The Mountain's Names
40,000 or so years ago the first people arrived in Tasmania on foot, having migrated across the land bridge that was then present in what is now Bass Strait. These people were the ancestors of today’s Tasmanian Aboriginal community.
When European explorers and then settlers arrived in Tasmania 38,800 (or so) years later they encountered the descendants of the first Tasmanians. The impact of this meeting was devastating for the indigenous people and resulted in the loss of lives, knowledge and culture. We know that this ancient culture was both rich and deep and that the people of Tasmania would have had many names for the Mountain they knew so well. Of these, only five have been recorded by historical sources: ‘burnangye’, ‘gurnangye’, ‘gonunye’, ‘unghanyahletta’ and ‘pooranetteré’. These five sounds, filtered through European ears and translated into European text, are all that was left.
Colonial attitudes might have extended to asking what indigenous people called a thing but they didn’t typically stretch to using those names. To European minds, explorers had the right to name land features in the areas they ‘discovered’: you get there 'first' and make the map, you choose the names. Back then voyages of discovery were long, arduous and dangerous. It took years for results to filter back to Europe and sometimes several exploration parties turned up one after the other, each making their own maps and each choosing their own names. So it is that explorers William Bligh (1792), Bruny D’Entrecasteaux (1792) and John Hayes (1793) all visited southern Tasmania – then known as Van Diemen’s Land - each making a map and naming the Mountain. In a twist of fate, Bligh’s choice of Table Mountain won out, thanks to a young Midshipman called Matthew Flinders who sailed with him. Flinders would go on to circumnavigate Tasmania in 1798, producing what then became the official map of Van Diemen’s Land on which he dutifully recorded Bligh's name for the Mountain.
So it was that Table Mountain was used during the first years of the Van Diemen’s Land colony. In 1821 then-Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited Hobart from Sydney, for a second time. Transcripts from his journal record the following entry on April 29:
The greater part of the Table Mountain, alias Mount Wellington, was this morning Covered with Snow which fell this morning in great Quantities.
Macquarie was not shy of naming a thing and this entry seems odd in that he appears to be reporting rather than officially making a name change. Somewhere along the line, the young colony had decided to rename the Mountain in honour of the Duke of Wellington who was, at that time, a hero of the British Empire following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is unclear if there was any official process surrounding this change which just appears to filter into the record. Classified advertisements in The Hobart Town Gazette were still referring to Table Mountain in May 1822 and it is not until August of that year that the newspaper started using the name Mount Wellington. It was another decade again before map-makers seemed confident of the switch.
If you want to change the name of a Tasmanian mountain today, you have to follow a long process laid out in State Law known as gazetting. In 2013 this process was used to alter the Mountain’s name again, this time to finally recognise its First Nations connection through the dual name kunanyi/Mount Wellington. The word kunanyi is in palawa kani, the language of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, reclaimed from the whispers of the past.
When European explorers and then settlers arrived in Tasmania 38,800 (or so) years later they encountered the descendants of the first Tasmanians. The impact of this meeting was devastating for the indigenous people and resulted in the loss of lives, knowledge and culture. We know that this ancient culture was both rich and deep and that the people of Tasmania would have had many names for the Mountain they knew so well. Of these, only five have been recorded by historical sources: ‘burnangye’, ‘gurnangye’, ‘gonunye’, ‘unghanyahletta’ and ‘pooranetteré’. These five sounds, filtered through European ears and translated into European text, are all that was left.
Colonial attitudes might have extended to asking what indigenous people called a thing but they didn’t typically stretch to using those names. To European minds, explorers had the right to name land features in the areas they ‘discovered’: you get there 'first' and make the map, you choose the names. Back then voyages of discovery were long, arduous and dangerous. It took years for results to filter back to Europe and sometimes several exploration parties turned up one after the other, each making their own maps and each choosing their own names. So it is that explorers William Bligh (1792), Bruny D’Entrecasteaux (1792) and John Hayes (1793) all visited southern Tasmania – then known as Van Diemen’s Land - each making a map and naming the Mountain. In a twist of fate, Bligh’s choice of Table Mountain won out, thanks to a young Midshipman called Matthew Flinders who sailed with him. Flinders would go on to circumnavigate Tasmania in 1798, producing what then became the official map of Van Diemen’s Land on which he dutifully recorded Bligh's name for the Mountain.
So it was that Table Mountain was used during the first years of the Van Diemen’s Land colony. In 1821 then-Governor Lachlan Macquarie visited Hobart from Sydney, for a second time. Transcripts from his journal record the following entry on April 29:
The greater part of the Table Mountain, alias Mount Wellington, was this morning Covered with Snow which fell this morning in great Quantities.
Macquarie was not shy of naming a thing and this entry seems odd in that he appears to be reporting rather than officially making a name change. Somewhere along the line, the young colony had decided to rename the Mountain in honour of the Duke of Wellington who was, at that time, a hero of the British Empire following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. It is unclear if there was any official process surrounding this change which just appears to filter into the record. Classified advertisements in The Hobart Town Gazette were still referring to Table Mountain in May 1822 and it is not until August of that year that the newspaper started using the name Mount Wellington. It was another decade again before map-makers seemed confident of the switch.
If you want to change the name of a Tasmanian mountain today, you have to follow a long process laid out in State Law known as gazetting. In 2013 this process was used to alter the Mountain’s name again, this time to finally recognise its First Nations connection through the dual name kunanyi/Mount Wellington. The word kunanyi is in palawa kani, the language of the Tasmanian Aboriginals, reclaimed from the whispers of the past.
