice little like winking like
why why is the bear want to help out these blokes?
I don't understand that. The motivation there. He is certainly
in with that group, so he's either, uh, he's one
of the gangs. His motivation is to maintain that group
of friends. So he's an anthropomorphic pervy bear. He's a
polar bear, and he's also on the bunderberg Rum. He's
(44:44):
like part of their logo. Oka. He's like they're two
can sam oh I get it? Or he's like there
coke polar bear. I guess I don't like it. Well,
it's it is, it is, but hey, I don't know.
It's like high jinks. It wasn't aiding a crime. Right, Well,
well we've only seen a snippet of this bear's life. Yeah,
and we we only know how the nights started. That
(45:05):
is also true. And while we're overthinking animal commercials, uh,
you guys know about panda cheese, right, I'm sure when
ad nausea and panda cheese, what the hell is that? Oh? Okay,
so we're gonna have to hang out for a second
after we record and will post this. And here's where
it gets crazy when this episode comes out. There's an
(45:28):
Egyptian cheese company named Panda and they put out a
number of years ago a series of advertisements about this
evil panda that would appear if you turned down Panda cheese,
it would appear and ruin your life. What's an increasingly
dark and sinister ways. Okay, there's a YouTube video called
(45:49):
top seven Panda Cheese commercials. We don't have time to
do it now, but he's doing a slow clap in
this one, but they're worth it. There were is a
creature pure evil. So I would take the Bundy rum
guy over this one. But you know what we should
also take at this point a break. Yes, yeah, you
just need to set them up and I knock them
(46:10):
down there and we're back. So we talked about the bunny,
if we explored the drought bear just for fun. Now
it's time to dive into this story of what I
would call the most likely to be real cryptid here
(46:33):
in this case, and that is the Thila scene or
Tasmanian tiger, one of the most fascinating alleged cryptids in
the region. Also known as the Tasmanian tiger um, this
creature technically went extinct in Tasmanian the nineteen thirties with
the last Thila scene, which was a male named Benjamin.
(46:55):
It's like, it's like your name. They have a weird
they have they have a weird story about Benjamin. Well,
let's get to it. So Benjamin died in a zoo
in ninety six, and for years and years after there
was this controversy because they didn't know the gender of
the animal. So there were some people who went back
and obsessively watched video this one short clip of the
(47:17):
animal walking frame by frame by frame, enhancing the crap
out of it until they could see one testicle. So
a lot of science went into that. Wouldn't you just
couldn't they have just said, oh, its name is Benjamin.
I don't know, one would think obviously, so last one
(47:38):
dies in nineteen thirty six. As you were saying, no, right,
it's a fascinating looking creature, it really is. Yeah, and
over there it's it's true. And over the years there
have been numerous residents of Tasmania have claimed to see
uh encounter even this carnivorous marsupial. So it's a lot
like the drop bear in that respect. Um. So the
Tasmanian tiger can grow to six ft long if you
(48:00):
count the tail and um. Folks like Andrew Orchard who
have investigated this cryptid claim to have seen the creature
multiple times. And often people hunt these um much with
the same dedication that we attached to bigfoot hunters here
in the United States. So maybe we could interview uh
(48:21):
devil hunter. Also, that sounds really cool, Yeah, the devil hunter. Well,
it looks it's a fascinating looking animal. It looks kind
of like the head of a canine almost in a way. Um,
but then its tail is very rodent or marsupial like,
but again it's large, and then its body has the
stripes of gosh, I don't even know. Almost some African
(48:45):
animals that you can find just to have the stripes
of this kind Almo not tiger stripes, but they're very
their lines, they're not like some kind of jagged shape
or any kind of they're not even really swooping or anything.
And they start on the upper back and then they
expand as they go down towards the haunches. It's a
(49:08):
very very strange placement. It looks like somebody customized the
creature in a video game of some sort. So it
was it was common in Australia for some time as well,
but it went extinct in Australia first and then later
extinct in Tasmania at least officially. And as as you
(49:31):
pointed out, role there are a ton of people in
Tasmania who are certain they have seen this thing, you know.
