This Day in History: The first reported sighting of the so-called Nullarbor Nymph was made on this day in 1971.
This report was by professional kangaroo shooters from Eucla in Western Australia, near the border with South Australia. They claimed to have seen a blond, white woman amongst some kangaroos, and backed their story with grainy amateur film showing a woman wearing kangaroo skins and holding a kangaroo by the tail. After further sightings were claimed, the story was reported around the world, and journalists descended upon the town of Eucla which had a population of 8 people at the time.
The incident was eventually revealed as a hoax, initiated as a publicity stunt. The girl on the film turned out to be a 17-year-old model named Janice Beeby. She did appear in a photograph taken later, as an evidence of the Nullarbor Nymph, but the woman in the original photograph used by the media to disseminate the hoax was Geneice Brooker, the partner of Laurie Scott, one of the kangaroo-shooter hoaxers. Scott admitted to Murray Nicoll of The News that the hoax was created by a publicist Geoff Pearce, of Melbourne, who happened to be in the Eucla Hotel and had contacts within the media.
However, "the world was captivated with her story and more and more legends grew around her. People wanted to know who she was and what caused her to live a feral lifestyle. People put up statues in her honor, and you have to know they made a movie about her in 1994." Source
No comments:
Post a Comment