Indigenous name slated for new Sydney metro station

A new metro station in Sydney’s CBD is set to be named after the local Indigenous people, putting an end to a protracted debate about what the stop should be called.

Pitt Street station, near Town Hall, is expected to be called Gadigal Railway Station, in honour of the original Indigenous people, and would become the first public transport station in Sydney to be explicitly named after its traditional owners.

The new metro station at Pitt Street in Sydney’s CBD is set to be called Gadigal, pending final approval from Customer Service Minister Jihad Dib.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

A spokesperson for Transport Minister Jo Haylen’s office said the name was “still going through the Geographical Name Board process”.

Final approval for the name lies with Customer Service Minister Jihad Dib, say well-placed government sources who are not authorised to speak publicly. Dib is responsible for the Geographic Name Board that approves names for the state’s roads, suburbs and stations. The government will have to announce the name in a parliamentary gazette.

Approval would officially shut down a debate that began two years ago.

The board first announced plans to name the station Gadigal in October 2021, following a suggestion from the Metropolitan Aboriginal Land Council. The proposal was signed off by then-Liberal transport minister Andrew Constance, and a public submission period attracted feedback from 123 people, with 72 for and 51 against.

Former transport minister David Elliott intervened in the process to propose naming the station after Captain Reginald Saunders.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

But that process was thrown into disarray when the now former MP David Elliott moved into the transport and veterans’ affairs ministry in December 2021, and proposed an alternative name for the station. Elliott suggested it honour Captain Reginald Saunders, the first Indigenous Australian to be commissioned as an army officer.

“In short, he was a hero,” he said at the time, citing Saunders’ impressive military record in defending against a Nazi invasion in Greece in World War II, before serving in New Guinea and Korea. Elliott declined to comment on Tuesday.

But Professor Jakelin Troy, a linguist and director of Indigenous research at Sydney University from the Ngarigu clan in the Snowy Mountains, said the recognition of Country was more significant than an individual’s name.

“[The station’s name] is an evocative word about bringing us into the space of Sydney Gadigal Country,” she said.

“Historical namings are also a really great way to honour Aboriginal heroes [like Saunders]. But I’d rather see something like a statue.

“The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages of Australia are Australian languages ... so you’re putting an Australian language word into a place that connects it to its people and its story.”

Other public transport stops have used the Indigenous names of their suburbs (there is a ferry stop in Barangaroo, which is named after the leading Cammeragal woman, and a metro stop at Tallawong, in Sydney’s north-west, uses the Darug word for apple gum tree). But none have been given the name according to the Aboriginal land on which it sits.

“Speak the name,” Troy encouraged future patrons of the station. “Speak it out loud or in [your] mind to invoke the sense of the Gadigal and their country.”

The station, on the $21.6 billion Metro City and Southwest Line, is due to open between April and June next year.

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