#Acacia #Wattle #WattleSeason #MaroondahDam #Maroondah #Healesville #Indigenous #Aboriginal #Etymology

When I visited Maroondah Dam on Friday I learned that despite the media coverage surrounding the proposed renaming of the Maroondah Hospital after the dead queen, ‘Maroondah’ is not a #Woiwurrung word.

In 1881 when the Maroondah Aqueduct was first used, a 77yo colonist named James Dawson campaigned to give the aqueduct, then named after the Watts River, an Aboriginal name. He wrote in a letter to ‘The Argus’, “May I suggest that the aborigines [sic] of Coranderrk should be appealed to, and a local name obtained from them and applied to the proposed reservoir…”

The Watts River is named for an assigned convict worker who managed Yering Station and drowned in the river in 1840. (The ‘Camperdown Chronicle’ reported Watts’s death as a suicide but the signage at the reservoir today suggests it was an accident during flooding.) Nearby Badger Creek is named after Watts’s bloody horse, which got stuck in the muddy creek one time and had to be winched out!

William Barak, then the #Wurundjeri ngurungaeta, was only too happy to point out that the river in Woiwurrung language was called Broong-ku-galk, meaning a rotten log, because there was so much dead timber on the riverbanks. (‘The Argus’ reported this using the spellings “Burngothalk” and “Pumburngalk”.)

Some kind of cultural wires were crossed, however: with the best of intentions, in 1881 or early 1882 Dawson went to Coranderrk where he met with Elders, one of whom told him that the location selected for the water catchment, including the neighbouring mountain, valley and stream, was called “Marroondah” (his spelling).

But they didn’t tell him what it meant or whose language it was: turns out it means “throwing” in Barababaraba (aka Parrapa), a language spoken further north by a people whose neighbours were the Wemba Wemba and Yorta Yorta.

According to historian Ian D Clark, Dawson’s informant at Coranderrk was either Barababaraba man John Terrici or Benjamin ‘Lanky’ Manton, a Wadi Wadi speaker from Swan Hill whose mother was Barababaraba. (One Kulin glossary lists “muruma” as the Wati-Wati word for ‘to throw’.)

So, how exactly do you pronounce #naarm anyway? Is it more like "are"/"arm", or "air"/"ham"? In addition, do people prefer to use "Narrm" or "Naarm"? Any advice would be much appreciated, more so if you're #BoonWurrung or #woiwurrung .

For context, one of my Year 6 students here in Nagasaki is really interested in English and foreign cultures. At his school, I normally give out handmade bookmarks to my Year 5 and Year 6 students if they can complete a stamp sheet (they earn stamps if they can demonstrate particular communication skills in English), and this student had earned a Naarm-themed bookmark (with "Melbourne" written on it). While it's obviously a small glimpse into an Aussie city for him, he was really surprised to learn that Melbourne has another name (which is the one I'm currently trying to use), and that "Melbourne" is a name that was given by the European settlers.

As a language teacher, I encourage the use of all available resources that a student has in order to acquire a language, and when it comes to teaching English in Japan, that also includes using and modifying the Katakana script. I'm obviously not an Indigenous Australian, and I do realise that I can be inconsistent in actually saying "Naarm" out loud, which is why I'm asking the question in the first place. That way, I can teach my students how to pronounce "Naarm" properly by using the correct Katakana.

Now that I have two followers, time for an #introduction

I'm a nutrition scientist and sports myotherapist based in #melbourne and the #macedonranges on #wurundjeri #woiwurrung country :firstnations:

My work is split between sports injury management, dietary assessments and #bikefitting.
I work primarily with endurance athletes, but I also have a keen interest in #publichealth and #healthpolicy

Outside of work, I'm also interested in,
#roadcycling
#environmentalscience
#cooking
#birdwatching

I'm a firm believer that Monte Carlos are better than Kingstons.