Australian Cryptozoology
Gary Opit, 2009 (pp 162)
(Available from
author; request details at garyopit@bigpond.com)
(Investigator 129, 2009
November)
This ring-bound,
A4-sized
self-published work is the latest addition to the already strong
tradition of cryptozoological work emanating from the Big Brown Land.
It joins
the offerings of
such as Healy & Cropper (1994), Smith (1996) and other works on
'bunyips', 'Tim the Yowie-Man' (2001), etc, a veritable string of books
specifically dedicated to the thylacine ('Tasmanian Tiger'); also:
sections in works on Australian mysteries (including spectacular claims
about eg surviving populations of the 'giant goanna' megalania
and even
surviving dinosaurs in the writings of the maverick Rex Gilroy, whom
Opit takes seriously as a 'naturalist'; see p 27); Australia-focused
sections in general cryptozoological books; various articles in Cryptozoology
and other journals; and now of course web-based
material.
The
indigenous fauna of
Australasia is distinguished by the absence of any (scientifically
recognised) placental land-dwelling mammals, which apparently never
crossed the 'Wallace Line'; even the well-known dingo was introduced by
Aboriginal people around 4,000 years ago.[1] In their place, we find
the familiar marsupials and three species of monotreme (two in
Australia).[2] The cryptids reported in Australia by more sober authors
include:
a)
surviving
populations of large marsupials deemed extinct by mainstream
scholarship (notably thylacines and the 'marsupial lion' thylacoleo);
b)
out-of-place
placentals (or quasi-placentals) such as big cats (as in the UK and
eastern North America) and the 'yowie' (Australia's equivalent of the
Asian yeti and the North American bigfoot/sasquatch);
c)
animals of uncertain
classification (notably the 'bunyip').[3]
In his rather
disjointed
introduction, Opit first explains the focus of cryptozoology and
summarises the content and character of much of the earlier Australian
material. He then provides a string of summaries of Australian cryptid
sightings, mainly of yowies, which would probably be better relocated
to the relevant later chapters (see below).
In the
final section of the
introduction, Opit engages in a critique of contemporary science in a
manner typical of the genre, arguing on the strength of carefully
selected facts that science has been much less successful than its
practitioners would claim in arriving at accounts of aspects of the
physical universe (including humanity itself).
To some
degree, in fact, he
seems to adopt the popular view of science as concerned mainly with
conclusions (rather than with the scientific method and the ongoing
revision of theories in response to expanding knowledge) – and the
associated fringe perception of scientists as unwilling to consider new
or non-standard ideas. In addition, he adopts the 'trendy' view of
traditional belief systems (here, Aboriginal) as reflecting the true
structure of the universe more accurately than contemporary science and
thus demonstrating the superior wisdom of traditional peoples.
Some of
Opit' s own
extrapolations from the scientific data he cites are themselves almost
mystical and involve undefined claims about 'vibration', 'dimensions
beyond light-speed', etc – again as is currently popular in New Age
thought. This kind of extreme fringe claim is not required for or
relevant to the substantiation of reports of flesh-and-blood cryptids.
(Despite the above, Opit rejects the view of cryptids as paranormal
entities; see p 57.) These reports, if valid, will (eventually, in
favourable circumstances) meet the normal standards of scientific
evidence and be accepted by mainstream thought; they cannot be usefully
justified in terms of weaker empirical standards associated with
non-standard pseudo-science.
Opit's
focus on these ideas
will weaken the book in the eyes of scientists and is thus
counter-productive. In addition, these ideas stand in confusing
contrast with Opit's own stated and repeatedly instantiated commitment
to the need for careful empirical study if cryptids – even those
frequently reported anecdotally, as recounted in this and other books –
are to be accepted as genuine (a pattern of conceptual tension familiar
in this kind of context).
In the
body of the book,
Opit commences with an essentially uncontroversial discussion of the
Australian environment, flora and fauna as it has developed over time
(chapter 1) and a chapter (2) on 'Aboriginal People and the Australian
Mind'. This latter chapter again presents a highly positive view of
traditional Aboriginal beliefs about the relationship between people
and the land (identified in the introduction as 'proven' by scientific
data). Opit stresses Aboriginal beliefs surrounding the 'dreaming', and
urges that all people embrace such ideas as reflecting spiritual
reality and engendering more fruitful attitudes to humanity and the
world.[4]
Although
this point is not
foregrounded in this chapter, Aboriginal beliefs of course include
belief in the 'real' existence of creatures which count as cryptids in
the context of 'western' science, and in fact the very distinction
between 'real' creatures and eg spiritual entities is typically
interpreted differently in such traditions.
In the
later chapters,
reference is made to these ideas (and, interestingly for this reviewer,
to the names of the cryptids in the relevant Aboriginal
languages), as
well as to modern reports of the creatures in question (involving
either chance sightings or expeditions) and earlier discussions of
these matters. All these types of datum are obviously of great
interest. Opit reproduces newspaper reports and other documents, and
refers where appropriate to physical evidence such as casts of alleged
footprints, structures supposedly created by yowies, the bodies of
animals apparently killed by cryptids, objects scraped or disturbed by
them, etc (he includes photographs).
