The Great Bunyip hunt is on again. On 5 December, Tim Blair stirred the possums and other billabong beasts by posting a one-liner saying,
“IMRE, er, I mean Professor Bunyip – is back! “

This passed without mention, but along with a few other things, it left me with the view that Imre Saluszinsky is the best candidate for Bunyiphood we have – after all, how many born-again conservative academic Lennie Lower fans are there in Australia (I qualify on my own somewhat eccentric definition of “conservative”, but it isn’t me, honestly).

So when, commenting one of Ken Parish’s posts, I made the Freudian slip of typing “Imre” rather than “Bunyip”, I thought I’d do my own bit of stirring and leave it unchanged to see what happened.

Now Jason Soon has jumped into the fray, saying

Though I don’t have first hand confirmation of my guess, I do strongly believe (with literally close to 100% certainty) I know who the Bunyip is now, based on something that the Bunyip himself wrote in a relatively recent post. However, his secret is safe with me, the rest of Ozplogistan will have to continue their speculations.

Jason implies, but carefully doesn’t say, that his candidate is not Imre.

The standard secret identity question is ‘Have you ever seen them together’. Given that bloggers are virtual creatures, we can’t physically locate them, but we can expect that the pseudonymous identity won’t refer to the secret true identity and vice versa.

So let’s Google “Bunyip + Imre” and see what we get. That brings up this post where Professor Bunyip mentions an email from Imre to Tim Blair. The pseudonymous Professor refers to his putative alter-ego as “the Professor”, leaving the reader in a whirl of postmodern confusion.

A second Google hit, here starts

Imre Salusinszky hits a six

Both of these are from the very early days of Bunyip’s career. A boringly prosaic explanation is that Prof Bunyip, as a neophyte blogger, took a few weeks to realise that you don’t use a pseudonym to plug your real self, unless you want to be called a ‘sock puppet’, a cruel fate for a ferocious denizen of the deep. A more appealing interpretation is that these posts and Tim’s one-liner are all part of an elaborate prank. If so, I hope we don’t have to wait too long for the denouement.

Update Be sure to read the comments thread where, at least according to several well-informed commentators, the truth is revealed!