~ Bunyip
~ Polynesian Dragons
~ Rainbow Serpent
~ Taniwha






Bunyip (Australian Dragons):
The strangest of the Australasian dragons is undoubtedly the bunyip; this swamp-dwelling dragon is perhaps one of the oldest alongside its serpentine kin, the Rainbow Serpent.

During the early settlement of Victoria (a state of Australia), tales of a terrible man-eating water monster were heard from natives far removed from one another (Buchler & Maddock, 1978). The consistencies in the many different tales were startling, and soon the bunyip had aroused the interest of the European settlers, who described the beast as a huge monster-dragon creature, with bull-like horns, a flat, pushed-in face with large cheeks, the body of an oversized cow tapering into a whale back half (Shuker, 2004).
This does not easily fit with the Aboriginal description of the swamp-dragon, who described the creatures as huge snakes with large eyes and long ears, while at other times they were depicted as dingo like animals (turudun) or as birds, particularly the emu (gourke) (Buchler & Maddock, 1978). Bunyips often assume forms of their own choosing, including enlarged variants of already existing Australian animals, to chimerical creatures, such as winged, flying fish (Reed, 1974). It is no surprise, then, that bunyips are renowned for their mismatched appearance; their body coverings encompass scales, fur and feathers (Buchler & Maddock, 1978).
While bunyips are known for their aggression, a few appear to have a rather placid temperament. One bunyip sighted in New South Wales (state above Victoria) during 1868 was pardoned of any viciousness by the witness who said, "it is all nonsense about it being a savage sort of brute" (Barnard, 2001, p. 16). Despite this, not all bunyips appear friendly. The creatures are known for eating humans, and often meat out severe punishments for wrongdoings.
Bunyips are endowed with many strange, esoteric powers; the boundaries of which remain unknown to humankind. These swamp-dwelling dragons use their well-developed power of metamorphosis to inflict damage on others, including the land, which they are known to flood in bouts of anger. This tells us a great deal about the bunyip’s attitude, and the inability they have of seeing that, in their own personal grief, they cause the undoing of others, including innocents.
One such tale tells of an Aboriginal boy who unwittingly captured a baby bunyip; after his feather’s entreaties to return the small creature which he obeyed, the boy and his family were turned into the first black swans, and their land was flooded (Shuker, 2004).
Bunyips also have the ability to turn people into stone, entrapping them for years in separation from their families (Reed, 1974). Their own viciousness has ensued a lasting place in Australian mythology; not only are they credited with altering the landscape, they have been involved in the creation of the three sisters (who as Aboriginal girls were known as Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo); having trapped them, their father was forced to turn them into stone (Ratcliff, 2004).

Preferring the cool secrecy of water, bunyips lair in waterholes and swamps, which they share an affinity with, using the water to flood or cause drought (Shuker, 2004). They can also be found in damp holes and caves where they lair harmlessly, until disturbed (Ratcliff, 2004).

Polynesian Dragons:
Across the Polynesian region, belief in dragons may be traced to the ancient home in Hawaiki; subsequently, dragons branched off to New Zealand with the Polynesian settlement of the land (Westervelt, 1910). Another family branch carried their long-established belief in dragons and their colourful folklore to the Hawaiian Islands, and soon the creatures had spread in many places across the Pacific Ocean and featured richly in Polynesian tradition (Westervelt, 1910).
Prior to the establishment of Hawaiki, the first Polynesians who occupied Samoa and Tonga from the Asian mainland may have carried memories of crocodiles with them across to Polynesia, which would have aided in the birth- or continuation- of the dragon (Alpers, 1970). In addition, Asian mythology of Eastern Dragons may have added to the establishment of their own version of these mythic creatures. To reinforce this, it also appears likely dragons stemmed from the remembrance of crocodiles in India’s River Ganges, where many of the other Polynesian native residents lived prior to emigration (Westervelt, 1910).
Mythologically speaking, the Polynesians believed the first dragons to have arrived in Hawaii came from Kaui-he-lani, a far away island. The original dragons were in possession of mana, an arcane ability that allowed them to alter their appearances from men to dragons at their whim. Later dragons also inherited mana, and some had attained a semi-divine status that demanded they were held in high esteem among their colleagues (Westervelt, 1963).

