Woronora, New South Wales - Placename History

Placename History

'Woronora' is an Aboriginal placename. Records show the spelling of the name has varied since it first appeared in the 19th century, the earliest being Wooloonora (Dixon, 1827, quoted in Walker 1974:66), followed by Wolonora (Dixon, 1837), and Woronora (Mitchell, 1835). The name was first applied to the Woronora River, a tributary of the Georges River, before being given to a hundred, an electoral district, a local road east of the river, and finally the suburb itself.

The following meanings have been suggested for Woronora:

• 'black rock' (Appleton and Appleton 1992)
• 'black rocks' (Walker 1974; Neve 1970)
• 'river-of-no-sharks' (Bolton 2000)

Variations such as 'black cliffs' and 'sharkless waters' have also been suggested by local residents.

The Aboriginal language known variously as Dharug, Eora or simply 'the Sydney Language' was spoken around Woronora at the time of colonisation (Troy 1994:61). Lists of Dharug words gathered around the turn of the century provide a number of possibilities regarding the number of morphemes and likely constituents of the placename. An analysis of the number of syllables in Dharug words recorded by Mathews (1901) shows over 50% contained two syllables, and just under 40% contained three, while only 1.45% contained one syllable:

It therefore seems likely that Woronora is made up of two disyllabic elements.

In light of what historical Dharug information is available, the meaning of the suffix of Woronora seems most transparent. A range of phonetically similar words are present in the sources:

• ngurra 'camp' (Troy 1994:67; Stockton 1993:156; Mathews 1901:158)
• nura 'place or country' (Troy 1993:83)
• ngurang 'place' (Troy 1993:78)
• ora 'a place or country e.g. Woronora' (Kohen 1993:16)
• 'place; gno-rang, no-rar' (Kohen 1990:238)

We may tentatively conclude therefore that *-ngurra could function as a locative suffix in Dharug.

The stem of Woronora is much harder to specify. Unfortunately, no word list contains a word *wooloo, *wolo, or *woro, but the following orthographically similar words are present:

• wal-lan 'rain' (Ridley 1875:105; Kohen 1993:224), wulan 'rain' (Troy 1993:71)
• wolora 'wallaroo' (Mathews 1901:158), wularu 'wallaroo' (Troy 1993:52), wolaru 'kangaroo (mountain)' (Ridley 1875:104)
• wurral 'slow' (Mathews 1901:159)
• warra 'breast' (Troy 1993:34)
• wural 'bashful, ashamed' (Troy 1993:66)
• wala 'then' (Troy 1993:79)
• wurra 'mouse, rat' (Troy 1994:69)

Oft-cited definitions like 'black rocks' find no support in the written records. Words for 'black', 'shark' and 'water' do not resemble any element of Woronora, though we lack a record for the Dharug words for 'rock', 'cliff', 'river', and 'creek', and thus cannot categorically rule these out.

Guesses regarding the original form of the placename depend largely upon the degree of mishearing assumed to have taken place between the Aboriginal informant and the European recorder. Might a surveyor have missed a syllable in *wolaru-ngurra? Although English speakers frequently reproduced trilled rhotics as either /r/ or /l/ orthographically (Donaldson 2002:235), it is difficult to establish whether the name was misheard from Aboriginal sources three times (producing the Wooloo-, Wolo-, and Woro- variants), or whether the change in spelling was a product of changing European pronunciation without reference to Aboriginal people. The latter is quite likely considering that until the 1840s, and possibly beyond, it was the only official placename from the mouth of the river southwards (Dixon 1841), and thus must have been written and pronounced frequently in reference to a large area.

Assuming therefore that the original placename most closely resembled Wooloonora, and acknowledging the inadequacy of our records due to language loss, three potential definitions present themselves:

• *wulan-ngurra 'rain place'
• *wolaru-ngurra 'wallaroo place'
• *wala-ngurra 'then place'

Cultural information could be the deciding factor in defining Woronora. Was there a Rain or Wallaroo Dreaming in this part of Sydney? Could reported dialogue of the Dreamtime ancestors make sense of 'then place'? Or was there another noun unknown to us relating to black rock/s? Unfortunately the consequences of colonisation for the Dharug people in terms of land loss, dispersal and language loss mean this will probably never be known.