SELF-styled filmmaker and archaeologist Peter 'Mungo' Jupp has set out to deliberately send a few tremors through accepted history.
He plans to make 26 documentaries questioning the destruction of ancient civilisations and the effect things from space - most notably comets - have had on earth.
In his most recent effort - Mega Tsunami Melbourne 1500AD - Jupp claims the bay Europeans named Port Phillip was created just 500 years ago in a cataclysmic event.
Viewers at a preview screening in Mornington last week heard how a "mega-tsunami" came streamrolling in from Bass Strait at the same time as an earthquake seemed to swallow the ground.
Raging fires followed, searing the ground and tonnes of shells that had been tossed to the top of newly formed cliffs. Jupp claims those shells, easily seen along clifftops from Mt Martha to Mt Eliza, have been mistakenly identi-
fied as Aboriginal middens.
He says the so-called middens (piles of shells discarded after being eaten) are too widespread to have been made by Aborigines and contain types of shells that would not have been a food source.
As a solo filmmaker Jupp sets up the camera and, remote control in hand, states his case for the origins of Port Phillip. Standing on the cliffs near his "home" beach at Mt Eliza, he gestures behind him and marvels at the scene and the destruction that he believes occurred as a result of a "mega tsunami".
Down on the beach he shows close-ups of a tree, petrified in parts, embedded in the shoreline reef but seemingly woody and burnt in others.
Later he runs up a steep sand dune near Flinders, which he claims was also the result of the tsunami: "How else could this sand have been piled so high?"
Jupp says the earthquake and tsunami was caused by the impact of the comet Mahuika, which burst through the earth's atmosphere in 1481, igniting New Zealand's "Fires of Tamaatea" and leading to the extinction of the giant moa bird.
Further "proof" of his theory comes by way of a filmed conversation with Professor Ted Bryant of Wollongong University.
A world authority on tsunamis, Professor Bryant speaks of 90-metre high waves leaving identifiable scars (chevrons) on Australia's coast, including one that hit the south-east coast 500 years ago.
He speaks about carbon dating and modern tsunami technology and an undersea crater off New Zealand that was caused by a comet.
Closer to home, Jupp quotes the diary of early McCrae settler Georgiana McCrae and Aboriginal legends that also talk about waters pouring across the land through what are now known as the Port Phillip Heads.
The research of Wallace Thornhill, a plasma physicist who trained at Melbourne University, is used to describe electric discharges around earthquakes and volcanoes causing instant fossilisation.
Jupp, who has been a builder, hypnotist and worked in medical equipment sales and marketing, majored as a mature-aged student in archaeology at Melbourne University where he also studied filmmaking techniques and production.
He has also lectured in medical imaging at the Sydney University school of radiology and studied fine art at Chisholm Institute of Technology.
"I don't think archaeology involves being thrilled by dusting off broken pots and bones. Since my early days, I've been fascinated with the rise and fall of civilisations. Everywhere you go around the world you see ruins shattered, abandoned in deserts and buried under sand. You've got to ask what happened.
"I aim to overturn modern scientific dogma from Darwin and his natural selection to Einstein and his theory of relativity.
"In particular, I strike hard at the theory of uniformity that has dominated so much of geology and evolutionary theory. In my view a disciplined chaos runs the universe.
"I felt we have naively accepted the theories of geologists on the formation of Port Phillip and ignored the legends and myths of the Bunurong and other local indigenous tribes. These legends were rich in facts but were dismissed as fairytales by those theory-laden sciences called geology and archaeology."
Another of Jupp's documentaries will explore his theories on the remains of up to 20,000 people he says lie on the shores of Lake Victoria, 100 kilometres from Mildura.
"Most are about 2000-3000 years old and I believe something occurred there. I think it's more like a natural disaster not burial ground - it's the Australian Sodom and Gommorrah."
Peter Jupp is distributing his documentaries from www.ancientdestructions.com.au
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