K’gari or Fraser Island: Your say on the name changes

Queenslanders love a name change about as much as The Voice, based on this reaction. JOIN THE CONVERSATION

Dr Stephen Hagan campaigned to have to have Coon Cheese renamed to a less racist term. Picture LENN CAMPBELL

Last year, the man who fought to rename Coon cheese and Toowoomba’s E.S. “N--ger’’ Brown grandstand called for a statewide audit of racist or offensive names, starting with the Bundaberg-hinterland town of Gin Gin.

Stephen Hagan’s call came six years after the Department of Resources launched a “proactive review’’ of its place names database and removed 10 north Queensland localities containing the word “N--ger’’.

It followed complaints about N--ger’s Bounce, a hill 100km west of Charters Towers, which resulted in it also being erased from the database.

Mount N--ger, 200km west of Cardwell, N--ger Head near the tip of Cape York and seven N--ger creeks, one in Herberton, were also abolished in September 2017.

Hopefully, most Queenslanders would see the reason for the above changes.

But changes to landmarks like Fraser Island to K’gari, have gone as well in Queensland as the Voice referendum.

Let’s face it, most people don’t like change, especially if as many of our readers argued, it was seen as being part of some ‘woke’ BS.

Colleague Carlie Walker wrote this week that the origins of the name Fraser Island was reason enough to fully embrace the change to its traditional Indigenous name, K’gari,

But 80 per cent of our readers preferred Fraser Island.

Susan summed up the sentiment of many.

“Changing the names of anything and everything for the sake of it (wokeness) simply leads to resentment in the community.

“In New Zealand there has been a massive backlash to all the Māori names coming into everyday life during the years of the woke Ardern government.

“Thankfully many of these changes have been or being unwound.

“People proudly go to Fraser to go camping and fishing etc and always will. Same with Ayres Rock with many now not going because of the climbing ban, even if they were not able to do it safely when visiting previously.

Gin Gin is among Queensland names in the firing line.

“Being told that they weren’t allowed to do it is enough to stop them bothering to take their money and spend it in the area.”

Michael wrote the name change is not the issue, it’s the fact it wasn’t changed democratically.

“If we are going to go about changing all historical names because the name may offend some inner city elites then at least do it democratically not by stealth in some late night government voting.”

WHAT OUR READERS HAD TO SAY

Canetoad Daz

I will be calling it Fraser Island and I’m encouraging my children to do the same as I don’t want them to buy into Bleeding Heart WOKE activism. I wouldn’t want name changes to places like Caboolture, Indooroopilly and Woolloongabba. Australia has a good mix of European and Aboriginal named towns and places, no need for change.

Cam

The resistance to name changes is basic human nature, we like consistency and hate change. The other question many are asking, where will they draw the line? There are thousands of towns that were named in the past 250 years, do all these get knocked on the head? Does Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney etc etc all come under the spotlight? Will they try and rename Australia itself?

Robyn

I see why changing the name here might be seen as justified. I didn’t know about the massacres of Indigenous people on Fraser until about ten years ago and they were shocking. The names of Brisbane and Logan are also not ones we can truly honour – both those men fell far short of being admirable. But we can’t be changing names because we’ve learned more about history, or because people and ideas have fallen into disrepute or just out of fashion. Let’s just understand that history is riddled with such territory and move on.

Ron

My son loved Fraser Island, and after he passed away a couple of years ago, his ashes were scattered in the water near Sandy Cape Lighthouse. This was his wish. The woke warriors can call it what they like. To me, and many others, it will always be “Fraser.”

K'gari is an island paradise known around the world, as Fraser Island.

Alan

It was, is and always will be Fraser Island to me. For a start, it is apparently the largest sand ISLAND in the world so the name “island” should definitely stay in the name.

No one overseas or even here has heard about the indigenous name so it will remain meaningless to most people. If the local indigenous folk want to call it K’gari, that’s fine, let them. If we keep changing names of geographical locations like this, it just results in confusion and a poor attempt at changing history. Anyway it appears that most people agree with this, just look at the poll with the vast majority wanting it to remain as Fraser Island.

Pervis

The problem with the name change is it leads to more. Why stop there if the woke brigade has their name, renaming something creates a new sense of ‘ownership’ and removal of historical significance. Pretty soon the left will claim the country in a new tomorrow, armed with their new names while they hand over land to indigenous corporations in the process of claiming them. Throw in treaty that govt is pushing and we become second class citizens

Diana

Fraser Island is a huge part of international tourism. People looking to visit will still be calling it Fraser Island in 50 or 100 years time, in exactly the same way as people still visit Ayers Rock.

Murdering Creek Road, Peregian is among our more controversial Queensland history.

Pat

Similarly, the proposal to rename magnetic island national park is socially divisive, has little to no impact on cultural awareness or respect, and does absolutely nothing in terms of closing the gap or improving the lives of those very few indigenous needing even further support.

Terry

OK so K’Gari means paradise so why isn’t it “Paradise Island” because no one I know speaks Butchella so no-one knows what it means we would still be honouring the original inhabitants the district would be better marketed as “Paradise Coast” rather than K’Gari Coast

Saying It As It Is

Remember that farce called The Voice. Remember 70% of Queenslanders were against it. Hold a vote for name changes and see where it goes.

KJM

Just how many of the Butchulla people actually live on the island. In fact how many individuals claim to be part of this tribe. I ask this because it seems a tiny minority of people have held sway over the government and in turn the majority of us. Indigenous people can call places by any name they like but the rest of us prefer things as they are. We can’t see any sense in making place name changes. This is just another case of a weak minded government caving into the woke brigade.

Boswoz

If one gazes across to Africa, where many nations have gained their independence from, Britain, France Portugal and others, they all went through the process of changing the names of everything. Looking at those countries today, none have progressed, they have all gone backwards. So name changing never helped fixed anything.

John

This is how the media works. To change a name, the original name is never referred to and the new one is blazoned on every story and slowly gets burned into your brain over time. The Lefties are experts at it. It passes over to the Leftist Education System and after 2 generations the origins of Place names and History have disappeared. Game over, mission accomplished.

Originally published as K’gari or Fraser Island: Your say on the name changes