One of Hawaii’s most famous dragons was "Moo-Kuna", a trickster dragon who caused the goddess Hina much distress by littering her cave with general debris in an attempt to drive her from her home. Eventually, when Moo-Kuna attempted to flood the goddess, Hina called for the aid of her son, the demigod Maui, who chased and slew the dragon with his magic club and by calling forth lava. As previously discussed in the Introduction/ Overview, the name "moo" and "kuna" means an alien, reptilian form unknown to the natives.
After this event, this same dragon was seen reflected in nature, as the name "Moo-Kuna" today is given to any suspicious-looking black log or rock sitting in the middle of a river, near the falls or rapids. A saying developed from this story, "as if he [the dragon] were not dead enough already, every big freshest in the stream beats him and pounds him and drowns him over and over as he would have drowned Hina" (Westervelt, 1910, p. 153).

In the Hervey Islands, the dragon is interchangeable with the phallic eel (Alpers, 1970), and in Samoa, the dragon is simply a serpent and his enemy the owl (Westervelt, 1910). This may be because the Samoans did not have a word for dragon, but more likely, it is simply a linguistic difference caused by the spread of the creature across the islands. Regardless, the dragon here shows it is not immune to the ravages of time and travel, yet it has retained much of its basic properties; the simple, reptilian/ serpentine properties, and its ever-recurrent ties to water which it lairs in.
In Hawaiian later years, the dragon became interchangeable with the shark; the king of dragons, Ka-moho-alii, later became the god of sharks. This is not unusual in Polynesia, as New Zealand’s taniwha has also been described and associated with the shark (Westervelt, 1963).
Because there is so much difference between the Polynesian dragons, it is hard to pinpoint exactly the core basics of their appearance. They are mainly black, serpentine creatures with a thick hide and a fearsome presence. Many can fly, but this is not a trait shared by all Polynesian dragons. With wide, gaping mouths and small, staring eyes they take in all the details of their surroundings and situations, and thus are not easy creatures to overcome (Alpers, 1970).
While many dragons appear to have good natures, many more are deviant beasts who, while not out to cause real harm, do stir trouble amongst the divine gods and the people.

