“K’gari is one of those places that is incredibly well known, not just nationally but internationally,” says Dr Rose Barrowcliffe, a postdoctoral research fellow and Butchulla woman.
“We have a huge amount of international visitors that come to see K’gari every year. So, what we are doing when we are respecting Indigenous place names, is we are respecting Indigenous culture.”
Lake McKenzie on K’gari.
And this, to me, is the key triumph of the reinstatement of K’gari. Because if Australians, those of us born here and who have lived here our entire lives, are so quick to erase Indigenous history – I grew up just near Hervey Bay, but had never even heard words like K’gari or Butchulla until a few years ago – then consider how international visitors would not even be aware of it.
Name changes like this are vital for the way we as Australians see our country, but also the way the rest of the world sees us. The names of our premier international tourism destinations are the first impressions visitors have of Australia, the first thing they think about.
How much more appropriate and important is it that that impression is K’gari, and not Fraser Island?
I suppose I can understand why some of the more conservative types might push back against this. Names imply ownership. They might feel that they’re losing something. But really, Australia gains hugely from this. We gain 20,000 years of history. We gain stories and culture. And maybe even a step towards reconciliation.
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This isn’t the first time this has happened. Famously, the rock that for tens of thousands of years had been Uluru was, for just 120 years, known as Ayers Rock. Its reversion has been a worldwide success, to the point now that it’s hard to believe white colonists were ever brazen enough to give it their own moniker, to bestow upon something so stunning and so spiritual the name of a guy who was forced to resign as Chief Minister of South Australia five times in 10 years.
Surely the more natural attractions in Australia that can revert to their original names, the better. It’s not like white settlers gave them good names, anyway. How much better is Colomatta than the Blue Mountains? Or Yurong than Mrs Macquarie’s Point? Or Gariwerd than the Grampians? Or Julaymba than the Daintree?
Now is the perfect time, too, for righting historic wrongs. The Sydney Morning Herald is wrestling with its own history, and last week formally apologised for its support of the stockmen who massacred 28 Kamilaroi people at Myall Creek Station in 1838. This year all Australians have the chance to finally enshrine an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament in our Constitution.
The opportunity to reinstate the original names of the places we so proudly show off to the outside world is one we should embrace wholeheartedly. This is our history. All of it.