The shocking racist history behind this Metro Tunnel station name

It’s a famous North Melbourne street, it’s synonymous with the Kangaroos football club and it will soon adorn a new underground Metro station, but historical documents show the name Arden comes from a racist colonist who held “grotesque” views of Indigenous Australians.

The government says Arden station will open under that name next year, despite concerns about comments from George Arden – who co-founded 19th-century newspaper the Port Phillip Gazette – publicly labelling Indigenous people as violent, ignorant and promiscuous savages.

Environment and Outdoor Recreation Minister Steve Dimopoulos with Premier Jacinta Allan at Arden station in January.Credit: Jason South

A senior First Peoples’ Assembly member on Wednesday night urged the government to reconsider the move.

Arden, who claimed kinship with playwright William Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden, migrated from England in 1838, the year the Port Phillip Gazette, one of Melbourne’s first newspapers, was launched.

In later years, he worked as a journalist in Victoria but fell on hard times and became a vagrant. The Geelong Advertiser reported his death on the Ballarat goldfields in 1854, with a jury finding he had “died from suffocation, the result of intemperance, having fallen into a trench full of water”.

The Age has unearthed an 1843 essay in which Arden called for Indigenous children to be taken from their parents, sent to school in the cities, and then put to work under “moral and sober masters”.

Notice in The Geelong Advertiser of the death of George Arden

He linked the Indigenous population to cannibalism, referred to what he described as their “barbarity of ideas and actions” and said they had “no arts” beyond building a simple shelter in a storm.

“The savage of Australia makes, probably, the lowest link in the connection of the human races; he is at once the most pitiable object of legislative charity, and the most difficult subject for the labours of the missionary and the civilizer,” Arden wrote.

He called on the government to use a method of “severe controul” [sic] against Aboriginal people, rather than one of “injurious leniency for their preservation and improvement”.

The essay, called Civilization of Aborigines, is available on Trove, the National Library of Australia’s digitised historical database.

An extract from the essay Civilization of the Aborigines.

Rueben Berg, co-chair of the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria, said that he thinks the Arden station name should be changed.

“We understand these might have been widely held colonial views, but in 2024 we don’t have to choose to celebrate and showcase the people that held them,” Berg said.

“We have a vibrant and diverse history and living culture to draw from. With Arden’s racists views now coming into light, I’d hope the government will be open to better suggestions.”

Aboriginal activist Celeste Liddle labelled Arden’s views as “grotesque” and said the state government should remedy an historical injustice by changing the station’s name.

North Melbourne Football Club at Arden Street.Credit: Eddie Jim

“Another name should be chosen,” said Liddle, an Arrernte woman living in Melbourne, a writer, a unionist and a former federal Greens candidate. “This would provide [the government] with an opportunity not only to engage in truth-telling, but also to rectify an historical injustice.”

Liddle said Arden Street’s name should also be changed, because it had been “sanitised, and indeed celebrated, due to its connection with the North Melbourne Football Club. So this provides an opportunity for change and education.”

This masthead asked the Department of Transport and Metro Tunnel questions including whether the government was aware of Arden’s racism, how much research had been done on him before the station name was decided upon, and whether the name should be changed in light of his views.

“The new Metro Tunnel stations were named following extensive consultation with stakeholders and the public, with more than 50,000 submissions received,” a Metro Tunnel spokesperson said.

“Arden was the most popular nomination during the station-naming process, and is consistent with other well-known landmarks in the area – Arden Street and Arden Street Oval.”

George Arden moved to Australia at the age of 24 and died at the age of 40 on the goldfields. In 1839, on Batman’s Hill, near today’s Southern Cross Station, he engaged in a gun duel (the reason is not known) with surgeon Dr Barry Cotter. Both men survived.

In Sydney in 1843, he wrote the essay for the second and final issue of his publication Arden’s Sydney Magazine of Politics and General Literature.

A year earlier, a similar pamphlet he had written was reported on in the Port Phillip Gazette, which said Arden had written that “the blacks are further from morality and civilisation, and nearer to destruction, from the anger they have themselves excited through their repeated aggressions”.

A sign at Southern Cross Station.

It said the scheme of retaining different tribes in reserves would fail unless coercion was used. The report again spoke of “systematic separation of the children from their parents” being the best course.

The state government said the name Arden station had the strong support of all key stakeholders, including the Victorian Planning Authority, the Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions, the Department of Transport, Metro Trains, City of Melbourne and VicTrack, and the approval of Geographic Names Victoria. It also reflected the identity of the precinct and had strong geographic relevance, the government said.

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