TheBanyanTree: Remembrance day: the other victims

[Peter Macinnis]

I am old enough to recall a time when bus stops in Australia had a sign 
to say that those with TPI (Totally and Permanently Incapacitated) 
badges could go to the head of the queue.  Back then, there were lots of 
ladies who were "getting on" but still active, who were all "Miss".  It 
took me many years to realise that these were the girls who became women 
in a man-drought caused by the Great War.  They were victims as well.

So were the civilians caught in the manoeuvring of great armies, the 
women raped, the elderly and children heedlessly slaughtered.  And in 
Australia, aside from the single women left behind, the kids whose 
fathers returned, broken, were also victims.  I escaped the worst of 
that when my own father returned from the next war, but I know some 
horror stories of fathers who had gone--and remained--"troppo" in one of 
the World Wars, and I have seen what has happened to a few Vietnam 
returnees and their families.  (For American readers, yes, we were drawn 
into that one as well.)

Coming out of Auschwitz, eight years ago, I thought that well, maybe 
there was such a thing as a just war.  A few days later, leaving 
Dresden, I wondered how I could have got it so wrong.  Basically, there 
were no winners, and few victims ever get anything for their troubles. 
This need not be the case for some other lesser casualties, who merely 
suffered nomenclatural injustice.

In one case, at least, we can right a small and petty wrong.

By training, I am a botanist, and I tend to write a lot of history. 
Combining these, my current project deals with the naturalists who came 
to Australia, their adventures, squabbles, scandals and discoveries. 
This past weekend, I have been digging into the records for Ferdinand 
Bauer, an Austrian painter and passable botanist who visited Australia 
with Matthew Flinders in the early 1800s.  Near Streaky Bay, Flinders 
put Ferdinand on the map when he added Cape Bauer to the chart.

By 1916, the pain of war was apparent to all, and beefy men of a certain 
age and choler, but with no disposition to risk their own pelts in 
conflict, were casting around to show the jolly old Hun what was what. 
The average vile Hun being far off and probably inclined to retaliate, 
they turned to the Australian map, and thought, perhaps, of how the 
Saxe-Coburg-Gothas had become Windsors.

So began a movement that saw Germanton in NSW named after Holbrook VC, a 
submarine commander (for Australians, NOW you know why there's a sub on 
the Hume Highway between Gundagai and Albury!)  The other states all 
piled in, but the state of South Australia had the highest proportion of 
place names "of enemy origin" and Something Had To Be Done.

So it was that in November 1916, the South Australian government brought 
down the report of the committee appointed by the Government to make 
recommendations for the substitution of British or Australian aboriginal 
names for places in South Australia.

It is here: http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5530969 but the 
relevant paragraph reads  "BAUER, CAPE, near Streaky Bay. - Named in 
1802 by Matthew Flinders after Ferdinand Bauer, Austrian painter of 
natural history, who was on the Investigator. To be CAPE WONDOMA, the 
native name applied to a well in the locality."

Note that this wasn't the Aboriginal name given to the cape, just a 
local place name plucked at random and bestowed on a different location. 
  There is no justice entailed in applying that Aboriginal name.

So I wondered if the change to Wondoma happened, and if it did, whether 
it lasted.  Bauer was an Austrian, serving on a Royal Navy ship, so the 
change seemed a little discourteous.  I knew that some other names in SA 
had reverted, so I went burrowing.

In October 1935, the SA government was preparing for a centenary, and 
reviewing the prospect of restoring some of the original names.  I found 
this: (The Advertiser, Thursday 3 October 1935, p. 8, 
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/36185943)

"Wondoma Or Cape Bauer? In the Assembly yesterday, Mr. Morphett (L.C.L.) 
asked whether the Government would consider changing the name of 
Wondoma, on the West Coast, to Cape Bauer, which it originally had been 
called. Cape Bauer, he said, had been named by Captain Matthew Flinders 
on February 5, 1802. as related in his journal, in honor of Ferdinand 
Bauer, who was a painter of natural history on the technical staff 
aboard the Investigator. Cape Bauer had also been associated with South 
Australia in connection with Eyre's first expedition.

"The Premier (Mr. Butler) said that the Government, in restoring German 
place names, desired that certain pages of the State's history should 
not be lost. The Government had reached a definite decision in regard to 
Klemzig. Hahndorf, Lobethal, and Hergott. Whether or not the system was 
to be extended was a matter for the Government to decide."

* * *

The following day, the same paper published this letter of outrage:

"RESTORATION OF GERMAN PLACE NAMES FLINDERS'S HONOR TO FERDINAND BAUER 
To The Editor Sir—Referring to your article, In Wednesday's issue of 
'The Advertiser,' on the restoration of German place names, I regret to 
note that no request has been made in connection with Cape Bauer, now 
known as Cape Wondoma, and I submit that the S-A. branch of the Royal 
Geographical Society might very well take the matter up before the 
special legislation has been prepared. The name Bauer was given by 
Captain Matthew Flinders during the Voyage of the Investigator in 1802, 
the man thus honored being Ferdinand Bauer, an Austrian, not a German be 
it noted, who joined the Investigator as botanical draftsman to the 
celebrated botanist Brown.

"Flinders considered it a point of honor never to disturb a name 
bestowed by an original discoverer, and his naming: of Cape Leeuwin, 
Mounts Zeehan and Heemskirk, and Cape Keerweer, are eloquent of his 
desire to recognise in full the exploits of his predecessors on the 
Australian coast. He gave to the geographical features of the shores 
discovered by himself the names of people who had befriended him. the 
names of the gallant band who voyaged with him, and the names of places 
in his native county, Lincolnshire; but never was a place named after 
himself. He left to posterity the recognition of his performance, and it 
should devolve on posterity to see that his names are not disturbed.

"If the change back to Hahndorf, Hergott, Klemzig, and Lobethal is 
justified, as a Centenary gesture, how much more so is the restoration 
of a name given by the State's original discoverer—the man who gave to 
the continent around which he was the first to sail, the name Australia. 
I am Sir, &c., NORMAN FORD 70 Currie street, Adelaide."

* * *

Ford's outrage achieved nothing.  If you enter "Cape Bauer" in Google 
Maps, the database is good enough to trigger the response "Do you mean 
Cape Wondoma, 5680?", but that is the only name it likes.  Agree to 
Wondoma, or it shows you nothing.

To this day, Cape Bauer remains doggedly, chauvinistically Cape Wondoma, 
a monument to pettiness of people who have yet to notice that the war is 
over. There is one bit of good news: the road from Streaky Bay that goes 
around much of the coast is called Cape Bauer Road.

The centenary of this spiteful act is just six years off.  Will we do 
justice to a painter who never butchered a Belgian baby or did any of 
the other nasties attributed to the opposition in World War I.  I plan 
to start jumping up and down.

How good was Ferdinand Bauer?  See this: The Sunday Herald (Sydney), 
Sunday 27 August 1950, p. 2, 
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/18482275


-- 
   _--|\    Peter Macinnis       petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
  /     \   Runner-up, Wallangumba submarine chess festival,
  \.--._*   unusually unreliable source on double negatives,
       v    http://members.ozemail.com.au/~macinnis/index.htm