This is the name of a class of monstrous dog-faced humanoids in the traditions and legends of the Native Australian people. The Cheeroonear are described as having extremely long arms with hands that trail on the ground as they walk, a head and ears resembling those of a dog, and a vast dewlap under the throat that extends in wrinkles to the belly:

What he saw caused him to tremble, and he was unable to speak for a time. There, walking before them, was a being with ears and face like a dog, but without a chin. From the lower jaw there hung a flesh-like bag, shaped like the pouch of a pelican, and leading into the stomach. The ribs did not join in the centre to form a chest with one cavity, but were arranged so as to make two compartments. The compartment on the left side contained the lungs, and the one on the right side held the heart and its vessels, leaving the throat like a wide sack between the two, so that when it held water or food it looked like a tube. This was the dreaded gigantic Cheeroonear, of whom they had heard much, but whom they had never seen. He stood eight feet high. His arms reached below his knees to his ankles. When he stretched or opened his fingers he could touch the ground. He could pick up objects from the ground without stooping.

Legend of australian aborigines. From W.R.Smith's book (1441: p.253)

These monstrous beings are predatory creatures that hunt and devour humans in the Nullabor Plain.

One particular legend tells how, during a particularly severe drought, the Cheeroonear turned up at a billabong^* and terrified the humans who had gathered there for the last drops of water in the region. The Cheeroonear male sank to the water level and drank so much that his distended stomach ballooned and made him vomit. There on the ground afterward, to the horror of the human onlookers, were the skull and bone remains of their missing relatives. The Cheeroonear leered at them and declared that they could not live to tell of this incident, and he departed before they could do anything. That night the humans pondered what they could do to protect their families from this predator. They decided that only the wirinuns (medicine men) known as the Winjarning brothers could help. The wirinuns were sent for quickly and asked how they might protect the tribe. Soon all were busy fetching brushwood, as directed, and laying it in two lines converging at the waterhole. Then the families hid in the rocks while the warriors took their position behind the brushwood. As the dawn rose in the east, the Cheeroonear's pack of hounds came through the scrub and toward the water. Then as the front dog got to the end of the brushwood lines, its head was severed from its body by the boomerang of one of the wirinuns, and as each subsequent dog came, it met the same fate. When all were dead, their tails were cut off and whisked at the end of the lines in the hands of a warrior, to simulate the dogs cornering some prey Soon a Cheeroonear came to investigate and as he reached the end of the brushwood lines the clubs of the humans smashed his skull. He was pulled out of the way, and in the silence the hidden warriors heard the Cheeroonear's wife coming. Her fate was to be chopped up by the waiting men; but before she expired, what appeared to be a boy emerged from her severed body. This being transformed into a monstrous serpent that slithered into the bush to carry on the Cheeroonears' evil (1395: p.77; 1442: p.46).