In these
later chapters,
Opit deals with yowies and a range of similar creatures (chapters 3-8),
putatively marsupial 'cats' (chapter 10), anomalous 'big cats' (chapter
11), bunyips (chapter 12) and thylacines (chapter 13). He also includes
discussion (chapter 9, ie pp 85-86, also pp 28-30) of the possibility
of the local survival of homo erectus, whose remains have not
actually
been found in Australia but have been discovered, spectacularly, in
long-insular Flores. In this context there is also a brief reference (p
28) to the 'hobbits' more recently found in Flores. The final chapter
(14) deals with the ri or 'New Guinea mermaid', which he links with
Elaine Morgan's highly controversial 'aquatic ape' theory of human
evolution (which Opit takes very seriously, without however rehearsing
the scholarly objections).
Again
interestingly for
this reviewer, Opit refers (albeit very naively) to (quasi-)linguistic
behaviour on the part of yowies (p 45); and in chapters 9 and 14 he
summarises claims to the effect that cryptids probably representing
surviving homo erectus exhibit linguistic behaviour (p 86)
– compare Woods (1997), etc on the alleged (pre-)linguistic behaviour
of
sasquatches – and that the development of language was crucial in the
differentiation of homo sapiens (and its closest relatives such
as
erectus?) from their hominid predecessors (pp 158-159; citing here
Jared Diamond).
Opit is
a serious (if at
times arguably selective) student of the technical literature. Each
chapter contains extensive references to relevant scientific
literature, especially where it can (possibly sometimes dubiously) be
adduced in support of his ideas, and a bibliography, and the work ends
with a general bibliography.
There is
clearly a
reasonable case to be made that some of these cryptids might be genuine
animals; others are more suspect. However, Opit personally is evidently
totally persuaded that his cryptids are genuine animals and that the
zoological mainstream is grossly in error in rejecting them. (He takes
a similar view of non-Australian cryptids, accepting eg the 1967
Gimlin/Patterson sasquatch film as veridical and arguing against some
skeptical points; see pp 73-74.) Indeed, he makes frequent statements
in which the existence of a given cryptid species or a reported
observation of a specimen is treated as a matter of plain fact. Some of
these statements refer to field observations (often prolonged and/or
repeated) reported by his associate Pixie Byrnes, who provides drawings
of the animals. But in this context one might reasonably expect Opit to
provide photographs, which would furnish some more of the hard
evidence
for these cryptids which – as Opit admits (p 14) – is at present often
conspicuously minimal, despite the fact that the entities in question
appear to observers to be flesh-and-blood animals like any other
animal. (Of course, this is precisely why these alleged creatures
remain cryptids.) However convinced Opit himself is, he would do well
to adopt a less forthright stance, and to take contrary mainstream
views more seriously, if he wishes to influence the scholarly
community. But he has given that community plenty to (re-)consider!
NOTES
[1]
But note that
mysterious animals closely resembling antlered deer are shown in the
'Bradshaw' rock art of the Kimberley (itself of disputed provenance);
see eg Wilson (2006). Opit addresses the question of how various
placental mammal species could have reached the Australian bush (eg p
57 on yowies, pp 115-117 on big cats) – with varying degrees of
plausibility.
[2]
Remote New Zealand's
land-dwelling fauna is even sparser, and included no mammals at all
until humans and accompanying kiore rats arrived, apparently around
1000 CE.
[3]
The main New Zealand
cryptid reports involve the moa, a genus of giant ratite birds thought
by most scholars to have been exterminated by the Polynesian settlers.
[4] In
this context, it
should be noted that – as reported by eg Josephine Flood – some
traditional Aborigines who become familiar with Europeans, especially
scientists and such, perceive them as 'having no dreaming' and thus as
'going their own way'. But for many 'western' scholars, this
emancipation from their people's own traditional beliefs is to be seen
as part of the legacy of the Enlightenment from which science and
critical philosophy emerged, and thus as advantageous – as long
as the
traditional beliefs are not merely discarded but rather taken into
account both for such merit as they do possess and as objects of study
in themselves.
REFERENCES
Healy, T. & Cropper, P.
Out Of The Shadows: Mystery Animals Of Australia (1994)
Panmacmillan,
Australia, Ironbark (NSW)
Smith, M. Bunyips
And
Bigfoots: In Search Of Australia's Mystery Animals (1996)
Millennium
Books, Alexandria (NSW)
'Tim the
Yowie-Man' The
Adventures Of Tim the Yowie-Man, Cryptonaturalist (2001) Random
House,
Australia, Milson's Point (NSW)
Wilson, I. Lost
World Of
The Kimberley: Extraordinary Glimpses Of Australia's Ice Age Ancestors
(2006) Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest (NSW)
Woods, L. Story
In The Snow
(1997) Galde Press, Lakeville (Minnesota)
(Mark Newbrook)