Australian folklore refers to the folklore and urban legends that have evolved in Australia from Aboriginal Australian myths to colonial and contemporary folklore including people, places and events, that have played part in shaping the culture, image and traditions that are seen in contemporary Old Australia.
Australian Aboriginal mythology
Baijini – Unknown race mentioned in Yolngu folklore. Bora – Sacred Aboriginal initiation ceremony. Many sites still exist throughout Australia. Bunyip – According to legend, they are said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes. Dreamtime – The Dreamtime to Aboriginal Australians is the beginning of time, the creation of knowledge from which their culture began more than 60,000 years ago.
Kata Tjuta – Many Dreamtime stories are told by the Pitjantjatjara people, including a mythical creature that lurks the summit. Lake Mungo remains – Human skeletons found in 1969, believed to have lived between 40,000 and 68,000 years ago are the oldest human remains found in Australia. Rainbow Serpent – It is the sometimes unpredictable Rainbow Serpent, who vies with the ever-reliable Sun, that replenishes the stores of water, forming gullies and deep channels as he slithered across the landscape, allowing for the collection and distribution of water. Yara-ma-yha-who – According to Myth, the creature resembles a red frog-like creature that hides in trees waiting for an unsuspecting victim to consume.
Animals and creatures
Bob the Railway Dog – A Dog that was remembered for traveling along the South Australian Railway. Booie Monster – Reports of a monster lurking in a cave first reported in the 1950s Drop bear – Stories of drop bears are frequently related to visiting tourists as a joke. (see also the Queensland tiger)
Gippsland phantom cat – An urban legend centred on the idea that when United States soldiers were based in Victoria during WWII, they released cougars into the wild. Consequently, many sightings of big cats have been reported across Gippsland and even in other parts of Australia. Hook Island Sea Monster – Gigantic, tadpole-like sea monster, Photographed in Stonehaven Bay, Hook Island, Queensland. Megalania – A giant goanna (lizard), generally believed to be extinct. However, there have been numerous reports and rumors of living Megalania in Australia, and occasionally New Guinea, but the only physical evidence that Megalania might still be alive today are plaster casts of possible Megalania footprints made in 1979. Platypus – Native Australian animal which is one of only two mammals that lay eggs (the other being the echidna), and one of the few species of venomous mammals. Due to its unique features the scientist who initially discovered and examined the creature thought it was made of several animals sewn together and deemed it to be a hoax. Red Dog – A dog that was known for his long travels through Western Australia's Pilbara region. Tasmanian tiger – Despite the widely held view that the thylacine (or Tasmanian tiger) became extinct during the 1930s, accounts of alleged sightings in eastern Victoria and parts of Tasmania have persisted to the present day. Yowie (cryptid) – In the modern context, the Yowie is the generic (and somewhat affectionate) term for an unidentified hominid reputed to lurk in the Australian wilderness, analogous to the Himalayan Yeti and the North American Bigfoot. The Dog on the Tuckerbox – an allegorical bullock driver's dog that loyally guarded the man's tuckerbox until its death. It has been immortalized in both a poem and a statue at Gundagai in southern NSW. By way of explanation – tucker means food – so a tuckerbox is a lunch box.