Reviving old Indigenous names for new purposes

Full text

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CHAPTER 7
Reviving old Indigenous names
for new purposes
LAURA KOSTANSKI AND IAN D. CLARK
Introduction
George Seddon (1997: 15) theorised that the words of the landscape carry “cultural
baggage” that may “imply values and endorse power relations”. This notion of
power relations being borne out through placenames is nowhere more evident
than in Australia. Since the time of early European exploration of Australia
the landscape has been mapped from a colonial cartographic perspective.
European explorers, surveyors and settlers brought with them to Australia a
colonial understanding of land tenure, and with this the existing Indigenous
understandings of the landscape were overwritten. The landscape was almost a
palimpsest (the place where a text has been overwritten or erased to make way
for another text), constantly being overwritten to suit the needs of the colonial
government. In the act of mapping Australia the colonists began to take control
of the landscape, and one of the most important and powerful ways they did this
was to name places in the landscape. Sometimes names were taken from those of
the colonial ocials, or borrowed from places ‘back home’. In other instances
where the landscape was deemed ‘too foreign’, Indigenous languages and their
vocabularies were used to create new colonial places from the landscape of space
(Carter 1987). This use of Indigenous names by the colonial powers transformed
the names from being exclusively Indigenous in origin, to becoming Anglo-
Indigenous in nature (Kostanski 2005). The term ‘Anglo-Indigenous’ is used
because the names were used for colonial cartographic purposes, and were
symbols of colonial places. Thus, in essence the names which had been used to
describe Indigenous landscapes were now used for the colonial landscape and
their meanings had been altered permanently.
This paper is concerned with the recent and current ocial government use of
Indigenous names, those names which the authors describe as Anglo-Indigenous.
There are many important linguistic programmes that work with Indigenous

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groups throughout Australia, which focus on recording the Indigenous names
that are used in their traditional ways. These programs (McKay 1992) record the
traditional spiritual meaning of the names, and in most cases these meanings
are recorded for the sole use of the Indigenous groups, and specic sub-groups
of them. We will not be discussing these Indigenous names, and so to make the
distinction, the names we refer to, the ones used for government purposes, are
those that are Anglo-Indigenous.
The act of naming transforms space into place (Carter, Donald and Squires
1993) and toponyms act as cultural symbols and artefacts which, with the passing
of time, become cultural relics. In Australia the toponyms are predominantly
relics of colonial and Indigenous landscape interactions – relics which can
be investigated to uncover their historical importance and value in shaping
community identities.
There are many policies in Australia which govern the contemporary ocial
government use of Indigenous toponyms. These policies are derived from the
United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names resolution which:
recommends that all countries having groups of aboriginal/native people
make a special eort to collect their geographical names along with other
appropriate information;
recommends also that, whenever possible and appropriate, a written
form of those names be adopted for ocial use on maps and other
publications. (Natural Resources Canada 2004: 22)
In Victoria this resolution is presented in the following policies and principles
as outlined by the Registrar of Geographic Names:
2.1.2 PRINCIPLE 2 – Recognition and use of Indigenous names
The use of traditional Indigenous names is encouraged and preferred for
unnamed features, subject to agreement from the relevant Indigenous
communities.
The use of a word from an Indigenous language may also be used as a
geographic placename. The use of Indigenous geographic placenames
or words should be undertaken in the context of the Guidelines for the
Recording and Use of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Place Names
formulated by the Committee for Geographical Names in Australasia.

