Hi I'm Tom Melville and Welcome to Voice of Real Australia. Each week we bring you people, places and perspectives from beyond the big cities. A map of Australia shows you place names with different origins -- some are first nations words, others are European hand me downs. Some Aboriginal names are so iconic like Noosa or Wollongong that we don't even think about it. But often these First Nations names encapsulate a rich history in just one word -- a story, a spirit. But over two centuries of displacement many of these names have sadly been lost or erased, along with the languages and the people who originally spoke them. You can read about this country's brutal history on a map through its place names. But some names are coming back -- Uluru was only called Ayers Rock for a brief moment in its history, we now know it by its true, Pitjantjatjara name. And there's a growing push for more of Australia's old names to be brought back, particularly when the story their new name tells is one of hate and violence. Names are changing and in the process we're learning about the true history of this land.

Rodney Carter 01:03

If you close your eyes, and you listen, and maybe try and use your senses, you smell something familiar. And that's the wetness the water, and it's what in your mind's eye you would think of as a creek. It's probably small, it's fragile. It's it's meandering, curvy, up and down. For us as Dja Dja Wurrung. It's special. Like all creeks, streams, rivers, places, it has a form of identity. So I think it's beautiful.

Tom Melville 01:43

Rodney Carter is a Dja Dja Wurrung man from central victoria. He's talking about a stream on his people's country which, since the 1840s, has been called Jim Crow Creek. Jim Crow has hugely racist connotations in the American South -- it became shorthand for the racist system of segregation that lasted up until the 60s in the United States. Rodney has long been unhappy about this name, and what he says it does to the creek itself.

Rodney Carter 02:08

It's been incarcerated. It's been suffocated, it's been imposed upon. And maybe for my people. It's easily said because this is the idea of oppression, displacement colonisation.

Tom Melville 02:23

Hepburn Shire Council, through which the creek flows, is looking at changing the name -- a process of community consultation is going on right now. Rodney wants the new name to be the Dja Dja Wurrung phrase, Larni Barramal Yaluk, which means Home of the Emu Creek.

Rodney Carter 02:39

Then what we're doing is we're freeing it by placing language back into country acknowledging its presence in landscape. And I also think when we speak the language at country, one of our mob say you sing country and you can through verse, but you can also quite easily speak to country by just saying its name. So for our creakier The Larni Barramal Yaluk, the home of the emu creek, the waters of the emu, that's its name so I respect it and call it by its name.

Rose Barrowcliffe 03:18

K'Gari actually the name of one of our sky spirits who came down and helped create a Butchulla country so we have a god Birral, Birral sent down in Yindingi to help create the earth and indeed he bought K'Gari this beautiful sky spirit down with him. And when they had created the mainland and the water, she looked around and thought it was the most beautiful place she'd ever seen and she begged to stay.

Tom Melville 03:45

That's Rose Barrowcliffe, a Butchulla woman whose ancestral homeland is around Hervey Bay in Queensland, and includes the world's largest sand island -- you might know it as Fraser Island.

Rose Barrowcliffe 03:56

Yindingi said well, you can only stay if he turned her into something else. So he got her to go lie down on some rocks out in the water and he turned her into the island. It's our creation story for the island, for us. So it's very inherent in our culture and our connection to country, that name.

Tom Melville 04:19

Butchulla people have long campaigned against the name Fraser Island and recently their name for the island, K'gari, was officially restored by the Queensland government. Fraser Island had been named after Eliza Fraser.

Rose Barrowcliffe 04:31

So she was the wife of a ship captain back in the early 1800s. And they were traveling up the east coast of Australia and ran aground and ended up as castaways effectively on K'Gari or what became known as Fraser Island.

Tom Melville 04:50

Eliza was taken in by Butchulla people on the island and stayed with them for a few weeks as they transferred her to safety.

Rose Barrowcliffe 04:55

Eliza Fraser's version of that story was very different about how You know, basically she was treated very badly and, and she went on to sell that story over and over again throughout the colonial world and made a lot of money out of painting Butchulla people in this horrible light.

Tom Melville 05:17

When she got home she described her time on the island as a fate worse than death, and her Butchulla hosts as cannibals. There's little chance she'd have survived without them but because of her lies, a narrative of the savagery of Indigenous people spread around the colonial world leading to death and dispossession.