Rainbow serpent (Australian Dragons):
Of the Australasian dragons, the rainbow serpent is certainly the most prolific and divine. Not only do these serpent-dragons possess elemental ties to their world that stretch beyond the normal, they also hold the unseen characteristics of the gods.
Male rainbow serpents are coloured to match their name; down their long, snake-like form they are striped in red and yellows (Reed, 1974). Coupled with black, these colours appear on the Australian Aboriginal flag; the central yellow orb symbolises the sun, while the red lower half portrays the earth and the black upper half represents the Aboriginal people. This is somewhat reflected in the rainbow serpent; like the sun, he travels through the sky, and through his land journey across the earth he sculpts the landscape. Although lacking black along his coloured skin, we are inclined to recall the story of Bolong who spewed out new people after being assaulted with a spear.
The female rainbow serpent is completely blue, and pairings of these serpents frequently fly through the sky after the rain, arching their slender forms to resemble the ribbon streaks of the rainbow. However, rainbow serpents are ancient and wise creatures, and punish those who fish for sport, as opposed to hunting for food. It is when they fly through the sky they spy on people; should they find anyone who had been fishing for recreation they dart down like lightning. The rainbow serpent is not without its sense of irony; as punishment, these people are fed to the fish in the river (Reed, 1974).
Rainbow serpents are most noted for the part they played in the creation and shaping of the land and its people in the Dreamtime (also Altjeringa), when the world was new and a strange ancestral race occupied the land (Littleton, 2002). Unlike today, the world was rather plain and void of the nature’s beautiful features. People also were anatomically different; rather than defecate, waste was regurgitated from their mouths, and childbirth was a very different and even more painful affair (Saxby & Winch, 1997).
There was a massive rainbow serpent called Bolong, who slept in the middle of the rather shapeless land. Inside her body, Bolong carried the features of the landscape; trees, rocks, hills, birds and animals, including a large group of people. An old woman recognized the potential for a better life if Bolong were slain; after convincing the young man Jaitmee to slay the serpent, he killed Bolong with a spear through the back of her head, from which water and all manner of life spewed forth (Saxby & Winch, 1997). Through her unwilling death, Bolong essentially became a creatrix and anchored her kind into Australian tradition and mythology.
Other stories credit Bolong with shaping the land through her travels. Once she had done this and lay to rest in a lake, she was disturbed by an Aborigine and in her fury, flooded the land for many days and nights in what was known as the Great Flood (Nigg, 2002).
While it was with a serpent the world came to be how it is today, it was also with serpents Australia came to an evolutionary standstill. A great battle between the Kuniya, the rock-python people, and the Liru, the poisonous serpents, ensued until the 430 m (1 300 ft) tall monolith Uluru (previously known also as Ayers Rock) erupted from the battle scene and marked the Dreamtime’s last creation (Littleton, 2002).
The rainbow serpent’s sway over the world’s formation had not gone unnoticed; well after the Dreamtime, the serpent continued to be greatly respected. Known by different names, the serpents are differentiated slightly by their features; in Melbourne, Victoria, the serpent or mythical snake was known as myndie, with a long and thick body. Myndie had a large head and, when spitting their fiery poison a forked tongue with three prongs could be seen (Buchler & Maddock, 1978). In Perth, South Australia, the rainbow serpent is winged and known as wogal, who was said to lair in certain waterholes which were dutifully avoided by the Aborigines (Buchler & Maddock, 1978). In western Arnhem Land, the male rainbow serpent is known as Ngalyod (Littleton, 2002), and has a heavily plated reptilian tail and thick horns, while the female is Yingara (Tacon, et. al., 1996).

Rainbow serpents held a particular vendetta against women, attacking them more frequently than men (Buchler & Maddock, 2002; Littleton, 2002). Despite this, many were phallic and masculine in nature (Buchler & Maddock, 2002). By manner of representation, they symbolised for the wet season (Littleton, 2002).

During procreation, rainbow serpents scatter their eggs over the earth, leading them to be often mistaken for hailstones. However, these "hailstones" slowly tunnel themselves into the ground, where they are incubated by the earth and eventually hatch into baby rainbow serpents (Reed, 1974).

Rainbow serpents are essentially a catalyst, for throughout their thousands of years in existence (appearing in rock art some 6- 8 000 years ago, although they almost certainly featured in Aboriginal belief prior [Tacon, et. al., 1996]), they have changed very little. Their powers and ability to cause floods and droughts were famous during the years, and Aborigines were wary of where the serpents lived, lest they stir their great wrath. In Dhuwa tradition, the ancestral Wawilak (or Wagilag) sisters and their children were eaten by the serpent Yulunggur after disturbing his peace; in retribution for his crime, however, a monsoon even a rainbow serpent could not handle was thrown against them, and his thrashing, writhing movements carved out a river valley (Littleton, 2002). Another serpent was known as Thugine, who turned wandering boys to stone for having entered his watery lair (Reed, 1974).