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2.1.5 PRINCIPLE 5 – Assigning names to unnamed features
Naming authorities should give priority to names drawn from relevant
Indigenous Australian languages, names covered by Principle 3,
or unocial historical names, when assigning names to existing
topographical features that have neither an ocial nor an unocial
name. Within these options, consideration might be given to names
that recognise groups of people or types of names previously under-
represented in the ‘namescape’. Where more than one name amongst
the above options is considered appropriate, dual naming may be used.
Some geographical features in Victoria have neither an ocial or
unocial name e.g. some peaks in the Great Dividing Range, some minor
tributaries at the headwaters of river systems. If it is decided to name
features such as these, then the sense of connection criterion outlined in
this Principle should be adopted.
2.1.11 PRINCIPLE 11 – Dual names
Naming authorities may assign dual or multiple names to places, in those
instances where it is appropriate to give ocial recognition to names
drawn from two or more cultural backgrounds. The most common
combination would be a name drawn from a relevant Indigenous
Australian language and an Australian English name. There should not
be any restriction on the language source for names used in selecting
dual names, provided Principle 3 is observed and provided Australian
English is used. (Department of Sustainability and Environment 2004)
Thus, at this point in time, features in Victoria can be dual named with both
an Indigenous and a non-Indigenous toponym to symbolise the place. Where
once there had been only Indigenous names related to specic areas, colonists
came through in the nineteenth century and claimed the landscape through
their own procedures of mapping and naming. In recent times consideration
has been given to reinstating the Indigenous names, in an eort to represent
Indigenous cultural heritage in the landscape.
Yet, just because this ideal exists in government guidelines and policies does
not mean that the process of implementing these practices is straightforward. More
than 150 years of colonial landscape domination and historical understandings
of the landscape have meant that the ocial recording of the Victorian, and
Australian, landscape is, and has been, represented from a colonial cartographic
perspective. This perspective has negated Indigenous understandings of place
for more than 150 years in Victoria, with the consequence that eorts now being
made to reinstate Indigenous names are perceived by many as an attempt to
instate a ‘counter-landscape culture’.

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Colonial understandings of the landscape
One case study which can best exemplify the inuence that nineteenth century
colonial cartographic and toponymic practices have had upon the understandings
of the constituents of Australian landscape and place is that of the Grampians
(Gariwerd) debate of the early 1990s. In the early 1990s there was an eort from
the incumbent Victorian state government to reinstate the Indigenous names of
signicant sites and features within and around the Grampians National Park
in Victoria.
Prior to 1836, the Grampians landscape was understood solely by Indigenous
groups. The Buandig, Wergaia, Dhauwurdwurrung, Wathawurrung, Jardwadjali
and Djabwurrung all had names for features within this area. The traditional
custodians of these landscapes are the Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung (see the
maps in Figures 7.1 and 7.2).
In these landscapes, features and sites were identied by names linked to
ancestral stories, which enabled the inhabitants to travel across the country
along clearly dened routes (Young 1992: 256). More than this, the names gave
identity to the Indigenous groups and the land was (and still is) a part of them.
Stephen Davis and Victor Prescott note that for Indigenous people in Australia
the land was given form by ancestral beings who traversed the
landscape, conferring territories and naming each locality. Each named
locality within the total territory can be identied by senior custodians
of the territory. Names are recited in a particular order. When asking
a senior custodian the extent of his territory he will, most often, name
all localities on the territory to which the ancestral being travelled and
performed all the daily activities of life in the creative epoch. The names
are recited in the order in which they were visited. This naming of
localities matches the order in which names appear in the song cycle
during the performance of rituals involving clans from the wider ritual
group with which the clan identies. (Davis and Prescott 1992: 71)
Pertinently for this paper, as Ian Clark explained,
the ‘Grampian Mountains’ were central to the dreaming of buledji
Brambimbula, the two brothers Bram, who were responsible for the
creation and naming of many landscape features in western Victoria.
Many of the Aboriginal placenames… are believed to be conferred by
mythological Ancestors, and as such they are memorials to these mythic
heroes. (Clark and Harradine 1990: 21)

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Figure 7.1: The Jardwadjali landscape (Clark 1990: 256–257)

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Figure 7.2: The Djabwurrung landscape (Clark 1990: 108)