Rose Barrowcliffe 05:34

So it was really important to elders to not have her recognised on our homeland. And also, because she was only really there for a few weeks. So she was there on the island for a few weeks had this terrible interaction became very famous for it. But it's it's not what the island is about for bachelor people.

Tom Melville 05:56

Rodney Carter says his people were robbed of the ability to speak their language. Returning his people's language to country is an important part of connecting to it. In returning the creek's identity, the Dja Dja Wurrung themselves are having their identity returned.

Rodney Carter 06:10

If we were at the creek, today, there's no reason why we can't actually almost seem to the creek as Larni Barramal Yaluk, and to connect to the emotion that can sit embedded in the sound as we speak in in the true sense, that's what I believe song is, it's the way that we vocalise craft, the saying of the words that they become somewhat musical. And I think that's what we we see when people are mindful about actually looking at the water and seeing beyond the water. And how does the light glisten on the water? What floats upon the water? What are the vortices underneath the water that are creating the meandering, what are the insects, the birds, the amphibians, reptiles that connect with the water, so now, that's country, so we can speak and sing. But then what it's actually doing, it's speaking back to us and singing back to us, we just need to use our senses to connect with that.

Tom Melville 07:17

Larni Barramul Yaluk and K'gari are just a couple of examples. But there are campaigns all across Australia looking at our place names and trying to reintroduce language to country.

Melinda Holden 07:29

We have places where we go past and without, without, like the feeling that it gives us. And then years later, you will find out oh, that's way one of the massacres were. And this is my generation, you know, coming on later. So it's very important to take the names of those massacres sites and rename them. I'm Melinda Holden, I'm a Taribelang woman on my father's side and also on my mother's side, I am a Warrgamay.

Tom Melville 08:07

Melinda's country is up around Bundaberg and Rockhampton in Queensland. She works for First Languages Australia and has identified sites around that area which she thinks are offensive and ought to be renamed.

Melinda Holden 08:19

Well here in Bundaberg we have a place called Paddy's Island. My family used to live on the fringe up at (missing word) every Sunday. All of our little households used to walk about five miles down to the river, which was Paddy's Island. And that was a place for us to sit down and meet as the whole group. And, you know, everybody have a good time and that, but there was always one other side of the fence that we didn't really go to. I understood years later that that was where the the actual massacres had taken place. So I think we have to acknowledge that that's where, where the massacres, and why they happened. And that, that some of those are documented round, you know, in certain publications. But unless you read the publication, you're not going to know about it. So it needs to be out there in front of people. It needs to be more open and honest, where these massacre sites are.

Tom Melville 09:29

The Leap near Mackay in Queensland is another place name Melinda reckons should be changed -- the story goes that an Aboriginal woman was forced to jump off a cliff with a child in her arms rather than face the guns of the Queensland Native Police who were pursuing her. Names like these are all over the place, and cause a lot of pain to first nations people who have to see them and use them. But Melinda says that most people don't know their history, so renaming a place is a chance to tell the truth about what happened.

Melinda Holden 09:57

It is important to lead this country back more towards the traditional owners. And I say that because it makes our people a lot more proud of who we are, and can relate ourselves to it. But for our non Indigenous people it's amazing when they do learn of the different place names and the history around that. They you find they are really amazed and sometimes shocked. But it's also telling the truth about those places.

Tom Melville 10:39

Rodney Carter agrees:

Rodney Carter 10:40

There's many not just bilingual multilingual societies around the world. And what we've had here is something so unique, potentially with over 300 languages spoken on a continent that have been treated as a curiosity and, and suppressed. Whereas I believe that's what makes us so unique. So why wouldn't you want to learn that promote it, protect it, and ensure that future generations can inherit it because strangely, everyone else in the world doe it, but we don't seem to be doing it here. So there's an opportunity, I think, for us to create this new place in the world that better for all of us.

Tom Melville 11:25

Rose Barrowcliffe says changing a name is a sign of respect.

Rose Barrowcliffe 11:28

Place names are important for the same reason that people's names are important. You know, it's a sign of respect. And particularly for indigenous people. It's not just a name, it represents so much more. So it's, it's a part of recognising indigenous sovereignty as well. And it's multifaceted in that. Depending on the place name, you know, some colonial place names are given to honor people who might not have really done the honorable thing by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And yet, we still use their names. Even though that name leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths. It's about respect, I think is the long and short of that.

Rachael McPhail 12:12

My name is Rachael MacPhail, I am a Gomeroi woman. I was raised out on Dharawal country and I live in Wiradjuri country now. So I've lived out here since 2018.

Tom Melville 12:23

Rachael is speaking to me from the small Riverina town of Coolamon, just west of Wagga Wagga. Wiradjuri country. Last year she tried to buy something online and, out of nowhere, decided to whack in "Wiradjuri Country" to see if Australia Post would work out where to send it. They did, and from there she started a campaign to get Australia post to officially adopt first nations country names in addresses. She was successful.

Rachael McPhail 12:47

My Instagram account started blowing out which was amazing, because you know, that obviously means that there's a lot of people following the campaign. But it also came with a lot of inbox messages from people asking me like multiple daily messages asking me to help them to find out the traditional place name of where they lived, or where they were trying to send their mail to.

Tom Melville 13:09

Rachael says the resources we have on Aboriginal place names aren't good enough.

Rachael McPhail 13:14

It really became apparent for me, I guess that there's a real knowledge gap in our resources in Australia, because, you know, the best thing that we kind of have at the moment is the AIATSIS map. And it's not, there's actually a disclaimer underneath it that you can read they and they acknowledge that it's not accurate. So it was produced by using the Tindale's map, which is you know, based on colonisers records, and like possibly, you know, small amounts of consultation with community or community representative groups. But there are quite a few communities that aren't actually represented on the map, or whose elders actually disagree with what the name shows on the map.

Tom Melville 13:59

Because the map is so incomplete, Rachael believes it's even more important to consult with elders.

Rachael McPhail 14:05

So because of that, it's yeah, it's become apparent that we really need that database to be created so that we I guess so that we have that accurate record of the traditional place names as per what the elders say that the truth is, but also to give the elders that opportunity to have a voice, because their truth has never been recorded before. So that's really important, as well as from the social justice perspective of things.

Tom Melville 14:33

For Melinda Holden, truth telling is a huge part of her campaign.

Melinda Holden 14:37

So that's why we need to get rid of those Australian names, because a lot of those places are named after people who have persisted in the in the massacres of our people. So it's important that we change that whole system and to be able to tell the truth as well about that country.

Tom Melville 15:01

Rose Barrowcliffe says an attitude of "leave the past in the past" impedes the healing process.

Rose Barrowcliffe 15:07

If someone walked into your family house and murdered your family, and then you know wanted to name your neighborhood after, after that person, you wouldn't accept that and your descendants wouldn't accept that. I think sometimes it's just easier possibly to hold on to, to the place names that people have grown up with. And if they've grown up not knowing the dark histories of those names, they might just want to bury their heads in the sand about it.

Amanda Kearney 15:37

To call a place name, because this is something that my indigenous teachers my Yanyuwa teachers have taught me they said to call the place name is a political act. It because to call it in an Indigenous sense for Yanyuwa to call it is to say you know it, you know, the inside story that brought it into existence. So a place name is a declaration of knowledge about something, the naming process, that's what language does is it goes through the translational effort and brings it into our human realm and makes it mean something to us.

Tom Melville 16:07

That's Amanda Kearney, an anthropologist from Flinders University in South Australia speaking to me from Melbourne -- Boon Wurrung Country. She's spent much of the last two decades working with Yanyuwa families in the gulf of carpentaria. Names, she tells me, are powerful things.

Amanda Kearney 16:23

So a place name is a very powerful indicator of meaning of attachment, who names places, also says something about power. And I think it's interesting that we always think about who names a place, I like to think about what names a place, because in an Indigenous knowledge system, place names are derived of your dreaming ancestors, they put those place names into country. So this is something that does not involve the human this is something that involves an ancestral presence of great substance and power that puts into place law. And that law contains its name. It's like peeling this onion, and you're sort of get these layers and layers of meaning that come with a place name. And in an Indigenous sense, those place names, as I say, are derived of law from the ancestors, in a Western sense. We do things like draw maps, and we therefore demarcate the world of possibility, we then put names into it. So then we've delimited, what it could be now or ever in the future. And then not long after place, naming comes some sort of declaration around ownership. So it's very powerfully shifted then into a sense of possession, and control. So there's multiple there's multiple ways to configure why we place name, what is the substance of a place name, and what's important about it. Yeah,

Tom Melville 17:50

She tells me about an atlas the Yanyuwa put together in the early 2000s called Forget About Flinders. When Flinders mapped Yanyuwa country up in what is now the coast of the northern territory he gave those places names, forgetting, or not ever considering, that these places already had names.

