Budawangs - changes of place names

[Chev]

Has anyone noticed or know any of the history of changes to named features in the Budawangs?

I have an old, but not that old, map that has completely different names for several prominent places.

For example it shows:

Mount Renwick for Mt Owen
Mount Roswaine for Mount Cole
Mount Fletcher for Donjon Mountain
Mount Pataird for Shrouded Gods
Mount Irambang for Mount Mooryan
The Sugar Loaf for Wirritin Mountain
Angels Falls for Crooked Falls

There are also some features with minor variations of name:

Bibbenluke Walls (Mountain)
Corang Hill (Peak)
Mount Tairn (Tarn)

The map is Natmap 1:100000 Ulludulla. I would have bought it early 1990s, but it is a 1984 reprint of a 1975 publication. Still, this seems pretty recent for these things to be in flux and earlier editions of the sketch map use the more familiar names.

Of course none of this is terribly important. Gee whiz someone decided to name a bunch of things after a different bunch of, presumably, old white blokes. But I have been curious about it for thirty years so I thought this would be a good place to put it out there.

Attachments

[Allchin09]

I can't quite recall the story but I believe the names on this map were from bushwalkers (CMW?) who didn't know the names that previously applied to the features, so gave new ones. Information was later supplied by 'Major' James Henry Sturgiss who lived in the area. The story is in his biography, "The man from the misty mountains" https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/catalog/725753. I don't have his book on hand to refer to unfortunately.

[Chev]

Thanks for the reply. I haven't seen that Sturgiss biography. I have read Pigeon House and Beyond but don't have it to revisit. I think it does mention some of the names given by Sturgiss - Shrouded Gods especially - but I can't remember if it goes into the alternative names. I think there was something about Angels falls - Crooked Falls. These would be good sources to go back to.

Last edited by Chev on Tue 10 Sep, 2024 6:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[bernieq]

Pigeon House & Beyond has a dictionary of place names but not much mention of alternatives. It does say that 'the Budawang Committee made a submission to the Geographical Names Board in 1967 on the nomenclature of many places, and provided historical information. The Board gazetted the majority of the names.'

In another quote from PH&B, by Gorden McKern, who researched early surveyors' field books, letters etc 'most of the surveys by Meehan, Harper, Hoddle, and Florence were carried out to search for good agricultural land, to fix the course of rivers, or mark the boundaries of grants. As a result, they were not very interested in mountain and ravine country .... I have not been able to find one instance of any individual claiming to have named any feature' (except Hoddles Castle Hill & Cook naming Pigeon House).

I've seen many of the names you list in various trip reports in old editions of The Bushwalker. I imagine those early bushwalkers gave names to features that were superseded/ignored by the Geographical Names Board. If your map is pre-1967 then many of the official names must not yet have been gazetted.

[bernieq]

BTW, most of those names appear on Ken Angel's 1952 sketch map (although Shrouded Gods is unnamed).

[Chev]

Thanks for the info. I like the point about early surveys focussing on agricultural potential and water supply not peaks. I'm still surprised place names here were still being worked out as late as the 70s. (Or maybe they simply erred in using an old list for this map.)

I'll have to get myself to the National Library to look at some of those Budawangs Committee sources sometime.