And the Australia Rare Fund of Research Association has almost
four thousand reports of Tasmanian tigers in Australia since ninety six,
(49:52):
like observations or sightings of some sort. Right, And if
you look at the silhouette or the profile of the thing,
it looks different enough from a dog or dingo, even
because that tail sticks straight out like like a kangaroo tail. Absolutely,
if you saw it at night, I can see how
you would mix this up with a few things, with
the exception of the tail, if you're like seeing it
(50:13):
with a flashlight night or headlights or something. You know.
The most popular, uh, I guess misidentified animal we have
here in Atlanta now? Is a coyote? You yet I have?
Actually yeah, me too, and some foxes. I've got them
mixed up initially. Really yeah. I saw in a neighborhood
outside of Atlanta, fears Back. I saw a lost dog
(50:38):
poster and someone's like, have you lost your dog? I've
been seeing this one around. I haven't caught him. He's
kind of shy. It's totally a coyote. Yeah, kilch and cats.
But um, but look, people who think that the Tasmanian
tiger survives, I think that it survives most likely in
(50:58):
a remote part of Tasman you know, the island off
of Australia, or in a very remote part of the
Australian not quite the outback the bush. Like you said, no,
I'm blissy, don't let the game boy machine head. Did
(51:22):
you know he played the bad one of the bad
guys in Constantine? Yes, he did, and he was fantastic
at it. Very wasn't anything else. Um, there are the Australian, British,
British and take the trip. Damn. It would have been
a good a good transition, not a transition, at least
a better non sequitor. Well uh speaking of fantastic segways, Yeah,
(51:50):
sequitors and segways which is another name of a different
podcast will probably do one day. What about large cats?
This is when it gets me. Every place that we
have ever investigated in terms of cryptozoology, they always have
at least a few large cats. Like every state in
(52:10):
the US has its own alleged cryptid large cat. Even
states that have mountain lions say they have a large
cryptic cat. But it's different. Yeah, it's different from mountain lion. However,
mountain lions are terrifying. If you've ever seen one in
the wild or maybe on your property, uh be where
(52:31):
that's a mountain lion, it will take your dog and
or maybe you. Yeah they're not they didn't come to
play with you. But it feels like the reports of
large cats in Australia have a little bit more credibility. Yeah,
there's one, I guess the most famous sighting is the
Gippsland phantom cat. It's been spotted all over the place,
(52:53):
repeatedly in the Grampians. Grampians, I don't know how to
say that correctly, Australians. I'm sorry, uh it since the
nineteen seventies. Are Grampians like geriatric champions, Yes, just like that.
It's a it's a region or a little an area,
and experts and skeptics believe these are maybe perhaps the
feral descendants of just you know, plain old house cats,
(53:16):
but maybe a little bigger, maybe a little more feral. Yeah.
So this National Park is is huge. It's sixty six
square miles and it's a nature reserve, so it's taking
a lot of the boxes for us. It's not heavily populated,
and it's remote. There you go. Maybe it's a different
(53:38):
species that we just haven't cataloged yet. And where it's
located plays a role in its credibility too, because there's
this long standing theory or somewhat of an urban I
don't want to call it a myth, but there's a tail.
There's a story. At least it says when US soldiers
were stationed in Victorian World War two, they had a
(53:59):
pair of pumas that were mascots, and after the war,
when they were going back home to the States, they
release these cats into the wild. Pumas, pumas. You gonna say,
which is the same. It's just a cougar, A cougar, Yeah,
but it looks I mean, it's just a large it's
a large cat. It's another word for mountain lion. Two
(54:22):
to three feet in height. So maybe not as intimidating
as a gigantic wombat, but it is carnivorous. It can
run fifty miles per hour, and if you piss it off,
it will it will attack you. Right, most animals in
the wild, It's pretty much true everywhere, if they have
(54:48):
the option to avoid a human versus confronting them, the
majority of animals would rather avoid a human being, right, Yeah,
the majority of human beings would rather avoid human beings.
