Captured one of those in a purple translucent image overlaid on a normal digital photo, the type had much bigger ears.
Those ears are the right shape, but 50% bigger
True, they to have glowing red eyes and a bark like outer surface. They usually take small children 2-4 years old, and teach them the laws of the land.
They still exist.
The amphibious ones are called bunyip's
Among the many reports that began to come in from explorers and settlers of the dark wilds of Australia, one of the earlier and weirder is from 1818, when the explorer Hamilton Hume and his companion James Meehan were at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales when they came across an array of bones from some large, unknown creature at the water’s edge. They did not specifically call it a Bunyip, but whatever it was, Hamilton described as being similar to a hippopotamus or manatee. Unfortunately, they did not take the massive skeleton, and oddly never went back for it even when offered a handsome sum to collect it for The Philosophical Society of Australasia. Interestingly, more anomalous remains were found in 1830, at the Wellington Caves, described as being like those of an ox or buffalo, which were claimed by locals to be those of a Bunyip. Another account printed in 1821 in the Sydney Gazette reads:
My attention was attracted by a creature casting up water and making a noise, in sound resembling a porpoise … it had the appearance of a bulldog’s head, but perfectly black …
Throughout the 1800s, and particularly the 1840s and 50s, there were numerous sightings of strange creatures in the waterways, often described as “water dogs,” with a sleek, seal-like appearance, but at other times as more like giant reptiles, or as a calf-sized, shaggy-haired or maned quadruped. Indeed, one of the strangest things about accounts of the Bunyip is just how inconsistent the descriptions are, with the disparate physical characteristics so nebulous and ill-defined that it is hard to figure out just what a Bunyip is supposed to look like at all. One description was published in The Greelong Advertiser after a report came in from an Aboriginal man who had been attacked by the beast in 1845, and it reads:
The Bunyip, then, is represented as uniting the characteristics of a bird and of an alligator. It has a head resembling an emu, with a long bill, at the extremity of which is a transverse projection on each side, with serrated edges like the bone of the stingray. Its body and legs partake of the nature of the alligator. The hind legs are remarkably thick and strong, and the fore legs are much longer, but still of great strength. The extremities are furnished with long claws, but the blacks say its usual method of killing its prey is by hugging it to death. When in the water it swims like a frog, and when on shore it walks on its hind legs with its head erect, in which position it measures twelve or thirteen feet in height.
https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2021/02/the-bunyip-australias-most-bizarre-mystery-monster/