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triantiwontygong
Mythical creature presumably related to a bunyip. Used in central Victoria in the early 1940's to scare/embarrass/confuse city children sent to the country to 'escape the bombing': 'Did you see that?' he said in a hushed whisper while pointing to the scrubby bush they were passing through on their way to school. 'No don't look now. It's a triantywontygong.'
Editor's comments: This word and its relatives are all variants of the original "triantiwontigongolope". It was a fictitious word invented by CJ Dennis in a poem for children published in his "A Book For Kids" (1921). The creature so named is a type of insect that doesn't exist. For further elucidation you can read the poem at www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/denniscj/bookforkids/triantiwontigongolope.html
Contributor's comments: My mother in the 50s in Adelaide would refer to mystery animals or to something unknown as a trianiwonigong, no Ts in the word - no mention of it being a bunyip type creature. It was left to our immaginations to interpret.
Contributor's comments: Triantiwontigongolope, and triantiwontigog have been used in WA before. My grandmother used the latter - and I think she may have learnt it as a child in Britain.
Contributor's comments: triantiwontygong - we used a similar word in the South Burnett [Brisbane region] in the 1960's, but it had an extra syllable - trianteGOwontegong.
Contributor's comments: I remember this mythical creature as a triantimontygoggle.
Contributor's comments: [Melbourne informant] I have always known it as a triantiwontygongalope.
Contributor's comments: I'm sure you've already heard about this, but I know the word as "Triantiwontygongolope", from the CJ Dennis poem of the same name. This creature was an insect - "something like a beetle, and a little like a bee". But Mr Dennis admits to the mythicality of this creature in the last verse: "For there isn't such an insect, though there really might have been If the trees and grass were purple, and the sky was bottle-green"
Contributor's comments: My father used this word when I was a child in the late 1940's in Adelaide. He had lived most of his life to this time at Burra in the Mid-north of the State.
Contributor's comments: I can remember Triantiwontigalope being the subject of an ABC radio broadcast for schools in 1961 in Adelaide when I was in year 7.
Contributor's comments: (Melbourne) My father used this word in the same context in the sixties.