At the Constant Recurrence of Inappropriate Names
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M It has frequently been a matter of deep regret - we had almost said disgust - at the constant recurrence of inappropriate names given to new villages or towns in the various colonies of Australia… We submit that in naming a new locality reference should be made to some great feature or peculiarity in the same, and in most cases, not all certainly, the Native Names especially of South Australia, will be found euphonious, at any rate more expressive than those adopted by the settlers. (Border Watch, 10 January 1862) Maaoope - The Boandik people had a word mooeyup meaning ‘edible root’, while the Penola historian, Peter Rymill, says that: One local opinion has it that ‘Maa-ooup’, as it was originally pronounced, was derived from the call of the bullfrog. However, this amphibian (Limnodynastes dumerilii) utters a single, short note, sounding like the ‘bonk’ of a flat banjo string, to which its mate will sometimes reply ‘bonk-bonk’. Another opinion, originating from the Dickson family, is that ‘Maaoupe’ [sic] is evocative of the cry of the bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus); a deep, resonant, two-syllable booming, likened to the bellowing of a bull (as its generic name, Bo[s] taurus, suggests). Incidentally, it is likely that the haunting call of this bird gave rise to the widespread myth of the fabulous bunyip. Dr James Dickson is acknowledged as being the pioneer of Maaoupe [sic] Station, 9 miles (15km) north- west of Penola in 1846. Remembered as a north-countryman, he was probably born into a medical family near Romaldkirk, Yorkshire, in 1809. However, when he graduated with a medical MA from King’s College, Aberdeen in March 1833 he gave his address as nearby Bervie (Inverbervie). Sailing shortly afterwards from London in the 339 ton barque Ann on 1 May 1833, he arrived in Hobart on 28 October and Sydney on 13 November 1833… Dickson applied for an occupation license at Maaoupe on 15 June 1846, and arrived with 700 head of cattle on 20 July. They were probably under the supervision of his first manager, George Gladstone… As the frontier decade of the 1840s drew to a close, Dickson arranged for a private survey that would ensure secure freehold title to his homestead on ‘Muskitto Plains’, which was ‘situated at Dixon’s Station and about 9½ miles North West from Cameron’s Public House’… On 11 February 1853, and probably in Adelaide, [his wife] Eleanor gave birth to a son, George Logue Dickson who, later in life, claimed to be the first white baby to have been brought overland to the South East. It was to such an enterprise that the Scottish poet, William Ogilvie, arrived as a young overseer, and wrote home to his mother on 3 December 1893: Our shearing has got on grandly this last week it having been fine every day. We have now shorn about 20,000 sheep and have another 16,000 to do yet… I am afraid when the English buyers put their hands into our bales in London they will draw them out again pretty quick as the thistles are like bayonet points right through the wool. A jackeroo who followed Ogilvie recalled ‘I slept in the room he had. He scribbled his thoughts on the walls, and all around the room as far as he could reach were verses for Fair Girls and Gray Horses, I think they were.’ One of these verses would have been: Fair Girls and Gray Horses! A toast for you Who never went wide of a fence for a kiss, While horses are horses and eyes are blue There is never a toast in the world like this! Another of his poems, The Filling of the Swamps, first published in The Border Watch on 31 May 1893, is evocative of Maaoupe and captures the exuberant joy felt in autumn at the break of the season: Hurrah for the red-gums standing Hurrah for the shade they fling So high on the range above! For the curve of the cygnet’s splendour, Hurrah for the she-oaks bending The sheen of the black duck’s wing! So low to the wave they love! Hurrah for the clouds and the glorious rain Hurrah for the reed-beds slender! The water is out in the swamps again! The 1880s opened with the lonely death of Dr James Dickson, by then an invalid aged 71, in the thermal baths at Lake House, Ohinemutu (Rotorua), New Zealand on 29 December 1880… Early in the new century, on 9 April 1904, George announced his intention of placing up to 8,000 acres of Maaoupe Estate on the market. The land lay on the eastern side of the property, and the agent declared that ‘a large portion of it was of the same nature and equal to the [nearby] Coonawarra fruit land’ and that ‘not an acre was not plentifully cropped by Scotch Thistles which, like Scotchmen, knew good land when they saw it.’ On 14 December 1935, Maaoupe Station was put up for sale by auction. Divided into 35 lots, it was described as ‘magnificent grazing country growing clean, bright wool and excellent export lambs.’ By this time it comprised only 10,933 acres, which was less than a third the size it had been in its heyday, considerable areas having been sold over the years, and only about 9,000 sheep were being shorn, compared with over 50,000 in the 1880s. Much of the station did not sell at this auction, and the remainder was subsequently acquired in 1947 by the government for soldier settlement blocks after World War II. The final clearing sale, attended by 1,500 people, was held on 21 January 1948, by which time Maaoupe had been held by three generations of the one family for 102 years. The Maaoope School, in the Hundred of Killanoola, 24 km North-West of Penola, opened in 1951 and closed in 1957. The Advertiser, 29 November 1937, says that ‘selected by Dr Dickson 96 years ago, this pastoral landmark has remained a family possession, its quaint old homestead a striking illustration of the architecture of the pioneers… A keen lover of animals and birds, [George L. Dickson], was a benefactor to those in genuine financial distress and sickness…’ (See Killanoola, Hundred of) Mabel Creek - This school opened in 1964 and closed in 1972. Macaw Creek - A school south of Rhynie opened in 1860 by William Gains and closed in 1870. Probably, it was named by early settlers who mistook the kookaburra for the ‘old-world’ macaw. In 1856, a public meeting was held to determine the most eligible site for a Wesleyan Chapel when it was ‘resolved that Mr W. Giles, manager of the SA Company, should be asked for the gift… of ground in a central situation… With this request he most cheerfully complied…’ Macclesfield - In 1846, Mr Francis Dutton said the town was within the boundaries of a special survey taken out by Messrs George, Robert and Samuel Davenport, whose father was an agent of the Earl of Macclesfield. (See Battunga & Beaumont) This explanation has been accepted for decades, but Samuel Lewis casts some doubt on the accepted nomenclature: ‘…The mastership of the forest of Macclesfield [has] long been hereditary in the family of Davenport and are now [1831] held by Davies Davenport…’ who was related to the ‘South Australian’ Davenport family. The name translates as ‘matchless, peerless field’, while other sources say that, in 1183, it was recorded as maklesfeld - ‘open land in the Mackley forest’. The form of the township was drawn up by the surveyors Burslem and Nixon in 1841. (See Burslem Hill) In an essay in The Lasting Hills, Ms Sumerling says that the Three Brothers and Green Hills Special Surveys: Led to the licensing of its first hotel, (originally the Goat’s Head Inn, which became the Macclesfield Arms in the early 1840s and then the Davenport Arms in 1846), [which] had no competition until the licensing of the township’s second hotel in 1855. However, despite the smallness of the town’s current population, they are both still trading. [See Three Brothers] Macclesfield Post Office was opened by James Hackett in 1848, the laying of the foundation stone of a school reported on 9 November 1855 and, in respect of religious services, in 1857 a newspaper correspondent reported that ‘four places of worship have been built in this township and instances the fact of a flourishing existence of the voluntary principle’: Samuel Davenport’s home at Macclesfield I am somewhat surprised at this statement… The Congregationalists have (but it was very tardy in progress) completed a neat and substantial chapel and a small church has been built by the Episcopalians. The Wesleyans have recently laid the foundation stone for a chapel and the Roman Catholics assemble for worship in a slab tenement… Photographs are in the Chronicle, 12 March 1931, page 36, 23 July 1931, page 33, 6 and 27 February 1936, pages 32 and 32. The Hundred of Macclesfield, County of Hindmarsh, was proclaimed on 29 October 1846. MacDonald Hill - A railway crossing near Radium Hill, (See Radium Hill) MacDonald Park - In the Hundred of Munno Para, created by MacDonald Reid Pty Ltd in 1964. MacDonnell - The map of South Australia is, literally, plastered with the surname of Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell, Governor of South Australia from 1855-1862. A local opinion was that ‘he was a lad of some note in his young days, as the leader of everything that was fashionable about town’: He is decidedly a clever man; we must hope he is not too clever to be agreeable… There is a homely adage which says - as you make your bed so must you sleep upon it - Sir Richard MacDonnell might have won, if he had chosen, the esteem and confidence of the people of the colony.