The North Pole is located a short distance from Marble Bar, the hottest place in inland Australia. Siberia is near Kalgoorlie, with an average summer temperature of 35C. Australian humour is not complicated. And when you colonise a land that is almost the size of Europe, it’s easy to run out of names.
Which is possibly why there are so many bottoms in Tasmania.
Australia’s weird place names should be celebrated, if only so they don’t come as a shock next time you hear them read out on an ABC emergency broadcast.
However some, like
Suicide Bay and Victory Hill in Tasmania, named by the workers of the Van Diemen’s Land Company to celebrate the massacre of 30 Aboriginal people, should be recognised only as a reminder of a brutal past. The Tasmanian Aboriginal Corporation in 2017 lobbied to have those places renamed in palawa kani: Suicide Bay would be luwuka, Victory Hill called timuk and an island called N*****head Rock would be karanutung. The name changes have not been made official.