McMillan named it

I have a huge admiration for Angus McMillan. This column is not in praise of him, but simply a record of some of the places he named in Gippsland, so far as I know them.

Much of this comes from "Recollections of Early Gippsland Goldfields" by Richard Mackay, first published in 1916 and a hugely valuable reference.
In 1862 Mackay had a long sit-down with McMillan in 1862 and made copious notes from the explorer's diary. These are an addendum to the book itself.
There are five main rivers feeding the Gippsland Lakes - the Avon, the La Trobe, the Mitchell, the Nicholson and the Tambo. McMillan named most of these and a lot more. He named the Glengarry River, but Strzelecki renamed it as the La Trobe.

He also named the Macalister, which the Indigenous called It Wirn Wirndook Yeerung, which translates to "song of the emu wren".The Macalister is a significant river, flowing into the Thomson near Maffra.

I'm not sure who named the Tambo but I am told it is an Indigenous word for fish. I'm also told the native name is or was Berawan. The length of the Tambo means that it would have been known in at least two Indigenous languages.
Let me get to Mackay's copy of McMillan's diary – an 1841 diary Mackay was allowed to read, discuss and make notes about.
"…proceeded across the plains to the Glengarry river to a place I named Snake Ridge…." The Glengarry was renamed the La Trobe by Count Paul Edmund Strzelecki, just as McMillan's Providence Ponds was changed to the prosaic Perry River.

Snake Ridge, just over the La Trobe from Rosedale, has been called Snakes Ridge since that time but McMillan seems not to have capitalised the word ridge.
There are stories about First Nations people being frightened of the snake or snakes on the ridge, and of explorers being amazed at the site of a giant snake. These are good stories but that is all they are.
"To the east there was a bluff, which shut it (the Tambo) from my view and which I named Tambo Bluff."

"…and about noon came upon another river as deep and broad as the Tambo, to which I gave the name of Nicholson, after Dr Nicholson of Sydney."
January 13 "I named the lake Victoria, after her Most Gracious Majesty."
January 18 1840 "started again on our course southwest and after travelling seven miles came upon another large river, which I called the Mitchell after Sir Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales."

On the morning of January 19, McMillan crossed the Mitchell and on "the evening of the 20th we camped at a "chain of ponds" which I assume to be his "Providence Ponds".

On the 21st the expedition "came upon a very wide and deep river with high banks, flowing through a fine country of open forest, to which I gave the name of Avon" and they had from their camp "a fine view of the mountains, and the highest of them I named Mount Wellington."

On the 22nd "…we encamped in the evening on another large stream, which I named the MacAlister after Mr Lachlan MacAlister, of Clifton…".
He named places like Merriman's Creek and Bruthen Creek in his diary, or in Mackay's transcriptions, anyway. In 1841 neither of those names were in use and McMillan does not claim to have named them.

I might owe Strzelecki an apology, because I have accused him of pandering to those in power by naming things after them as he explored Gippsland, and thus renaming things McMillan had already named. However, in Mackay's book we read, in McMillan's words:
"On 27 March 1840 Count Strzelecki, accompanied by a Sydney blackfellow, arrived at Numbla Mungie, and at the Count's suggestion, I altered the name of the new country from Caledonia Australia (sic) to Gippsland, in honour of Sir George Gipps, then Governor of New South Wales." I'd not heard before of that co-operative act.

On September 22, 1859 Angus McMillan was elected to parliament as the Member for South Gippsland. He was so unimpressed with politics that he resigned in November 1860 and had nothing further to with those politics. At that time he was living at Bushy Park, on the Macalister.

Dr G.D. Hedley replaced him but he, too, served only a short time. Hedley was one of the Hedley family that played a big part in the settlement of the eastern end of South Gippsland – the tiny one-time railway town of Hedley was named for them.
McMillan has been accused of taking part in the massacres of First Nations people and as a result the Electoral Commission renamed the seat of McMillan to Monash.

He stands accused, for instance, of being part of the Highland Brigade, formed to protect settlers from Indigenous, and which is said to have trapped a group of Indigenous at Merriman's Creek and slaughtered them. This was the story of the day, but there has never been a bullet recovered from a tree or the ground, never a skull or any other. bones. Enough said about all that.

Noted historians, and others not so noted, have attacked him powerfully but not always with compete accuracy.
On the other hand historians who've taken a positive view of a man to whom Gippsland owes a great deal don't seem to be able to gain any traction at all.
The Wikipedia entry for Angus McMillan, too, is very disappointing. It has errors of fact and takes a very one-sided view.

In 1839, 1840 and 1841 Angus McMillan provided the only worthwhile attempts to find a route south onto the Lakes area grasslands, and it was McMillan who found the route to Port Albert and created a viable pastoral industry for Gippsland, with a port from which to export cattle to Tasmania in good condition.
It would be nice if we all remembered that.