Dear Evelyn, I am writing on behalf of myself and two other parents from St. Brendan’s Primary who have formed what I suppose you would call an informal committee, though we haven’t told the principal that part yet. There is something living in the concrete drainage culvert behind the oval. We believe it is a bunyip, based on the smell, a sound one of the groundskeepers described as ‘a very large kettle’, and the fact that it left the partial remains of a Murray cod on the handball court last Tuesday. The children found out about it approximately four days after the adults did, which in retrospect was inevitable. Since then they have been leaving it drawings — slid under the culvert grate on pieces of folded paper. Our concern is not the drawings. Our concern is that some of the drawings come back. They come back folded differently. My daughter left a drawing of what she said was a horse but was clearly a dog, and it came back folded into a very small, precise rectangle with the dog-end facing out. Another child’s drawing — a house with a sun — came back folded in half with the sun hidden inside. We do not know what this means. One of the other parents on our committee thinks it is being encouraging. I think it is being critical. The children are delighted either way, which is its own problem. We have a working bee on Saturday and I don’t know what to tell people. Yours sincerely, Deborah T.

Deborah, the kettle sound is a reliable indicator and I am glad the groundskeeper thought to mention it — they often know more than they let on, and the good ones always do.

You are both right, incidentally. It is being encouraging and it is being critical. These are not mutually exclusive, and in my experience, bunyips who take an interest in human creative work tend to be more nuanced in their feedback than most of the humans I have encountered at community arts events. The folding is communicative. A precise rectangle with the subject facing out is, as best I can interpret it, a kind of filing — it is keeping that one. The sun folded inward is not dismissal; it is almost certainly compositional commentary. Your daughter’s dog-horse is apparently a keeper. She should feel good about that.

My first piece of advice is practical: do not stop the drawings, but do not formalise the arrangement either. The moment an adult puts a laminated sign near that culvert grate, the whole thing will collapse. Bunyips are not anti-social, but they are deeply allergic to being made into a programme. Let the children manage this themselves. They are, from what you describe, already doing so with considerably more grace than the parent committee. If the school needs a cover story for the working bee, ‘drainage assessment’ will hold for at least two more Saturdays.

My second piece of advice is this: leave a drawing yourself. Nothing elaborate — a simple one. Don’t sign it with your name. In my experience, a bunyip that has been exchanging correspondence with the local children for more than two weeks has already formed opinions about the adults who haven’t written, and those opinions are rarely flattering. You have a narrow window. Use it.

I should mention — briefly, because it is relevant — that a reader from Echuca wrote to me some years ago about a very similar situation involving a weir and a primary school vegetable garden. The bunyip in that case eventually lost interest when the school installed synthetic turf on the oval. Shepparton still has real grass, which is worth preserving for more reasons than one. Do pass that along to whoever makes those decisions.

As for what to tell people at the working bee: tell them as much as they look like they can handle, and start with the cod.