Another recent depiction of the bunyip appears in the 1989 illustrated children's book A Kangaroo Court.

Naomi Novik includes bunyips as a dangerous adversary in the Australian outback in Tongues of Serpents, the sixth installment of her novels of alternate Napoleonic-history era, with dragons.

Perhaps the best known bunyip character in Australia is Alexander Bunyip, created by children's author and illustrator Michael Salmon.

First appearing in print in The Monster That Ate Canberra  in 1972, Alexander Bunyip went on to appear in many other books and even a live-action television series, Alexander Bunyip's Billabong.

A statue of Alexander is planned for the Gungahlin Library.

The Bunyip of Berkeley's Creek[ is a contemporary Australian children's picture book about a bunyip.
Books » Children's » Fiction » General
  By Jenny Wagner, Ron Brooks (Illustrated by)

Numerous tales of the bunyip in written literature appeared in the 19th and early 20th century. These included a story in Andrew Lang's The Brown Fairy Book (1904).

Another early written account is attributed to escaped convict William Buckley in his 1852 biography of 30 years living with the Wathaurong people.

His 1852 account records "in... Lake Moodewarri [now Lake Modewarre] as well as in most of the others inland...is a...very extraordinary amphibious animal, which the natives call Bunyip." Buckley's account suggests he saw such a creature on several occasions. He adds "I could never see any part, except the back, which appeared to be covered with feathers of a dusky grey colour. It seemed to be about the size of a full grown calf... I could never learn from any of the natives that they had seen either the head or tail."

Buckley also claimed the creature was common in the Barwon River and cites an example he heard of an Aboriginal woman being killed by one. He emphasized the Bunyip was believed to have supernatural powers.

The so-called Bunyip skull In January 1846, a peculiar skull was taken from the banks of Murrumbidgee River near Balranald, New South Wales. Initial reports suggested that it was the skull of something unknown to science.

The squatter who found it remarked "all the natives to whom it was shown called [it ] a bunyip"

By July 1847 several experts had identified the skull as the deformed foetal skull of a foal or calf.

At the same time however, the so-called bunyip skull was put on display in the Australian Museum (Sydney) for two days. Visitors flocked to see it and The Sydney Morning Herald said that it prompted many people to speak out about their 'bunyip sightings.'

 Fossils found near Geelong were revealed by The Geelong Advertiser in July 1845, under the headline Wonderful Discovery of a new Animal. It continued "On the bone being shown to an intelligent black (sic), he at once recognised it as belonging to the bunyip, which he declared he had seen. On being requested to make a drawing of it, he did so without hesitation." The account noted a story of an Aboriginal woman being killed by a bunyip, and the "most direct evidence of all," which was that of a man named Mumbowran, "who showed several deep wounds on his breast made by the claws of the animal." The account provided this description of the creature

“The Bunyip, then, is represented as uniting the characteristics of a bird and of an alligator. It has a head resembling an emu, with a long bill, at the extremity of which is a transverse projection on each side, with serrated edges like the bone of the stingray. Its body and legs partake of the nature of the alligator. The hind legs are remarkably thick and strong, and the fore legs are much longer, but still of great strength. The extremities are furnished with long claws, but the blacks say its usual method of killing its prey is by hugging it to death. When in the water it swims like a frog, and when on shore it walks on its hind legs with its head erect, in which position it measures twelve or thirteen feet in height.” Shortly after this account appeared, it was repeated in other Australian newspapers. However it appears to be the first use of the word bunyip in a written publication.

1830 a discovery of fossilised bones of "some quadruped much larger than the ox or buffalo" was found in the Wellington Caves in mid 1830 by bushman George Rankin and later, Thomas Mitchell. Sydney's Reverend John Dunmore Lang announced the find as "convincing proof of the deluge."

However, it was British anatomist Sir Richard Owen who identified the fossils as the gigantic marsupials Nototherium and Diprotodon. At the same time, some settlers observed "all natives throughout these... districts have a tradition (of) a very large animal having at one time existed in the large creeks and rivers and by many it is said that such animals now exist.

One of the earliest accounts relating to a large unknown freshwater animal was in 1818 when Hamilton Hume and James Meehan found some large bones at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales. They did not call the animal a bunyip, but described the remains indicating the creature as very much like a hippopotamus or manatee. The Philosophical Society of Australasia later offered to reimburse Hume for any costs incurred in recovering a specimen of the unknown animal, but for various reasons Hume did not return to the lake.

During the early settlement of Australia by Europeans the notion that the bunyip was an actual unknown animal that awaited discovery became common. Early European settlers, unfamiliar with the sights and sounds of the island continent's peculiar fauna, regarded the bunyip as one more strange Australian animal and sometimes attributed unfamiliar animal calls or cries to it. It has also been suggested that 19th century bunyip-lore was reinforced by imported European memories, such as that of the Irish Púca.