It's true. That's true. Um In in Victoria, however, these
reports of large and identified cats were taken very seriously,
(55:08):
so much so that the state government investigated the sightings
and they released a report that said there was no
evidence to back these concerns. Don't ask us how much
it costs to do this. Investigation, which became another sticking
point for the local government. But the stories continued, and
they continued today in eighteen and there was um. There
(55:32):
was at least one case where somebody caught an unidentified cat. Yeah.
This was a fellow by the name of Kurt Angle.
He shot a that said an identified cat which had
a twenty six inch tail. It's huge, And tests on
the cat showed that it was at least partially a
common domestic cat. Yes, they had a mitochondrial DNA test,
(55:57):
which means they can only trace the matrilineal side in
the mother's side of it. So the official conclusion was,
like you said, partially regular common cat, Yeah, but the
other parts are just monster. Doesn't twenty six inches seem
cartoonishly long for your tail? It really does. Why would
(56:18):
you ever need that from an evolutionary perspective unless you're
like hanging from it or I don't know, getting objects
out of the water with it. Seems like it'd be
a liability. Maybe you can go fishing with it. Maybe
I bet you could deep sea fishing. Well, unfortunately, don't
know because he discarded the body was dumb. Thanks Kurt Angle.
(56:41):
One point six meters long although he says two meters
you can see a picture of um of the cat
hanging up where he caught it. But destroying the body
really hurt his credibility, you know what I mean. But
then there's other there are other video clips you can find,
(57:02):
and there's a wealth of stuff out there. The problem
is that people are skeptical about this stuff, will say
it's inconclusive. They're also rumors that there are large essentially
komodo dragons wandering the outback. Yeah, I can see that.
We didn't dig too deep by that. That's just one
(57:22):
of those where I think I could also see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you know, you think there'd be more than just
a few sightings if there was a large enough population
of them out there, But who knows, maybe they're that isolated. Well,
but the best one, my favorite one. Yeah, yeah, what
is it anything walking around on two legs up in
this piece? I'm so glad you asked, Matt. Yes, there
(57:44):
are not one, but at least two types of big
Foot esque creatures in the world of Australian cryptozoology. The
first is the moon how of New Zealand. According to reports,
they're about the size of a normal person, normal guy,
but they have any blank face, long shaggy hair, and
really long fingers with sharp fingernails or claws. I don't
(58:05):
like that. Those with you until you get to the
long and started acting it out. Yeah, you crossed the
table towards you. They're thought to be responsible for two
deaths in two a prospector and a woman who was
found nearby. She'd been abducted from her home. Someone had
broken her neck. The prospector had been partially eaten. No
(58:28):
one knows what happened. Yeah did they Well, yeah, it
just makes you wonder if they found, you know, any
long scratches or strange creepy things. But it's contagious. Now
you're acting I know, and I'm not liking me doing
it even And then there's the Yahwi, which probably has
one of the more fun names cryptids. Oh yeah, I
mean this is this is your big foot. This is
(58:50):
your Australian bigfoot. Essentially, it lives deep within the wilderness.
It avoids contact with humans. You might be able to
hear uh a yahwe if you know, if you're walking
around the woods, you're maybe you're camping or something. You're
just exploring or hiking where you're on the like the
outskirts of the woods. Yeah, yeah, He's Alley, isn't that
(59:14):
a That's wow, He's Alley. It's a Pavement album. Ah.
