Even more names along the line

I got a little swept up in looking up the place names for all the stations along the smaller lines in Gippsland. I admit it, it’s been a passion for me.

First there was the South Gippsland line (we’ve done the main Gippsland line before) and then there was the Koo Wee Rup to Strzelecki line and then there were the branch lines running off the Gippsland line. Now I’ll backtrack a little, at least geographically, and list the Nyora to Wonthaggi stations,

This was the first major branch line from the South Gippsland line, built in 1910 and extended a little to the East Area Mine in 1917.

Nyora became a junction station when this line was built. Coal trains would come up from Korumburra, labouring through the hills, then would be joined into longer trains at Nyora for the downhill and then flat run the Melbourne. I don’t think the same happened when the Nyora-State Coal Mine line was opened in 1910, though there was a fair climb up to and down from Anderson.

Woodleigh might sound like a descriptive name and perhaps it was, but Blake, my main authority on all this, says it was the name of a North Queensland cattle run and that Albert and Isaac De Lany (or Delany) used it for their run here. I can’t find any local record of this. De Lany used the ‘dummying’ process the select four blocks of land in what became Woodleigh, but that was hardly a ‘run’. That Woodleigh Station in Queensland is up on the Atherton Tablelands, behind Cairns, and is still going strong, taking visitors and tourists but still an operating station.

Woodleigh was called Hunter for the first few years of the line’s operation, which might have been a local person’s name, but that was not usual in naming railway stations. There is another Hunter up Bendigo way and the postal folk hated duplicated names, obviously enough. The station was closed in 1978 but Woodleigh is still here, if only just.

Kernot was named after M.E. Kernot, a civil engineer who was the chief engineer for construction for the Victorian Railways for many years.

Almurta is said by Blake to mean “sweet” or “good”. I can’t find any other reference. Wikipedia told me it did not get a Post Office until 1914 so the railway (1910) might have opened things up. I just don’t know,

Glen Forbes is almost certainly named for a local landholder, D. McKenzie, whose family name was Forbes. If McKenzie was a woman that would make sense, I suppose, Perhaps, Maybe. There was a strong clan of McKenzies around Forbes in NSW so perhaps our D. McKenzie might have been one of them. Again perhaps. Maybe. They were Scots from the Isle of Skye so the ‘Glen” would make sense.

It is surprising, at least to me, that so many place names in Gippsland were brought in by people who had travelled from other states and brought names from those place to here. There was more mobility than one might think.

Woolamai’s name is a Sydney-area (Eora) Aboriginal name for the Snapper, or Schnapper, fish. When George Bass saw Cape Woolamai (or Wollemi) from the east, as he tried to run in behind it for shelter in his little boat “tom Thumb”, he thought it resembled the head of type of fish.

This was in 1798 and his discovery of the Eastern Passage was of huge and continuing significance. In some ways it could be said that this led to the discovery of Bass Strait with all that that meant.

Anderson was named after Samuel Anderson, one of the real heroes among our pioneers and yet a man largely forgotten. He came to the Bass River from Van Diemen’s Land in 1837, established orchards and vegetable gardens and built a home. He would take out a pastoral licence as he was a horticulturalist, and when the land was eventually broken up for selection he was unable to claim the pastoralist’s pre-emptive right. He was not well-treated.

From the Anderson railway station site you can look over the flat land around the mouth of the Bass River and see where he settled at almost the same time as the Hentys and Batman in their respective spots. He explored the area down toward Tarwin, found coal, as had Hovell, and ‘discovered’ the Inlet that bears his name.

Kilcunda (this one you might like to think about) is claimed by Blake to mean “exclamation”. Perhaps so. I cannot lead an argument against that, but I can’t see the reason behind it, either. The line crossed the Bourne Creek on a trestle bridge that is still there and is now protected and classified.

Dalyston was named for P.J. Daly, a rather prominent landowner in the area. The name was officially recognised in 1912, so perhaps the station was built a little time after the line went through, not uncommon.

Wonthaggi was an artificial place created to serve the State Coal Mine, or what was for a time the Powlett River coalfield. It is said to mean “pull along” in an aboriginal language if that is true it might well refer to purpose of the mine and settlement – to give Victoria an independent black coal source to power its railway locomotives. It make sense.

Then there were the little branches and spurs brought about by the black coal mining at Korumburra. These built during the 1890s and they did not survive long when the Wonthaggi field was developed as the State Coal Mine. It was cheaper to bring the coal from Wonthaggi, and the government could control the price and the supply, but the Korumburra coalfields were very important for two decades.

Coal Creek, a short, steep drop from Korumburra, does not need its name explained. This spur was built in 1892.

The next little branch line (I’m not sure when a ‘spur” is reclassified as a branch line) was the line to Outtrim and Jumbunna, built to Jumbunna in 1895 and extended to Outtrim in 1896.

Jumbunna is only about five miles from Korumburra – is that a branch line? The name is Aboriginal and has to do with meeting, or a conference, or possibly even a negotiation. We don’t know from language the white man took this name, and there very rarely, if ever, any indigenous people in the Korumburra area.

That line went on to Outtrim, which was very clearly and definitely named after Alfred Richard Outtrim, Victorian Minister for Mines in 1892-93. The first coal mines in Outtrim were opened in those years and the Outtrim Coal Mining Company was using the name before the was built.

Another ‘black coal line’ was the Strzelecki Siding line built in 1894 and was only a couple of miles long, though it served at least three mines.

Hopefully I will finish with my passion for names next week and then move onto another passion.