h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Me too, it arouses curiosity doesn't it?

Websailor

It'll be 13 hours soon Whilst I do overlap with you lot in the mornings, I can't get up early enough at the moment to make the most of it

Sorry Ivan to go off topic

fb

Never mind going off-topic; I wasn't even here. Good morning everyone... If it isn't morning where you are, print this off, cut out the words 'good morning' and look at them at an appropriate moment.

I'm sorry to have missed the nasal coffee-dispensing moment. That made me laugh like a drain. As it happens, I know a story about the naming of Mount Buggery - I'm not sure if it's true, but I do like the tale of two early explorers having a fight about which way to go next. One shouted at the other, 'Do what you want. I'm going this way. You can go to buggery!'

Mount Remarkable, on the other hand, has a certain stiff-upper-lip British understatement aspect to it. It's not nearly as intriguing.

I want a house, on Mount Buggery, Just so I can have the postal address that would give me.

Puts me in mind of BLM (Bureau of Land Management) map revisionism having to do with 1849 California Gold rush, for example, renaming "Misery Bar" (a run of the mill period gold camp only a few miles downstream from one of the richest) "Missouri Bar" (after the state) on account of a puerile compulsion to sanitize the record.

Ridiculous. And what a shame.

Agreed. Changing place names for stupid reasons like that is nothing less than rewriting history. That sort of thing makes me cross...

Incidentally, one of the earliest European landing-sites in South Australia was known at the time as Port Misery. It was, in fact, a dismal swamp... The area's now been drained and reclaimed and relabelled as West Lakes and turned into a slightly snobby housing estate. But the rest of us know the truth.

Hey.

There's a Scottish castle near me called Castle Gloom, with two streams running past it called the Burn of Sorrow and the Burn of Care. Beautiful place, too. Although, probably not a patch on Mount Buggery.

Nice to know that at least some place in the world they have a little respect for tradition as remembrance of the people who gave places their names.

Snaily! Nice to see you. Not that I've been around all that much lately, but I have missed you.

Now, why Scotland? There's probably a blog post I know, but I've lost track of everyone's blogs, even my own. Can I be lazy and ask for a link?

On the subject of 'tradition' - we have an increasing number of places here that have two official names - the European name, and the Indigenous name. Ayers Rock/Uluru; the Grampians/Gariwerd; there are others that escape me right now. I think it's only right to keep the 'original' names. But some of them are a bit odd. Victoria Square, in the very centre of Adelaide (complete with bronze statue of the old trout in question) is also officially called Tarndanyangga. The street signs are huge. (There was once a proposal to dual-name the city itself - Adelaide/Tandanya. That hasn't caught on.

A lot of places are dual-named here: English first, then Maori. Except Aoraki Mount Cook which is the other way round for some reason.

NZ is a lot more advanced than Australia when it comes to practical reconciliation. I'm not sure why we're so slow... I mean, obviously the last PM sent things backwards, but I don't understand why we weren't more evolved even before he got his grubby mitts on the place.

I think Waitangi has a lot to do with it. After all, the Europeans actually signed something with the Maori in NZ.

It's interesting to consider the difference in attitudes that came about within 60 years. 1788 - Europeans simply occupy a bit of Australia. 1840 - Europeans sign a treaty with the inhabitants of NZ. I wonder if there would have been a treaty here if European settlement had been simultaneous in the two countries...

I'm not sure that the two countries' existing occupants would ever have been treated in the same way.

Whilst there are similarities between Australian Aboriginals and Maoris (no written records, no metal etc); there are also basic differences. I think the main one was that Europeans had come into contact with Polynesians already and knew that they would trade and 'cooperate', before they arrived in NZ.

I have to wonder if the other main difference was that Australia was being settled as a penal colony, which was never the case in NZ?

I suspect it was that the Maori had a society which the British could recognise as such, while Aboriginal society was simply so completely alien that it wasn't actually noticed or understood. I'm thinking of that whole 'terra nullius' rubbish...

Yup. I agree... the Brits didn't understand Aboriginal society, so it was dismissed. And so were they.

As a result, it's only in the last few decades that there's been any serious attempt by anyone to bridge the divide. It's going to take decades yet before we get to the point NZ is at now.

California, we've got a colorful mix of Native American, Spanish and English place names with a miscellany of other kinds. Dual names are unusual, but occasionally place names are rendered from one language to another.

Examples from near home, Mt. Baldy (at over 10,000 ft.) faces Mt. San Jacinto (at almost 9000 ft., sometimes familiarly referred to as Mt. St.
Jack) across the San Gorgonio pass, which leads into the Coachella Valley (an English language corruption of "Valle Conchilla", originally a reference to the many sea shells found in the soil), where one of the more famous geological features is "Tahquitz Canyon", (Cahuilla language, named after a legendary ugly dwarf) and there is a local recreational "Lake Cahuilla", named after the local Native American tribe.