Box 4 Folder 5: New South Wales place names, 1899-1903 - Page 4

[Page 4]                                                                                  377

Surveyor S.H. Chesterman forwarding lists
supplying a few native names of places
with their meanings
                                                                                   Tumut
                                                            January  6th  1900                                                
    Sir
   1.                  In connection with memo
of Instructions enclosed on a Copy of  
?99/9689, I beg to forward herewith
meanings of a few native names of places
& localities the list, though small, having
been compiled rather carefully - a very
necessary provision.                  Some years
ago this subject interested me but I
was confronted with the great difficulty
that information must necessarily be
obtained second hand and that many
particulars supplied must certainly be open
to question.      It is to be regretted that
more care was not exercised in the early
days to obtain correct names and that
some little attention was not paid to
orthography. Numbers of places have  
been misnamed through carelessness and
the misnomers have adhered, in many
instances through the younger  generation
of blacks having adopted the altered word.
Gabo  and Woolloomooloo    supply two
well known instances of aboriginal corruptions.
2.    As showing how the aboriginals
occasionally coined words the name of
an old outstation on the Lachlan can
be cited. In the very early days the
hutkeeper there had a wooden leg -