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Misha Defonseca

The Nullarbor Nymph

The story commences …

The story starts on Boxing Day (26 December) of 1971, when kangaroo hunters on the Nullarbor Plain in Western Australia reported seeing a half-naked white woman living with kangaroos in the wild.

The media takes the bait

Very quickly the story was picked up by news agencies, and headlines appeared throughout much of the English-speaking world and also Germany. The story of this wild nymph of the plains enthralled people worldwide for weeks.

The plot revealed

Unlike most hoaxes, we know exactly who created this one, when, and why. In December of 1971, Steve Patupis, owner of the Amber Motor Hotel in the town of Eucla, together with Laurie Scott, Ron Sells and Geoff Pearce came up with the prank, partly as a publicity stunt but also to play a practical joke on tourists.

The real nymph

Model Janice Beeby, then 17, was hired to be photographed in kangaroo skins to create the first hoax newspaper photograph for Murdoch's The News.

The other real nymph

After much publicity and a number of sightings of a local dressed as the Nullarbor Nymph, the story was eventually revealed as a hoax.

Read more about The Nullarbor Nymph

You can read Dora Dallwitz' poem Ode to the Nullarbor Nymph here. For much more on the story of the Nymph, see Dora Dallwitz' web site The Nullarbor Nymph, and especially her dissertation.