We have a very big island here under us, though we have very few people to cover it. Because most of it is not much use, we don't need too many more - they tend to build houses on the bits around the edge of the island where we will need to be growing as much food as possible before long.
That has little to do with this week's column. I am going back to my hobby horse of place names, but in a different way. In The Australian Encyclopaedia 1958, Volume 77 "Parliamentary to Sandal Box" (what is a Sandal Box?) pages 127 to 136, there is a dissertation on Australian place names that is full of interesting facts. It is written by "A.H.C." or, as I found, Alec H. Chisholm, the editor in chief.
He points out that the first white names given in this country were Dutch names, like Arnhem (Land) and Carpentaria (the Gulf of) and Rottnest Island. The British were next and, in many cases, original names were overwritten. Flinders, for instance, renamed Cape de la Plateforme as Cape Schank. There are quite a few French names still on the map, but I think the only one in Gippsland is French island, originally Ile des Francais.
Chisholm makes many observations I find irresistible. Did you know that we have Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday islands, but no Monday or Saturday?
Did you know that Cook originally named the east coast "New Wales" and only added the South later? Did you know "Australia" was not used until about 1812, made popular by Matthew Flinders and officially adopted by Lachlan Macquarie?
Obviously we had many places named after British officials – don't all you Republicans get all hot and bothered about this. Honouring these people made them more supportive of the new nation growing down here in the south. As settlers spread out from the settlements on the coast, more and more names were simply descriptive, or Aboriginal.
We had waves of names from various places, too. As Victoria's central goldfields were established, the Crimean War gave us names like St Arnaud, Sebastopol and Havelock. Immediately after the gold bubble had deflated, if not burst, miners from all corners of the globe went onto the land and gave names from their homelands. Kosciusko was not one these, but was named by a Pole, Strzelecki, after a Polish national hero.
Many of the German ones had their names changed during World War I. There had been at least a dozen German towns, German hills and German gullies on the various goldfields, where the nationalities tended to stick together, but most of those names were, like their villages, long gone by 1914. I do know that Grovedale, near Geelong, was at first called Germantown but, to my frustration, I cannot name a Gippsland example.
King's Bay, the wide waters outside The Heads were named, after the name had first been given to Port Phillip, after Governor King, but King changed the name of the bay Melbourne looks out upon in honour Governor Arthur Phillip.
Aboriginal names are often musical even rhythmic, and we have thousands of them. Unfortunately, these were used a little willy-nilly by our pioneers. The rules of pronunciation seem hard to follow, as do the meanings.
Still, names like Korumburra, Warragul, Yallambie and Wonthaggi roll off the tongue more melodiously than Churchill, Stratford, Sale and Bairnsdale. I even like Longwarry! Bunyip? Not so much.
We have some interesting names here in Gippsland for which I have never been able to account and on which help would be welcome. These include W Tree, Suggan Buggan and the very frustrating Madalya.
Chisholm mentions unhappiness in some quarters about names that are too similar, like Licola and Picola, Callum, Hallam and Nullam, but he is even more scathing about the unimaginative descriptive names such as Lakes Entrance.
"Much multiple naming has occurred also on coastal features. There are no fewer than 12 places named West Point, 11 named North Head, 10 named Red Point, nine named Seal Rock/s and seven named Garden Island (including three of the last-named in Tasmania alone)."
He also quotes another researcher saying there were "90 Sugarloaf Hills and as many as 130 Sandy Creeks…".
Chisholm mentioned some possible naming that surprised me. Apparently, there was a move way back when for a new state in northwest Australia to be called Churchill, and this name was also proposed for the Northern Territory during World War II. Apparently, too, in 1956, North Queensland almost became either Cooksland or Flinders. Again, why not? They're a strange mob up there.
He also said there was a Wagga Wagga in Western Australia, as well as the one in New South Wales.
Cape Howe, to get back into Gippsland, if only just, was named by Captain George Vancouver (and there is a man whose work we have neglected - he was Cook's right hand on two of his three major voyages into the Pacific) in 1791. That was part of the naming of our country by the English explorers, with most of the names being for English aristocrats and officials.
Captain James Cook was more given to descriptive names like Endeavour River and Botany Bay, and he named 108 features on our coastline. Matthew Flinders upped the ante by naming 240, which included Wilson Promontory.
The Australian Encyclopaedia was first issued in 1925-1927, in two volumes. The project had been started in 1912 but the Great War held it up. Serious work on the new edition really began in 1950, with a plan for five volumes. But so much had happened, and we had found out so much more about our country, that it ended up as 10 volumes, published in 1958.
When Oakleigh Technical School was being closed down - for which the reason still escapes me - the books from the library finished up in a huge pile on the floor waiting for a front-end loader and a skip, but I got there first. The encyclopaedia set was just one of the things I saved.
Don't worry that the information is at least 60-years-old - the facts never change. Interpretations might, and that is the fun of looking at then and now, but the facts remain the same.