The best documented Australian "sea serpent" was an elongated, inquisitive mystery animal which frequented Deception Bay in the period 1959/60. Situated at approximately 153° 7' E, 27° 9' S, not far north of Brisbane, Queensland, Deception Bay is a sub-section of Moreton Bay. Roughly semicircular in shape, it is bounded on the south by Scarborough, the northernmost part of the Redcliffe peninsula, and on the north by Bribie Island. I can never hear the name, Deception Bay without thinking, "monster" because the first time I heard about it was in relation to the monster, not long after I moved to the Brisbane area as a boy.
In December 1996, I was on talkback radio promoting my book, Bunyips and Bigfoots. When the compere referred to the section on the Deception Bay monster, a Mr Mick Scheirupflug phoned in to say that he also had encountered a strange animal in the bay. One thing lead to another and, that evening, I was able to interview all three witnesses independently by telephone.
Matters of Agreement. All three agreed on the basic details. Several decades before, Mr Scheirupflug, his son, and young friend had hired a boat in order to fish for whiting in the bay. The creature surfaced not too far away, and was in view for a few minutes, moving parallel to them. It was a slim, serpentine animal consisting of a series of humps, but with no fins. They had difficulty describing its motion but, after some probing, but not leading, questions they all agreed it moved by vertical undulations. They also all agreed that it finally slid forward into the water and disappeared. They did not mention it to anybody else. Now for the individual stories.
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