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The mountain ranges themselves were known as ‘Gariwerd’ by the
Jardwadjali. As Luise Hercus explained,
Gariwerd is a compound noun. Gar means ‘pointed mountain’ and is
cognate with the word for ‘nose’. The –i is the particularizing sux,
which translates into ‘the’. Werd means ‘shoulder’ and appears in ‘werdug’
(pronounced werdook) ‘his shoulder’, the correct form for ‘Wartook’.
The compound simply means ‘The Mountain Range’, and is descriptive
and specialized for the mountain range Mitchell subsequently named
‘The Grampians’. (Luise Hercus cited in Clark and Harradine 1990: 23)
In 1836, Major Thomas Mitchell, the Surveyor-General of New South Wales,
came to the area, and he named it the ‘Grampians’. His use of a non-Indigenous
name was unusual, as Mitchell wrote in his journal.
The great convenience of using native names is obvious … so long as
any of the Aborigines can be found in the neighbourhood … future
travelers may verify my map. Whereas new names are of no use in this
respect. (Mitchell 1838: 174)
Thus, in 1836 Mitchell admitted that English vocabulary was limited as
an identier of Australian geographical knowledge. Indeed, Mitchell often
attempted to obtain names from the local Indigenous people of the areas he was
travelling through. Yet, before reaching the Gariwerd area, Mitchell’s travelling
group had killed seven Indigenous people on 27 May 1836 at a place Mitchell
would later call Mt Dispersion. After the massacre the word spread to other
Indigenous groups in western Victoria to avoid Mitchell’s party. So, when
Mitchell could not locate Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung people in Gariwerd to
obtain their names, he set about his own naming practices:
In adding this noble range of mountains to my map, I felt some diculty
in deciding on a name. To give appellations that may become current
in the mouths of future generations, has often been a perplexing
subject with me, whether they have been required to distinguish new
counties, towns or villages, or such great natural features of the earth,
as mountains and rivers.
I have always gladly adopted aboriginal names, and in the absence of
these, I have endeavoured to nd some good reason for the application
of others... (Mitchell 1838: 185)
It is at this point in Mitchell’s travels that the process of transforming
culturally-dened space into place can be best exemplied. For Mitchell’s camp
the landscape of the Djabwurrung and Jardwadjali was unknown, unmapped
and uncategorised in any European manner that was familiar to them. Thus,
this landscape was culturally dened by the Europeans as space. Through the

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process of exploring the area, dierent European meanings were attached to
the landscape by Mitchell and his group, and symbolised through the use of
names. One prime example of this was in the use of the name Mount Zero, which
Mitchell used to name the mountain where he slept on the night the temperatures
dropped to zero degrees centigrade. According to Clark and Heydon (2002: 261),
for the Muramuragundidj clan of the Jardwadjali this mountain was known as
‘Mura Mura’ ‘little hill’, which indicates a completely dierent understanding
of the landscape from that of Mitchell’s. Another obvious example, which is the
focus of this paper, was Mitchell’s use of ‘Grampians’ to dene that mountain
range known primarily by the Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung until that time as
‘Gariwerd’.
So it was that in 1836 the Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung understandings
of the landscape were overlaid with European understandings, as evidenced
in the toponyms. Cowlishaw (1998: 32) posited that the landscape in Australia
is a palimpsest. The European names became the ocial government records
of the landscape. Maps, addresses, electorates and government zones all came
to identify with the area as ‘The Grampians’ in essence. The Jardwadjali and
Djabwurrung were dispossessed from ocial records by an act of toponymy. As
Stuart noted, the explorers “were superimposing their own form of knowledge
for their own purposes” (Macintyre 2002: 4). Simon Ryan (1996) noted that the
creation of maps was the production of knowledge which was “invariably an
exercise of power” (Ryan 1996).
By 1989, the ocial geographical understanding of the Gariwerd/Grampians
area had changed from that experienced by the Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung
prior to 1836 and Mitchell’s party in 1836. The area was known ocially in
1989 as the ‘Grampians National Park’ and the remaining Indigenous cultural
heritage of the National Park was the joint responsibility of ve Aboriginal
communities. These groups were the Goolum-Goolum Aboriginal Cooperative,
the Gunditjmara Aboriginal Cooperative, the Framlingham Aboriginal Trust,
the Kerrup-Jmara Aboriginal Elders Corporation and the Portland-Heywood
Community, who formed Brambuk Incorporated.
The Honourable Steve Crabb, Minister for Tourism in Victoria, noted that
“given the Aboriginal heritage of the Grampians, many existing placenames
are inappropriate” (cited in Clark and Harradine 1990: 6). Crabb, through
the Victorian Tourism Commission, commissioned historical geographer Ian
Clark and rock art consultant Ben Gunn, to research the Indigenous names of
Grampians features and submit a proposal for which Indigenous names should
be considered for reinstatement. Thus began a process of renaming the National
Park and features within it that raised much attention from both Indigenous and
non-Indigenous locals and non-locals.