But here's the thing, all, there might be some confusion
here because within the oral storytelling over the years them
and within the Aboriginal communities, the term yawi is also
a regional term, uh for the bunyip creature. So there's
(59:34):
some conflation and confusion there exactly. So maybe it just
wanted the same or at least originally was, and then
it just became its own separate set of stories. Yeah. Well,
if I have become persuaded in this episode about one
thing and one thing only, it's the Pavement should do
an album that is entirely about the awe and it's
called Yahwe's Ali. Well, first we got to get him
(59:57):
back together. Okay. Well, look, everything it's a journey of
of a thousand miles starts with a single step. So
members of Pavement forward, members of Pavement, if you're listening
right to us, do this for us. Please. Do you
know a member of Pavement will send them this podcast,
make them listen to the entire thing against their will.
Don't send them just the end and then hopefully they'll
(01:00:20):
they'll hear this, well it does. You know. We do
have to wrap up today. But we've explored, at least
on a cursory level, some of the most popular and
strangest cryptids in Australia. But there's much more to this
story because Australia has its own rich history of these sightings,
and although many of them share tropes and themes with
(01:00:41):
stories and other areas of the world, these are very different.
Found one big twist to the to the entire cryptid
story here, and it's that of all the cryptids in Australia,
at least once we encounter while working on the show,
large cats and the Tasmanian tiger are the most likely
(01:01:02):
to be quote unquote real right, rather than purposeful hoaxes
or being misidentified. But the big twist is we might
find Tasmanian tigers sooner than we think, and we might
not do it by searching the remote reaches of Australia
and Tasmania. In the past few years, scientists have successfully
(01:01:23):
drafted the DNA sequence of the Thighla scene. This means
that in the future we not all of us listening. Maybe,
but our species may be able to create our own hybrids,
just like the work on the wooly mammoth. We may
be able to bring the Tasmanian tiger back from the grave.
The Philacene Park will be born. We will get the
(01:01:45):
the blood from ancient mosquitoes trapped in amber and the
great Outback. Oh wait what, I don't even know what
you'd find in the outback where you would get DNA
like that. Maybe maybe it will be huge. Australian mosquito
was unbeknownst to demand before this time, and we'll we'll
take that DNA and we'll book the whomever. The Jeff
(01:02:06):
Goldbloom of Australia, D Jerry and Malcolm will be there
and he will say, this is chaos and it's chaos
that we want you to be a part of. So
let us know what you thought about this episode. And hey,
if you're in Australia, let us know. Let us know
if any of these cryptics are taken seriously on the
ground where you live. You know, have you ever used
(01:02:29):
drop bears to um get a group of blokes or
Sheila's to hang out with you? Is it? Is it
all just sort of a dad joke. You know what
I mean, drop bears, we'd like we'd like to hear
from you. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
We're all over the place. If you want to see
those panda commercials, then get thee to our community page.
(01:02:49):
Here's where it gets crazy Panda chiese. Everybody, we are
going on tour. Remember that. We gotta tell you this.
Every time we're going on tour. We have been instructed. No,
we haven't been at act, we feel compelled to do. So.
You have to know this because we need you to
come and see us. We need you to be there.
We want to see you. Yes, please, we need you
more than you need us. Can we hang out please? Oh?
(01:03:12):
Speaking of shout out to Michael Shelby. I he if
you're listening to Michael, I kept my word, said one
of the Shelby brothers. Huh anybody anybody get that? Anybody
watching peeky Blinders? Okay? Never right? All right? Uh Thomas
Shelby hit me up if you're listening to this. Okay,
(01:03:32):
so uh, yes, we're going into our go to stuff
they don't want you to know. Dot com click on
the live shows tab you can check out all the
cities will be in when we'll be there. You can
get your tickets from there. Uh and you know, really
please come hang up. We don't want to give you
too many spoilers, but we can promise it will be
weird and more than worth your time. And if you
don't want to do any of that stuff all you
(01:03:53):
and you still want to talk to us and give
us a suggestion for what we cover in the future
or comment. Keep the criticisms light, but will we accept
You can write us a good old fashioned email. We
are Conspiracy and how Stuff Works dot com.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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