Baffling road sign leaves Aussies scratching their heads: ‘What on earth is that?’

A bizarre road sign left by a prankster has left drivers baffled.

A photo posted on social media showed a sign reading ‘Slow down for the’ with a silhouette of a strange mythical creature beneath it: the Australian Bunyip.

The Melbournite who posted the image joked that he was “actually speeding up… [we] I didn’t want to stay long enough to find out’.

The man-eating monster comes from indigenous Australian folklore in south-eastern Australia – later immortalized in a book entitled ‘Bunyip from Berkeley Creek’.

Social media users couldn’t blame the photographer for not recognizing the animal from the road.

‘I’ve heard of the Bunyip, but have never seen anything about what it looks like, so I have no frame of reference to assume this is a Bunyip. All I know is that it’s a thing, and that’s all I’ve ever been told,” said one reader.

‘To be honest, there is no conclusive description of a Bunyip. They say it looks like an ox, or a hippopotamus, or a duck, or a giant snake, or a dugong with the head of a cow, or a feathered seal… the only consistent details are that it lives in the waterways of South Africa. Eastern Australia and will get you if you’re not careful,” another responded.

The mythical Bunyip holds a fearful place in the hearts of many Australian children, as parents passed on stories of a man-eating swamp monster

The Bunyip is said to dwell in the reedy swamplands and descriptions of the creature have evolved with the myth.

‘They have a high mutation rate and can therefore vary in size, shape and colour. “What all Bunyips have in common is their appetite for tourists…Australians are spoiling their meat tastes with a diet of beer and meat pies,” said another.

Many Aussies were keen to spread the myth, similar to that of the ‘drop bear’ – often the root of pranks played on unwitting tourists.

One of them said the road sign should have warned travelers to ‘make a U-turn’.

“You haven’t really experienced Australia until you’re a little worried about being eaten by an amphibious swamp monster,” joked another.

There are varied descriptions of the folkloric monster, accompanied by gruesome details about its call and behavior

Many believe the origin of the Bunyip lies in the supposed appearance of seals upstream in lakes and rivers in Victoria, Tasmania or South Australia.

Versions of the myth suggest that the Bunyip makes roaring and booming sounds as it eats those brave enough to go near inhabited waters.

Some claim that the cries of swamp birds were the cause of the monster’s reputation for its terrifying howl.

Many said Jenny Wagner’s 1973 book scared them as children.

“That book terrified me as a child,” one person wrote.

‘As a child it was so bleak and depressing. But now I appreciate it,” another agreed.

‘I like the Australian’s sense of humour. I’m a Kiwi and my mother read that to me as a child, along with the Maori myths and legends. I never wanted to visit creeks alone again after that,” wrote a woman across the ditch.