The Whowie or Whowhie was a giant lizard in Aboriginal Australian folklore.
Description=
The Whowie was a gigantic lizardlike monster, about twenty feet long, with six legs. Its eyes were huge and wide and it had the head of a frog. Its dragging tail could create riverbeds as it walked, and the monster is credited with the creation of the River Murray.
=Story
The Whowie was always hungry, and its favorite prey was humans. At night the creature would steal into villages and silently swallow up incredible numbers of victims; thirty people, if not more, carrying anyone it didn't eat on the spot to its den. It had a special taste for children. When watchmen were placed to guard against the monster, the Whowie at first avoided them and at last, as it got bolder, began to feed on them, too.
One night the creature consumed an entire village, all but one little boy who escaped its attentions and went to warn his relatives, who lived in another town. Fed up with the monster's ravages, the people went to the caves where the Whowie lived and drove it out through the use of fire, where all of them hacked the beast to death.
Origin
The Whowhie is described as a giant monitor lizard, which is remniscent of the Megalania, an extinct species of giant monitor lizard that inhabited Australia, reached up to twenty-three feet in length, and may very well have fed on early humans.