Tuntapan

In the early 1800s, colonists around Port Phillip Bay started telling stories about something in the water.

Not a shark. Not a seal.

Something… else.

They called it the Tuntapan.

And if you’re picturing a fairly standard sea monster, I regret to inform you that the Tuntapan refuses to cooperate. According to those early reports, it had a long, maned neck, flippers instead of feet, and—because apparently that wasn’t odd enough—a head like an emu.

Yes. An emu.

You can imagine how well that went over in polite conversation.

Now, the colonists didn’t just claim to have seen this thing. No, no—they seemed to know quite a bit about it. Its diet, for one: small aquatic invertebrates, like crayfish and crabs. Fair enough.

They also insisted it laid exactly two eggs.

Exactly two.

Which raises a very reasonable question: how, precisely, did they gather that information without ever producing, say, a Tuntapan, an egg, or even a moderately convincing sketch?

And then things get… uncomfortable.

Because alongside the oddly specific biological details, there were claims that the creature would attack and eat any member of the Aboriginal population it encountered—while leaving the colonists themselves strictly off the menu.

Make of that what you will.

Fast forward to today, and you’d think a creature like this would be catnip for cryptid hunters. After all, people are out there enthusiastically searching for the yowie, the Queensland tiger, and anything else that might lurk just out of sight.

But the Tuntapan?

Mostly forgotten.

It’s been quietly downgraded from “sea monster” to “some kind of marine bunyip,” which feels a bit like being demoted from dragon to “large, damp inconvenience.” There’s barely any research, only a handful of mentions online, and very little curiosity overall.

Which, of course, makes it perfect.

Because if there’s one thing I love, it’s a mystery no one else is paying attention to.

So in the third Bunyip Jones book, Blood in the Water, I decided to bring the Tuntapan back—this time as ‘Topher’.

He’s… not subtle.

And writing him was an absolute delight.

If you’re curious how I handled a maned, emu-headed, egg-laying, possibly misunderstood aquatic menace from Victoria… well, you’ll have to dive into the book and meet him yourself