Interesting. Another take on it from Gillespie, LL 1984, Aborigines
of the Canberra region, L.L. Gillespie, Campbell, A.C.T.
'Frederic Slater tells an interesting story of how the
name Jerrabomberra came to be used and its supposed meaning. When
Surveyor Dixon was working in the vicinity of Canberra he came
upon a group of Aborigines, who fled when they saw him, leaving
behind a shy, trembling, little boy. Dixon bade his Aboriginal
assistant from Campbelltown to catch the boy and ask him the name
of the place. The little fellow uttered some words which the
assistant translated as "Afraid boy is of lightning, no tell me".
The boy's words sounded like "Jerrabonberra" and that is what
Dixon recorded in his notebook. It has since been altered to
Jerrabomberra. I have reason to believe that Dixon's assistant
was wrong in his translation — the boy was probably giving his own
name as the list of Aborigines, to whom blankets were issued at
Oueanbeyan about twenty years later, included the name
"Jerrabonderra"' (p. 28).
And for more, regarding the word rather than its meaning: Koch, HJ
2009, 'The methodology of reconstructing Indigenous placenames:
Australian Capital Territory and south-eastern New South Wales', in
LA Hercus & HJ Koch (eds), Aboriginal placenames: naming and
re-naming the Australian landscape, ANU E Press, Canberra,
<http://epress.anu.edu.au/placenames_citation.html>, pp.
125-6:
'...for the placename ‘Jerrabomberra’, which was spelled
‘Jerrabombera’ on Sir Thomas Mitchell’s 1934 map of NSW
(Fitzhardinge 1975: Illustration 1 opp. Aboriginal placenames 126
p. 16), we have from Lhotsky’s journal of the same year
“Giribombery (alias Giridibombera)” as the name of Mr Palmer’s
farm (Lhotsky 1979: 71). A decade later G. A. Robinson spelled it
‘Jerry Bunbery’ (Robinson 1998: 203). I would take the longer form
(and the forms ending in a) to be intended as the proper name,
with a pronunciation probably *Jeridibanbera'.
It reminds me of when I used to live in PNG. People used to say that
you'd asked a local the name of a place, and they'd reply. When you
got a back-translation, you found out that it meant 'piss off
whitie', or similar!
Not much to do with birding, tho! - David
On 20/11/2010 5:56 PM, martin butterfield wrote:
While Googling for Jerrabomberra I came across this
entry (in a Spackman Real Estate page for the suburb not the
wetlands). "Jerrabomberra is derived from the
local Aboriginal place name meaning ‘boy frightened by storm’."
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