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Within six months of Crabb’s announcement of Indigenous placenames being
reinstated and European names being removed, over 17,898 signatures had
been collected in petitions which demanded that the existing (European) names
be retained (Napthine 1989). Numerous letters to the editors of national and
regional newspapers were submitted and published, the vast majority of which
were resistant to the name change proposal. Politicians entered the debate, with
many discussions held as to the suitability of the proposal to change the name of
the Grampians. There was much discussion about whether the name ‘Grampians’
would be completely removed and replaced with the name ‘Gariwerd’. At the
time of the debate, there was no legislation available which allowed for dual
naming, and so the idea of reinstating the name ‘Gariwerd’ meant at the time
that the name ‘Grampians’ would be removed from the landscape.
This proposal invoked a strong reaction from the local non-Indigenous
community, who protested by stating, among other things, that “changing the
name would remove our history” (Birch 1992: 232). The placename ‘Grampians’
had provided the locals with a vocabulary for dening their distinct geography,
and they were not willing to part with this part of their identity. Indigenous
acceptance of dual naming was announced relatively late in the public discussions
and by that time local non-Indigenous resistance to name changing, including
the adoption of dual naming, was intense and inexible. An understanding of
this psychological process is oered by cultural geographers working in the
eld of place attachment.
Place attachment is described generally as “the bonding of people to places”
(Altman and Low 1992: 2), or the “emotional link formed by an individual to
a physical site that has been given meaning through interaction” (Milligan
1998: 2). Understanding of the community reactions to the Gariwerd debate
can be explained by the denition of place attachment being a “framework for
both individual and communal aspects of identity, and has both stabilising and
dynamic features” (Brown and Perkins 1992: 284). Thus, in a world where place
attachment gives a raison d’être for local community identity, the perception
that attempts are being made to change the name of that place, or the symbol
of that identity, will undoubtedly threaten local residents, especially if that
change is perceived to be coming from government authorities.
A complication of this place attachment is the fact that the non-Indigenous
community in the Grampians region felt attached to non-Indigenous
understandings of the landscape. The non-Indigenous community was not
familiar with the Indigenous Jardwadjali and Djabwurrung landscapes of
Gariwerd, and the most common human reaction to the unknown is fear and
rejection. Problems in the Grampians case study could be related to the cultural
geography theory that:

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One dimension of the person’s experience of environmental stability lies
in the armation of the belief that the properties of his or her day-to-day
physical world are unchanging. The individual’s recognition of these
properties at any given moment in a given situation serves to conrm
their continuity from the past, and in turn this perceived continuity
portends that they will occur again in the future. The perceived stability
of place and space that emerges from such recognitions correspondingly
validates the individual’s belief in his or her own continuity over time.
Since the individual’s place-identity mirrors a physical world, the
continuing recognition of that world over time gives credence to and
support for his or her self-identity. (Proshansky, Fabian and Kamino
1983: 66)
Essentially, if we take this theory on place identity, it could be extrapolated
to insist that the perceived stability of place and space is represented through
the unchanging values of the toponym. When this toponym is highlighted for
change, the people involved in using the toponym as a symbol of their place
identity could be said to face a threat to their self-identity. Thus, in the Grampians,
in an eort to reinstate Indigenous names, the process was also aecting the
place identity and toponymic identity of many local non-Indigenous residents.
Of course, to not reinstate the Indigenous names was continuing a process of
colonial landscape identication which negated the toponymic identity of the
Indigenous communities.
Perhaps one way to overcome the problem of the rejection of Indigenous
landscapes by non-Indigenous communities would be to increase the educational
promotion of Indigenous heritage areas. This promotion could lead to a greater
understanding of Indigenous cultural landscapes by non-Indigenous people
and, in turn, this could mean that government and non-government organisation
attempts to reinstate Indigenous toponyms are not as strongly rejected, because
people are familiar with the ideas.
In addition, the problems encountered in the Grampians (Gariwerd) debate
were also due to the fact that the Indigenous communities were not consulted
about the process from the onset. Thus, in essence they were disempowered
from the decision-making processes. To alleviate these problems it is necessary
to ensure that all Indigenous naming projects include and promote the best
interests of the Indigenous communities who are the cultural custodians of that
particular landscape. Whilst the names are being considered and promoted as
ocial for the landscape by Indigenous groups, it must be remembered that
these names are being made to conform to colonial cartographic practices, and
this renders them Anglo-Indigenous in nature.

