Aboriginal House Names and Settler Australian Identity

During his time as a federal politician and prime minister, Alfred Deakin divided his time between his city residence in Toorak and his holiday retreat at Point Lonsdale. His family had acquired several acres of land on the Bellarine peninsula in 1904 where they had built a federation bungalow called ‘Ballara’. The word is probably derived from the Wathawurung word balla for ‘elbow’, thus ‘reclining on elbow’ or ‘resting place’.1 The name has further significance as another form of ‘Ballarat,’ which was the electorate Deakin represented in federal parliament.2 While at Ballara, Deakin was a keen gardener. John Rickard explains that when toiling on summer evenings his aim was ‘to reduce the complex wilderness of teatree to a park-like, though still native prospect, with paths and occasional glades’.3 This juxtaposition of a native garden and a native name indicates a belief that Aboriginal names were Australian names that suited the natural environment and native flora of Australia. Deakin’s son-in-law, Herbert Brookes, subsequently bought an adjacent block at Point Lonsdale, which he named ‘Arilpa’ (meaning ‘moon’).4 The Deakins and Brookes also lived next door to each other in Melbourne where, in contrast, the names of their residences were ‘Llarnarth’ and ‘Winwick’ respectively. It is significant that their city houses in the affluent suburb of Toorak had settler names, while their rustic, coastal, holiday retreats at Point Lonsdale had indigenous names.5 This article examines the peculiar phenomenon of the Aboriginal house name. Its chief source of evidence is the wide variety of advice books which, throughout the twentieth century, encouraged Australians to give their house or boat an ‘Aboriginal’ name. It traces the development of a national (or settler) identity, which appropriated and adapted certain indigenous motifs for mainstream consumption, and argues that Aboriginal house names are a prime example of what has been termed the ‘indigenisation’ of Australian settler identity. In recent historiography, the extent to which Aboriginal culture and heritage has been employed to confer Australian national identity has often been considered. David Carter argues that ‘[t]he land has been a source of European images of distinctive Australian identity since the nineteenth century.’6 While Carter argues that the exotic nature of Australia’s indigenous flora and fauna is an obvious example of this, he goes on to argue ‘the landscapes that work with the full power of nationing are increasingly Aboriginal landscapes.’7 A similar view has been taken by Tom Griffiths, who argues in Hunters and Collectors that: