From Nowhere Else to Never Never
By: Emily Morgan
Tags: Life, Language, Culture, History

From Nowhere Else to Never Never

When place names say too much — or not nearly enough

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

I once had a conversation with an English friend. She saw a map of Australia on my wall and found endless amusement in the place names — Great Sandy Desert for instance. The Blue Mountains was another. And the Sunshine Coast, of course. We have a Two Mile, Seven Mile AND Nine Mile Beach. Then there’s Stony Beach. ‘My goodness, the creativity is world-class’, she said, rolling her eyes. Picture the conversation that led to the naming, as the intrepid explorers tramped through the undergrowth:

‘Oh, look, Mr. Cecil, what’s that over there?’ ‘Why, it’s a beach, Timmins. Let us rest awhile and enjoy the frolicksome waves.’ ‘Looks a little stony, sir.’ ‘Ah, too bad, too bad, Timmins. Let’s name it Stony Beach and continue on our adventure.’ ‘Righto, sir.’

Even the Nullarbor (a large desert) means ‘no trees’ in Latin.

But I venture to suggest we white colonial Down Under settlers are perfectly capable of being inventive, even cheeky, in our place naming. My local mountain is Cradle Mountain, due to its peak’s resemblance to a baby’s cradle. In my part of the Great Southern Land, Tasmania, we also have the Devil’s Kitchen, not to mention Crack Pot, Deep Thought and Granny’s Gut. Inventive, no? I for one would like to know how these particular places got their monikers. We also have not one but two Nowhere Elses in Australia — which makes the ‘Nowhere Else in Australia’ jokes that much more complicated…

Then there are the general expressions for the Outback, or a very long way away: the Never Never, out woop woop, the back of Bourke.

‘Come over to mine for a beer.’ ‘No way, mate, you live out woop woop!’ Don’t get lost out in the Never Never, mate. You’ll never never come back!’

Okay, so not that inventive…

Moody Explorers

‘Well, that mountain’s the wrong one, Charles. Where’s my pencil? How do you spell “disappointment”?’ (actual — not really actual — conversation during the naming of Mount Disappointment, Australia)

I personally enjoy the names that tell you something about the people who named them and what they were thinking at the time. Boring Creek — wow, that really must have had absolutely no redeeming features. Horrible Hollow Gully — someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. Bust-Me-Gut Hill really took it out of one poor soul. Mount Mistake — ‘oops, lads. That’s not the homestead. I think we might have got turned around…’ And the poor Little and Big Stinking Lagoons — I mean, did you have to mention it? Anxious Bay — some sea captain needed fresh water badly, I’m thinking. And if you thought Mount Mistake was bad, it didn’t touch the despair clearly felt when an explorer named Mount Buggery.

Then there are the names that tell you just how obsessed the male explorers were with the opposite sex. There are an awful lot of nipples scattered about the Australian landscape. Not to mention the Flirt Points, Mount Breasts and the fabulous Sleezy Lizard Caves.

History — lost

The most evocative English place names in Australia for me are the ones which tell you something about the first Australians who were booted out of them — and about the people who did the booting. Rubbish Cave — could have been a meeting or celebratory place for tens of thousands of years, rich in culture, tradition and archaeological treasures. Friendly Beaches — well, I’m sure they were at first. Manly was named for a tribe whose men embodied pleasing ‘manly’ traits of strength and skill in Governor Arthur Phillip’s mind. No patronizing there! Knock Em Down Gully, Dirty Womens Gully, Dead Mans Hole and Bang Bang Waterhole — well, you can jump to all kinds of conclusions and not be far off.

The sad thing is, of course, that all of these places already had names. Gorgeous-sounding, exotic, and most importantly old and established names, which were not often remembered and even less often given official status. Even well-meaning explorers and settlers often misheard, mispronounced or simply misunderstood what the first Australians were telling them, so that today, the meanings of many Aboriginal place names are lost. Still, we know a little. Parramatta means eel waters. Wagga Wagga means place of many crows. Moruya means home of the black swan. Kerang is named for a story about a big tree that once fell. It means ‘its leaves’, and this is an example of the way that landscape and ancestral and cultural lore and stories were interwoven in Aboriginal life. Even Piccadilly originated in an Aboriginal word for ‘two eyebrows’, pikurdla in the language Kaurna.

Such tales of the loss of historical and meaningful language and story by over-naming can be told in any colonized place, of course. While the US has Alaska (from the Unungan ‘place the sea crashes against’), Kansas (from the Kansa tribe, or ‘People of the South Wind’, with this word meaning ‘south’) and Mississippi River (Ojibwe meaning ‘Big River River’ — more on tautologies below — the Brits love ‘em!), it also has Hot Coffee, Mississippi, Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky and Tick Bite, North Carolina. Ouch!

On a side note, it’s good to see that official positions on naming, at least in Australia, have been reversing in recent years, with more places being changed to dual names, honoring the originals while keeping the better-known modern versions (such as kunanyi / Mount Wellington in Tasmania and Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre in South Australia).

And anyway… British names aren’t all that!

Of course, after my friend’s raucous laughter at my poor country’s naming choices, I was forced to respond. Oxford and Castle Hill, anyone? England has the advantage of hundreds of years of history and language shifts in its favor, but if you go back to the original meanings, the place-names are no less mundane. The entire point of a place name is to describe it, after all. Just because it’s historical doesn’t make it any less unoriginal IMHO. Think of the lovely Chelsea, which comes from the Saxon ‘cealc hythe’ meaning ‘a landing place for boats’ — dull! Or Clapham, originally clopp ham, which means the village (ham) by the short hill (clopp) — boring! Hammersmith? Um, a place where smiths made hammers — duh!

There’s a particular place in England whose name means “Hill Hill Hill Hill” developed from three different languages. So take that, England! (The place in question is Torpenhowe Hill, though there is disagreement as to its exact etymology). Not to mention the River Avon in Wales, which means River River, or Eas Fors Waterfall (Waterfall Waterfall Waterfall) in Scotland. Ha!

How much more ordinary can you get?