Taniwha (New Zealand Dragons):
Closely associated with a number of extant animals, taniwhas are interchangeable; physically, the creatures encompass both lizard and serpent, while mentally, they have varying intelligence, some going so far as to speak the human tongue. As descendants of the great atua (or god) Tane, taniwhas share a distinct ancestry with the gods, and often possessed their divine characteristics (Reed, 1963).
Taniwhas populate New Zealand and the waters off the coast of Australia where they lead solitary lives, however some have shown a fondness for the company of human women, whether or not the feelings are mutual (Reed, 1967; Reed, 1974). Despite these sour relationships, some taniwhas have been known to marry humans in love rather than as a result of their own selfish desires; unfortunately, as a result of persecution from disapproving family members, these partnerships are inadvertently doomed. Such is the marriage between the taniwha Hine-korako and the chief of the Ngati-Hine-haka (Reed, 1964).

Like the ngarara (another mysterious monster of New Zealand [Reed, 1967]), the taniwha encompass a large variety of unusual creatures, both land and sea dwelling. They usually lair in large water bodies such as deep lakes and the Tasman Sea (between Australia and New Zealand), while smaller water taniwha are often found in the bends of rivers (Reed, 1963). These water-dwelling taniwha were very gentle creatures (Alpers, 1970), known for rescuing the shipwrecked, while their land-dwelling brethren have a vicious nature, spending their days capturing and holding humans at their mercy (Alpers, 1970). These taniwhas hide in the dark areas beneath caves, hills and mountains; such tunneling taniwhas who cause the earth to shake are known as tuoro and hore. Their more placid cousins are puku-tuoro and kumi (Reed, 1963).
In similar fashion to the folklorist belief that there is a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow, Maori superstition warned that whenever there was quicksand at the bottom of a precipice, a taniwha laired nearby (Reed, 1963).

Taniwha are renowned for their power of change, and could often assume the form of aquatic animals to blend in and disappear. Popular "disguises" included large sharks, eels, crocodiles and lizards, while fish, whales and sea serpents were often referred to as taniwha, as have serpent and dragon-like creatures, sometimes credited with flight (Reed, 1964), and very frequently with ties to water (Westervelt, 1910). The more dragon-like taniwhas are lizard-like in form, sometimes with wings (the oceanic variants often have fins), and are in patterned hues of greens, blues, purples and reds, although natural colours tend to be more dominant. One taniwha who lived on a hillside was known as the "black monster", which had a 4 m (12 ft) bat-like wingspan, a heavily toothed maw set upon a long neck, taloned feet, a ridged back and the voice of a man (Reed, 1974). Despite these impressive details, the size of this taniwha is diminutive compared to others, who were so large their stomachs could hold an armoured man, and their limbs so strong they could- and often did- crush trees in their anger (Reed, 1967).

The Maori gave both the taniwha and lizards the same name, moko, recognising their linkage to one another; this same name was attributed to the tattoos on the faces of Maori men, who saw the writhing tail of the moko reflected in the strong curls patterned over their skin3 (Alpers, 1970). Taniwhas can shed their tails in fright or at whim (as can some lizards when pursued by predators), and these are capable of slithering off to become independent, such as the tail of the frightful Kaiwhakaruaki, whose descendants, the moko papa or little tree lizard, inherited the tail-shedding ability of their father (Reed, 1967).
As they are so closely associated with lizards, there has often been a great deal of suspicion regarding the taniwha as the Maori believed lizards to be a physical representation of the powers of death and disease. On top of this, they are notorious man-eaters, though they could often be placated by gifts of food and the recital of prayers or karakia (the recital of karakia by childless women to taniwhas sped conception) (Reed, 1963). They were described as the gods who were the enemies of mankind, "because they dwell as gods on earth, and inhabit the water, inland territory, trees, stones under the earth and in the space above" (from The Lore of the Whare-wananga, quoted in Reed, 1963, p. 296).
Today, theory suggests that New Zealand’s tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus) may have attributed to belief in the taniwha (Alpers, 1970), as these reptiles would have been familiar to the Maori. However, the tuatara are small when compared to the massive size of the taniwha, and there is no substantial reason to suggest this reptile inspired taniwha stories any more than the next native animal.