Dear CJ,

Ah yes, my old stomping ground of
Wentworthville and Parramatta...

PARRA-does-MATTER!

I also love all the old Aboriginal
names - and the song you quoted that made them even
more famous!

We've got such a unique heritage that's
been handed to us of the history of our town and city
names - it's interesting to find out their origins
and meanings. Part of the pleasure of travelling
around this vast country of ours is the discoveries
of places and people made along the way. Names are
part of this adventure.

It is interesting the way some Australian placenames have been seemingly used over the years to give the old 'middle finger salute' to the 'received Imperial wisdom' or 'official position' in relation to persons or events of national, or even British Imperial, significance.

One such is the placename 'Byng', seen on signposts on the road between Lithgow and Bathurst in NSW. Doubtless it commemorates the British Admiral, John Byng (1704-1757), who was court-martialled and subsequently shot on the forecastle of HMS Monarch. It would hardly be thought that such would have been looked upon favourably in the day of its naming, as a place name, but Byng it has been all these however-many years. FWIW the Wiki states: "... Byng's execution has been called "the worst legalistic crime in [Britain's] annals ...".

I wonder, as such, is it about to be exceded by the Howes' extradition?

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?discussion=3148&page=0

(Perhaps someone should tell Microsoft about the connotations of this name, no?)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Byng

Another place name that intrigues me is the Sydney northern beaches suburb of Harbord. Harbord as a suburb or locality would probably have been being opened up for settlement around, or shortly after the turn of the 20th century, say around 1902 or thereabouts. I note that the spelling is identical to that of the middle name of Lt Harry Harbord Morant, 'the Breaker', executed as a scapegoat for the killing of a German missionary, caught and shot 'under Rule 303', who had been conveying information to Boer forces during the Boer War.

I strongly suspect the naming of Harbord was an Australian 'middle finger salute' to the then Imperial establishment with respect to that disgraceful episode. Does anybody know for sure?

OT Belly, there is nothing sinister about Brian Howes being online on OLO in the very early hours of the morning. It is just the time difference: for him 5:00 AM here is 7:00 PM in Bo'Ness, Scotland, where he currently lives under house-arrest.

Yes never thought there was FG understood the reason, thanks for the three legged man info.
My uncle was held up there a lot of years ago by hitch hikers.
Tipperary quite a few Irish names around and a few with that name.
our one is hilly remote and only a few live there.
Its biggest farm runs three quarters of a million live stock.
Worms.
Seen any of the dozen Jacks creeks, dirty creeks?

Where I grew up, there were two areas that had lots of "space" names as street names.

In one area, all the streets were named after planets and such: Mercury Crescent, Neptune Avenue, Saturn Street, etc. A nearby suburb, built up about a decade later, had street names all taken from the space program: Surveyor Court, Apollo Drive.

When I was a space-besotted boy, I thought those names were about the coolest thing ever. I was eternally jealous that my street didn't have a space name.

As a space-besotted adult, I still think those names are cool, because to me they represent a time when there was genuine faith in, and a higher general awareness of, science and technology. As opposed to the Age of Unreason we seem to live in today.

I sometimes wish I could meet the anonymous town planner who had the vision to bestow those names on an ordinary urban-rural fringe suburb.

There seems to be an Eight Mile Creek on the fringe of just about every coastal town in Queensland. Driving from Brisbane to Townsville, you get the impression that the creek is a lot longer than eight miles . . .

And Alligator Creek. How many of them do we have? And how many of them actually have alligators in them? None, one would suspect . . .