Aboriginal Place Names

Written By Sandy Boyce on July 8, 2021

Do you know what Aboriginal land you’re on today?

No matter where you are in Australia — make sure you know that it’s on Aboriginal land … and what Aboriginal land.

For more information on Aboriginal geography, go to the AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australia.

This NAIDOC Week, Channel 10 is reporting the weather using the traditional place names for Australia’s major centres: Meanjin (Brisbane), Naarm (Melbourne), Mparntwe (Alice Springs), Boorloo (Perth). Viewers have responded positively to seeing the familiar map overlaid with names that will to most of us be pretty unfamiliar. News presenter Narelda Jacobs called it “one of the things that I’m most proud of in my entire career here at Channel 10”.
Also this week, Australia Post announced new packaging for letters and parcels that will include a line for the traditional place name. The change comes in response to a community campaign led by Gomeroi woman Rachael McPhail.

For these words to trip off the tongue – to trip off the pen, as we address an envelope – would be a small but concrete step towards drawing submerged layers of our history back into warm, living circulation.