What’s in a placename?

HAVE you ever wondered why town names in regional Victoria are what they are, and why some of them have changed at different times throughout history?

Join Federation University’s Professor Ian Clark for a 45-minute, “pleasurable walk” through some of the place names in the local district – including Wendouree, Ballarat, Buninyong, Lal Lal, Yarrowee, and Ballan – as he provides observations about their meaning and significance, and what they reveal about our past.

The curious concept of ‘sequent occupance’ will be a major touchpoint during the talk, which Mr Clark explained was first articulated in 1929 by historical geographer Derwent Whittlesey as a way of describing and interpreting changes in “cultural landscapes”.

“This means that when you research a particular area, where there has been a succession of cultures, you would expect to see a mixture of place names from these cultures,” he said.

Mr Clark said there’s a key difference between how Australian Indigenous cultures and European settlers chose to name areas, and how frameworks within each group can teach us about those cultures.

“While some place names are descriptive, many are parts of important ancestral stories and often relate to the actions of ancestral heroes, or may refer to body parts,” he said.

“Place names are windows into the past, and reveal much about the societies that were responsible for layering them.”

Professor Clark is an Adjunct Professor at Monash University and Federation University. He holds a PhD from Monash University in Aboriginal historical geography and has been researching Victorian Aboriginal and settler colonial history since the early 1980s.

To hear the full story, Ballarat Place Names: Talking History takes place at the Eureka Centre on Thursday, 1 July at 5.30pm. There will be a 15-minute Q and A session following the talk. Entry is free.