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Dual naming and colonial/Indigenous landscapes
In 1977 the then Place Names Committee of Victoria received a proposal to rename
Mt Niggerhead and other similarly named features such as Niggerhead Creek and
Niggerhead Aqueduct. After investigating the matter the committee resolved
“that no further action be taken on the matter”. Yet, in the intervening years
calls to remove the name ‘Niggerhead’ have been constant. For example in 1987
one non-Indigenous correspondent to a local parliamentary member expressed
embarrassment over the name. The following year ministerial correspondence
requested consideration be given to renaming Mount Niggerhead to Mount
Wells, Mount Brown, or Mount Kiewa. In its response to this proposal the Shire
of Bright objected to any form of renaming on the grounds that “the placenames
are of historical signicance [and] should not be changed merely because of
the social values of today”. In 1993, the Place Names Committee received the
suggestion that Mount Niggerhead be changed to the ‘Koori Heads’. Aboriginal
Aairs Victoria oered to assist the committee to undertake consultation with
the Aboriginal community and expressed a desire that all Victorian placenames
that contained the word ‘Nigger’ would eventually be changed. The Place Names
Committee rejected the suggestion of ‘Koori Heads’ and resolved to secure a
more appropriate name.
In 1994 an anonymous person, asserting representation of Indigenous
interests in the area, oered three suggestions for renaming The Niggerheads
(Warrakarntj ‘snowgum’), Niggerhead Creek (Dtjarrmalung ‘platypus’), and Mt
Niggerhead (You You ‘boobook owl’). Consultations ensued over the next three
years with various government agencies and shires but these came to nothing
when another group of Indigenous interests rejected the earlier suggestions and
repudiated the credibility of the proposer of the 1994 names and his claim to
speak for country, preferring The Niggerheads be renamed ‘The Yaithmathangs’
after the name of a local Aboriginal clan. Support increased for this new name
from particular agencies; however in 2002 the process stalled as the two relevant
Indigenous groups involved could not reach a consensus on the appropriateness
of names. In 2004 a Geographic Place Names Advisory Committee was formed to
discuss the renaming issue. Deliberations are ongoing.
The Mt Niggerhead issue highlights the problems involved with removing
or ‘cleansing’ from the namescape a toponym that is considered by some to
be oensive but by others to be historically appropriate. It should be noted
that the use of the word ‘nigger’ to refer to people of Indigenous descent was
common in Victoria during the early part of the nineteenth century (Dwyer
letter cited in Bride 1898). Other contemporary issues of this debate surround
the appropriateness of names that are proposed in contexts where ‘traditional’
Indigenous toponyms for the place under consideration have not survived: the
lack of consensus between stakeholders in the process, especially in situations

