Bourbong Street with Post Office in the distance, Bundaberg, c. BOURBON OR BOURBONG STREET 216998033?searchTerm=bourbong street bundaberg&searchLimits= ) A correspondent writing in the Mail on January 18th 1895 declaims against the g in the spelling of the name of the main street. He says: To old fashioned folk the modern spelling has jarred on our nervous system severely. Someone of an omposing elevation of mind probably thought it did or ought to belong to the aboriginal dialect. As there is not such aprt of speech as bour in native dialect, the bong meaning dead, renders the title sil
Bourbong Street with Post Office in the distance, Bundaberg, c. BOURBON OR BOURBONG STREET 216998033?searchTerm=bourbong street bundaberg&searchLimits= ) A correspondent writing in the Mail on January 18th 1895 declaims against the g in the spelling of the name of the main street. He says: To old fashioned folk the modern spelling has jarred on our nervous system severely. Someone of an omposing elevation of mind probably thought it did or ought to belong to the aboriginal dialect. As there is not such aprt of speech as bour in native dialect, the bong meaning dead, renders the title silly and unintelligible. The main street of Bundaberg was named Bourbon by the surveyor who laid the principal sections of the town out for a well defined and perfectly understandable reason. The first cane planted at Rubyanna came from Bourbon, an island in the East Indies, and that plant bears its French imperial title even to this day. It is difficult to understand how the name was altered locally to a meaningless farcicality, by boxing up a French imperial standard with an impossible aboriginal sentence. Mr. N. E. N. Tooth writes a few days later from Maryborough: I note in your issue a paragraph referring to the name of the principal street in your city. Possibly I may be able to throw a little light on the subject. As to whether the proper name is Bourbon or Bourbong I do not venture to offer an opinion, but I've heard it asserted that the name is a native or aboriginal one. If so the name should be Bier-rabong, meaning plenty dead. In the early 'sixties I knew every inch of country between the Burnett and Kolan Rivers from the sea up to Gin Gin, as at that time my brothers and myself had the Colanne station. Where North Bundaberg now is the blacks called Bierrabong. Neither for love or money could we get any blacks to go near the place. We knew it was on account of superstition, but it was a mere chance that revealed the cause. Two or three of us were one day looking for
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Keywords: 1890s, 1897, archival, archive, archives, australia, australian, bourbong, bundaberg, collection, historic, historical, history, image, office, photo, post, qsa, queensland, reference, state, street, vintage