Amanda Kearney 18:08

In many respects, like when you look at this visual Atlas, and you look at Indigenous place names when they are mapped out visually for you, or when you map out the dreaming. It is absolutely magnificent. And it's mind blowing the depth of knowledge that jumps out of the page. And I actually think this should be a point of intrigue for most Australians, because we're not saying, you know, chuck out Matthew Flinders and erase the history, but just for a moment, can we just forget about Flinders. And remember that there was something else here. And there's something that continues irrespective of these other names.

Tom Melville 18:46

First Nations borders are often diffuse, so Rachael McPhail accepts that it might be difficult to nail down precisely where one country begins and ends in all cases.

Rachael McPhail 18:55

You know, there were many different areas all around where there's like, literally written accounts of different family groups or tribes coming together, for celebration for trade for economy, you know, lots of different reasons, not just, like contesting that land if you get what I mean. So, if we do get this project up and running, and as we're going around and consulting with communities, my hope is that we can really keep that positive focus on you know, that kind of conversation, because it may come down to a situation where one piece of land is known as two different names and that we might just have to be okay with that. What we're just trying to do is give the elders you know, that opportunity to record what they believe that that area is. So in that sense, there may be elders who have different names for that particular area.

Tom Melville 19:54

And attachment to place names goes two ways. And despite European names being quite recent, connections to them can be strong. Place names conjure up social memories, they make people feel like they belong somewhere and our identities get tied to them. It's why a name like Coon Island in Lake Macquarie, despite being overtly racist to an outsider, can still see more than half of respondents to a council survey vote to keep the name. The council overruled the community in this case and it's now called Pirrita Island, an Awabakal word for a type of oyster found in the area. There's also the fact that this history is uncomfortable, and some of us don't want to think about it. Amanda Kearney again.

Amanda Kearney 20:33

But I think part of the reason it triggers such a kind of such a visceral response in people is that it's a discomforting reality to think that whatever you know, when the place names you live with, and if they you know, it's the ancestors of your long standing pastoral family in a region, to try and imagine that that is built on a history of displacement, that there's something that sits underneath that that has been crushed or squashed or denied. That's a very discomforting reality for most people who feel quite separate from that past from that historical period of colonial violence and frontier violence. But I think the reality is, is that until that discomfort is perhaps dealt with, it's going to continue to be a real needle in the side because it the terms on which the nation has named all of these places is on dispossession and displacement.

Tom Melville 21:33

For Rose Barrowcliffe it's harder for First Nations people to ignore the symbolic violence of a place name.

Rose Barrowcliffe 21:38

Some people are more open to talking about those difficult histories than others. And I think the thing is, for a lot of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we don't really have a choice to not think about those histories. They're part of the histories of our family and, and what have impacted on our family and community for generations. But for non Indigenous people, it's easier to say, oh, you know, that's in the past. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it. Let's just move on. But the reality is, until you address things like that, then then you can't move on.

Tom Melville 22:12

Back on Dja Dja Wurrung Country, Rodney Carter is optimistic that changing these names is an opportunity for all of us to learn about our past and to connect with first nations people and history.

Rodney Carter 22:23

Look, there's many things integral integral to to culture and identity. What always comes up is the first statement around it language. Language is key to culture. And I only know best for here in Australia and central Victoria, we're screaming out as a society, climate change, wanting to connect to the natural world. We've got languages here that speak and sing to country. So if we learn that, we learn what that means we learn to feel it. I think we're resetting an ancient journey that began many, many 1000s of years ago here, and we're gonna let it continue.

Tom Melville 23:10

Rodney Carter there reckons we've got a great opportunity to learn a lot about our country's history.

Tom Melville 23:29

That's it for this episode of Voice of Real Australia. Thanks for listening. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. If you like the podcast please tell your friends and give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. It really helps. If you'd like to share your story, email voice at aust community media dot com dot a-u... that's voice at aust "a-u-s-t" community media dot com dot a-u. Our Facebook page is Facebook dot com slash voice of real Australia. Follow me on Twitter @-Tom-Melville-1-2-4 Voice of Real Australia is recorded in the studios of the Newcastle Herald on Awabakal Land, and in Canberra on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. It's produced by Laura Corrigan and me, your host, Tom Melville. Special thanks this week go to Annie Lewis. This is an ACM podcast.