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where a consensus is considered critical to the success of the process. Another
related issue is that of Aboriginal land tenure and the diculty of determining
appropriate toponyms in situations where land tenure is itself disputed. The
nal issue is that of ‘inventing’ Aboriginal toponyms – is it any dierent to the
process of the invention of non-Indigenous toponyms?
One critical issue in this discussion has been the appropriateness of the
name ‘The Niggerheads’. Preliminary research by Lisa Arnold (2002) into the
name was unable to settle on one interpretation of how the name came to be
conferred. The word ‘Nigger’ is derived from the Latin niger, French nègre,
and Spanish negro meaning ‘black’, and historically has been used to refer to
black people, especially Africans. When used to refer to black people its use is
generally considered pejorative and derogatory. ‘Niggerhead’ in this context
may refer to a formation that appears to take the shape of a black person’s head.
However, what complicates this discussion is the fact that Niggerhead is the
common name for a grass, Enneapogon gracilis, and geologically the common
name for black basalt. The term has also been used, historically, to refer to a
stick of tobacco. Other uses include a reference to rows of bollards on wharves,
and as a printing term as a guide to trimming and folding.
One reason that explains the length of this community discussion has been
the lack of consensus for change. The relevant local government authority
has met on four occasions and has failed to support the push to change the
name. The Alpine Shire Council has expressed its view that although it does
not support a change, if an Aboriginal name is going to be adopted it stressed
the necessity that it be given a name that is easily pronounceable. The Alpine
Observer in late 2000 and early 2001 conducted a poll via their website and a
postal poll and some 54 percent of respondents opposed a change. At meetings
of relevant Aboriginal organisations there has been support for a name change,
although it is possible to nd support for the existing name as an important
historical artefact that highlights the views of its time.
Rating system for Indigenous names
Whilst it can be a problem not to have one Indigenous language area for one
non-Indigenous place, multiple names for one area can lead to problems too –
even if there is only one Indigenous language in the area.
During the Midlands State Forest Name Review, undertaken by the
researchers and the Victorian Department of Sustainability and Environment
(DSE) during late 2004, problems were encountered during many aspects of
the dual naming research. One of these problems was the fact that Indigenous

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201
toponyms and landscape understandings diered immensely from ocial
government landscape boundaries. One specic example of this was in the
Linton area of State forests.
The contemporary Linton State forest areas occupy the traditional land of
the Wathawurrung (see Figure 7.3).
Figure 7.3: Linton State Forest areas (Kostanski and Clark 2004)
As can be seen in the maps, the language spoken in the Linton State forest
areas is Wathawurrung. This paper will now focus attention on the forest areas
to the north-west of the cluster. What we will focus on is the fact that colonial
State forest boundaries were based on colonial understandings of the landscape
and did not reect Wathawurrung understandings. Thus, where there are

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202
multiple State forest areas, with one non-Indigenous name, there can be up to
three Wathawurrung toponyms known to exist in oral and written records (and
doubtlessly more ocially unknown too).
In order to apply dual names it is necessary to have one Indigenous name
and one non-Indigenous name for a contiguously bounded feature. Essentially,
the researchers, the DSE and the Wathawurrung community (represented by
the Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative (BADAC)) were faced with the
dilemma of deciding how to proceed with the dual naming in this area. Were
we to choose one Indigenous name for each non-Indigenous one? Did we need
to distinguish between the Indigenous names and only promote those which
were historically ‘relevant’? Could dual naming involve applying multiple
Indigenous names to each non-Indigenous one? And most importantly, were
we participating in a process of cultural homogenisation by taking Indigenous
words and toponyms that were specic to only one particular place, and
applying it to a much larger area?
As part of the historical research and compilation of the Wathawurrung
names, the researchers, in association with Aboriginal Aairs Victoria (AAV) and
the Surveyor-General’s and the Forestry Divisions of the Victorian Department
of Sustainability and Environment, devised a scoring system to be given to the
Indigenous names, to allow a distinction between the pedigrees of particular
placenames (refer to Table 7.1).
Table 7.1: Rating system for Indigenous placenames
Rating Meaning
5 Aboriginal placename has known meaning; relates to a clan name; there is at
least one variant source.
4 Aboriginal placename has partial meaning; at least one variant source.
3 Aboriginal placename has partial meaning and only one variant source.
2 Aboriginal placename meaning is not known; there is at least one variant
source.
1 Aboriginal placename meaning is not known; there is only one variant source.
This scale has been developed from toponymic research in Indigenous languages
areas where the language is no longer extant and signicant cultural knowledge has
been lost. In areas where languages are extant, researchers need to adapt this table to
reect the reality that some toponyms have no known meaning or are opaque (see Walsh
2002). Also, it must be remembered that some traditional Indigenous names are only
names, without an inherent ‘meaning’. In both situations (where names are extant or
not) it might be worthwhile for researchers to estimate the degree of opacity in the
languages they are researching.
The current table allows for multiple possibilities in toponymic practice. It is
based on the premise that to reinstate Indigenous names some research needs to be
undertaken into the etymology of the names. In the process of researching the names,

