The secret plan to rename Victoria after Queen Elizabeth II, and how the ‘billion dollar brain fart’ fell over

IT’S the bizarre proposal to rename our second most populous state. But is it a “fitting tribute” or a “billion dollar brain fart”?

The secret plan to rename Victoria

WE’VE BEEN RUMBLED! We hope you enjoyed news.com.au’s April Fool’s Day prank. And thanks to the good sports who went along with including, no less, Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy. The original story is below ...

IT WAS the audacious plan to rename one of Australia’s most populous states to commemorate one of the world’s most powerful women in a “gracious tribute”.

If the proposal had been enacted an announcement would have been made in just weeks that the state of Victoria was to get a new name 165 years after it was founded

But the plan, which was understood to be at an advanced stage, was scuppered due to its sheer cost and because of the angry reaction of an Adelaide suburb.

News.com.au has seen documents from a group of backbench MPs that would have seen the state of Victoria renamed Elizabeth in honour of the Queen on the occasion of her 90th birthday.

And it had high-level support with Opposition Leader Matthew Guy cautiously lending his backing to the idea. But Premier Daniel Andrews office has gone silent on the issue.

The top secret minutes came from a cross-party coalition known as the ‘Timbertop group’, named after the Victorian school Prince Charles attended when he was young.

“The name Victoria was bestowed upon the state as a tribute to Queen Victoria,” the document states. “The group concurred that to rename the state after her descendant, Elizabeth II, would be a gracious and fitting tribute to the person who will become the longest serving Queen of Australia and the longest serving monarch in the House of Windsor.”

Elizabeth became the longest serving monarch in September 2015.

However the plans have been blasted as “preposterous … baloney from a gaggle of starry eyed monarchists”.

Melbourne would become the capital of Elizabeth.

FIND THEIR OWN NAME

The Timbertop documents date from 2012 and go onto say, “Her Majesty has given a lifetime of service to the state and the nation, naming our state in her honour is the least we could do to ensure her memory is never forgotten”.

If official backing had been reached, the announcement would have been made either on April 21, the Queen’s official birthday in Britain or 13 June, the official birthday in Victoria itself.

Another reason for the rebranding was how distinctive the name Elizabeth would be. “There are countless Victoria’s across the globe. Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia; the name of the main railway terminuses in London, Manchester and Mumbai and the waterway that divides Hong Kong is Victoria Harbour. But Elizabeth’s are few and far between.”

Not so, said the people of Elizabeth in South Australia located in the City of Playford local government area. The suburb of Adelaide was named after the Queen in 1955 with Elizabeth herself visiting the area in 1963.

A local councillor, who wished to remain anonymous, told news.com.au “Can’t Victoria find their own name? They’ll be renaming Melbourne to Mount Gambier next.”

Geographic etymology expert, Professor Pretorius Tshwane told news.com.au renaming cities or states was more common than thought. “New York was originally New Amsterdam and was only changed to acknowledge the British; Australia was originally New Holland while Melbourne itself was once called Bearbrass.

“Name changes merely reflect the politics and the presiding wisdom of the day. Just ask the indigenous populations of Australia, many of whose geographical names have been lost as English names took hold,” she said.

A costly repainting program would see V/Line renamed E/Line.

E/LINE

New designs for ‘Welcome to Elizabeth’ state road signs were mocked up while V/Line regional trains would have been rebranded as ‘E/Line’.

Proud Victorians would become proud Elizabethans.

One proposal would even have seen the acronym VIC for Victoria replaced with ‘ELZ’ for Elizabeth, or even ‘LIZ’. VicRoads could become LizRoads.

The group had even bounced around few marketing slogans including, somewhat worryingly, ‘Drop the V, take the E’.

But as the plans progressed, and went up the parliamentary food chain, it’s understood the Timbertops came across roadblocks. Not the least of which was the cost of repainting the trains.

In the UK, it cost one train company $40 million to put its logos on old rolling stock.

Britain also threw a few spanners in the works by getting a first mover advantage on naming things after the current queen. Heathrow Airport now has a terminal named in her honour and a new London Underground route is to be named the “Elizabeth line”.

There are suddenly of rush of things and places named after Queen Elizabeth.

BALONEY

“Once England started renaming mere airports and railway lines after Elizabeth it seemed a bit over the top renaming an entire chunk of the world the size of England itself,” a source said.

Nevertheless, the proposal had garnered support in high places. It’s believed Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy supported the idea. But with an eye to his own legacy, he had a proviso that the renamed state included a town or suburb named ‘Guygrad’.

Opponents had other ideas. “This was a billion-dollar brain fart of preposterous proportions,” one MP told news.com.au. “A lot of time and effort was wasted on this baloney from a gaggle of starry eyed monarchists.”

A cheeky alternative proposal was to rename the state “Cromwell” after Oliver Cromwell, who briefly turned Britain into a republic in the 17th century.

They also questioned the practically of the plan. “Would we have to call her ‘Elizabeth, Queen of Elizabeth’ and what about our tourism slogan ‘You’ll love every part of Victoria’. Urging people to ‘love every part of Elizabeth’ is inappropriate and probably bordering on treason.”

Premier Daniel Andrews did not respond to news.com.au’s question. However, it is understood the name change is no longer under active consideration.