MELVILLE council won’t be following Fremantle’s lead and giving prominent landmarks an Indigenous name any time soon – it doesn’t have a single one to choose from. 

The council’s all-white list of potential names was highlighted at last week’s council meeting when more people surveyed about two new roads in the Carawatha redevelopment wanted Indigenous names than those supplied by the developer.

But the council is bound by its own policy to pick only from its Schedule of Names, which doesn’t have a single Indigenous reference.

In fact, the Whadjuk Noongar are such an afterthought in the document that English publican John Hole Duffield is referred to as the “original land owner of what is now Bicton”. Recognising the community interest in evening up the ledger, the council has called for a review of its policy and the schedule to allow the community to put up its own suggestions.

Landgate says any Indigenous names have to be supported by the local Aboriginal community. Meanwhile the two roads in the old Carawatha Primary School redevelopment, dubbed Gallery by Satterley Property Group, will be known as Goodrick Loop after a family of early Palmyra settlers, and Utting Lane after the school’s first headmaster, if they’re accepted by the state’s Geographic Names Committee.

by STEVE GRANT