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203
various characteristics can be identied, such as meaning, relation to the local language,
and so on. From these characteristics the ‘pedigree’ of the name can be deduced. This
is important to note, because as BADAC expressed, they knew that there would be
controversy surrounding the dual naming proposals, and they wanted to be assured that
the Indigenous names they were promoting were credible and not able to be discredited
by the non-Indigenous community. It is hoped that the production of this table for
rating will aid in future projects on the reinstatement of Indigenous names.
During the State forest name review, based on the table, it was recommended to
BADAC that the names with a scoring of ve be considered for dual naming, where a
European name was already in existence. BADAC agreed to this, as they believed that
only names which could be historically traced and evidenced should be applied, as
this would stave o any controversy. Yet, discussions were had as to the application of
one Indigenous name per European name, where multiple Indigenous names existed.
One example of this can be seen in the naming of the Linton State forest. Information
gathered for the Linton state forest can be seen in Table 7.2.
Table 7.2: Information for Linton State Forest (Kostanski and Clark 2004)
Linton
Status: Ofcial Placename (LOCB, RSTA, TPEX)
History: Map of 1884 shows Linton as a township of ‘Lintons’ amongst an
area of Timber Reserve. Map of 1937 shows township of Linton, just
south of Forest Reserve area.
Discussion: “Named after Mr Linton of Linton Parks. Gold was discovered upon
his station. The diggings and the township took his name. McGrath,
p. 118” (O’Callaghan 1918, p. 63). “Mary Linton, owner of Emu
Hill homestead” (Saxton 1907, p. 42). “Fossickers in feb 1855
found gold on property Linton Park, owned by Mrs Linton, widow of
squatter Joseph Linton; area rst known as Linton’s Diggings”. (Blake
1977, p. 159)
Rating: 5
Indigenous Names
Kay.jap
Language Area: Wathawurrung
Translation: Unknown
Discussion: Recorded in Robinson’s Journal (10/8/1841)
Rating: 1
Nawnight-widwid
Language area: Wathawurrung
Translation: ‘widwid’ is ‘toy throwing stick’ (Smyth 1878:192)
Discussion: This name refers specically to Black Hill, Scarsdale (this name is
recorded in map of 1885)
Rating: 4
Molongghip
Language Area: Wathawurrung
Translation: Unknown
Discussion: This name was recorded in Smyth (1878:193)
Rating: 1

Aboriginal placenames
204
Essentially, based on discussions with BADAC, and the use of the scale for Indigenous
names, the name nawnight wid-wid was chosen to be dual named with Linton. The scale
for testing the pedigree of a proposed Indigenous name could also be used with non-
Indigenous names in areas where multiple possibilities for naming arise.
Conclusions
This paper has discussed the various aspects of colonial use of Indigenous names
in Victoria. Problems associated with dual naming were identied, especially
where the colonial geographical area overlaps multiple Indigenous language areas
(cross-lectal). During the study it was found that sometimes where there was a
paucity of information on Indigenous languages for a particular State Forest
area, Indigenous names have needed to be ‘invented’. Considerable discussion
was given to the development of a rating system for the use of Indigenous names
in contemporary naming projects (where doublet or triplet intralectals exist).
The overall intention of the paper was to present methodologies for working
through various problems that can be encountered when working with projects
that involve ocial government implementation of Indigenous names in the
Australian landscape. Reference was made to specic case studies, such as the
renaming of rock art sites in the Grampians National Park during the 1990s, the
protracted yet contemporary Mt Niggerhead debate, and the recent Midland
State forest naming project.
Ultimately, this paper has asked more questions than it has answered. It
will be interesting to see over the next few years how the government resolves
these problems of dual naming. If the nation as a whole is to be serious about
recognising Indigenous cultures, then the names need to be properly recognised
as symbols of Indigenous heritage and culture. How we go about applying
Indigenous names to a landscape that is ocially understood from non-
Indigenous perspectives is an issue that will require much debate in the future.
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