​Incorporating a long past into a future for cherished places

By Editorial
Updated November 9 2017 - 10:44pm, first published 8:00pm

What the official history of Lake Wendouree may lack in veracity, it makes up for as great story of an epochal moment of change in Ballarat’s history. The nomadic Wadawurrung people were well aware of the value of the teaming wildlife at what was then a shallow reedy swamp. Scottish settler William Yuille, ever on the lookout for new pastures and resources to exploit, travelled up from the Barwon with that singular “new world” voracity and came upon what had also been called the 'Black Swamp' . So by turns it became known as 'Yuille's Swamp'.  So in an archetypal example of white settlement typifying the dispossession of the original owners, they first renamed with anglo-celtic familiarity what they wanted to grab from a strange land. But in one of those ironic twists of history the story about Yuille asking an aboriginal woman for its name and being told wendaaree, or go away, also resonates through history. Whether Urquhart’s surveying gave the name its official imprimatur in 1851 or word of mouth in the pre-gold era held sway but the name stuck. There is a hint of etymological justice that the name of Ballarat’s “jewel’ contains a hint of the reluctance with which the original owners greeted the Europeans.  

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