The settlers gave this place the name Blacktown. Now should they take it away?
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Version 0 of 1. On the fringes of Sydney, where patchy pieces of bushland and paddocks jut up against the sprawl, the pristine, still empty cul-de-sacs of a new housing development arch over a grassy ridge. From the lots on the top of the hill, signs of rapid development lie in every direction. There’s a new golf course on one side, and on the other, an imposing new Ikea, just down the road from a large mosque on the Richmond Road. The road, currently being widened, links that former outpost of European Australia, Richmond, with another historical settlement, Blacktown. The roar of the M7 can be easily made out; if it wasn’t for a patch of bushland dividing it from the new streets, it would be far more intrusive. To the Darug people of Blacktown, this bush is even more important. It’s the remaining, undeveloped section of the Colebee and Nurrangingy land grants, “given” to Sydney’s Aboriginal people in 1816. “‘It was called Blacks Town,” Darug man and university lecturer Shane Smithers explains. “It was where people who had been dispossessed from their land, people who had survived smallpox epidemics and all that sort of stuff ended up being corralled into a small area.” Out of hardship, there was this community resilience built The Blacktown area remains home to the largest urban population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in New South Wales: 2.7% of the total inhabitants. As well as many Indigenous newcomers to the area, there’s a Darug community, which, despite copping the brunt of the early days of white settlement, remains on country, retaining elements of language and culture. “We’re here largely today because of that situation where that Blacks Town formed, that gave people a safety, gave them a way to have their children and their culture and keep everybody together. That’s the beginning of the Aboriginal community post-settlement, one of the first ones in the country. Out of this hardship, there was this community resilience built.” When the railway came through the area in 1860, the first station was given the name Black Town Road. Two years later, a post office at the station was given the name of “Blacktown” post office, providing today’s council records with the first official use of the name, dated 1862. I meet Liberal councillor Karlo Šiljeg early one morning outside the council offices, to discuss plans to change the name of the local government area from Blacktown City to some other name chosen by the community. In August, the Liberals narrowly defeated a motion put forward by Labor councillors to rescind the name change plans. Unless Labor can force the issue again, a shortlist of five names for the new council will be put to voters at the time of the next council elections in 2016. When we meet, Šiljeg drives me to the site of the Blacktown Native Institution. “It’s a really sad and reflective place; that’s where Blacktown got its name.” he says. “The people of Blacks Town at the time didn’t want the name but the government decided for them.” Councillors such as Šiljeg stress that the suburb at the heart of the council, Blacktown itself, won’t change its name. “There’s a lot of people who live in surrounding suburbs and they wouldn’t even know they live in the Blacktown LGA if they don’t get a bill from council for their rates,” Šiljeg says. “Once people have become part of a process, they’ve selected the name, we’ll have this upsurge in energy where people feel they have created something.” For Šiljeg and local Liberal veteran Jess Diazz, that “upsurge in energy” is part and parcel of what really matters; attracting growth and development to the area. Blacktown is the biggest LGA in the state (just over 301,000 at the time of the 2011 census), and consistently one of the fastest-growing regions in NSW, seeing a whopping 11.4% growth between 2006 and 2011. “It [the name issue] is always coming back from time to time. Let’s deal with it once and for all. Let people decide,” Diazz says. “There are people who’ve approached me, particularly new people coming into this city. It’s not the small city it was when it was called Blacks Town.” For many locals, growth might not seem to be a problem. “It’s always growing, it’s getting faster and faster, bigger, we can’t keep up with it,” Darug man Gordon Workman tells me. To prove his point, he takes me to some of the many new homes being built near Quakers Hill. In the past few decades, whole regions of paddocks and scrub have been concreted over. “If the Liberals say this isn’t progress I don’t know what is,” Workman says. “People are coming here, and they’re coming here knowing it’s called Blacktown.” The branding of Blacktown is a negative for many developers Diazz and Šiljeg both stress the need to attract more white collar jobs to a region which despite its growth struggles with above average unemployment; a name change, they say, could be just the ticket. Much of the development that has been occurring can be put down to initiatives such as state government release areas, councillors will admit. “We must grow in the same way that the Hills District is growing,” Diazz says, which he cites as recently successfully pursuing re-branding by ditching the “Baulkham Hills” name. “In the same way as Parramatta, too. We will be overtaken by Penrith very soon. We are growing by default.” And Blacktown is faltering because of its name? “Wet and Wild come and they say they’re in Sydney. Why? Why do people say they’re in Marsden Park?”, Diazz asks. “Where’s the major government department for Blacktown?” He points to the parts of the Blacktown LGA where the growth in new homes is most visible, where wealthier newcomers are heading. Many of them are several kilometres from the suburb of Blacktown itself. “Have you seen Blacktown CBD after 7pm? It’s a disgrace. We want a modern metropolis which people will embrace, aspirational people. The branding of Blacktown is a negative for many developers. I think we should try and give the city a positive name.” Šiljeg suggests that by continuing to be burdened with the name, the area itself is being blackened. “I think we are painting it with another colour black, which is something we shouldn’t do.” But some Darug people like Julie Jones, who I meet at the Mount Druitt festival, fear that the referendum is about race. “I won’t deny that I have thought that [race] is one of the causes behind it [the referendum]”, Julie says. “Just get rid of the name Blacktown, and you get rid of the problem. Aboriginal people here have been taken from and taken from ... so it’s very understandable that my mother at 80 thinks that it’s racially-based.” Her cousin Smithers says: “Nobody would ever admit to it, everybody would always say there’s another reason. I don’t want to make that argument myself, but that argument can be made. The idea that Blacktown would improve it’s economy or have greater growth if it changes it’s name has a racist undertone. [It’s] not just people in the council talking about it, but they’re suggesting businessmen have an undercurrent of racism, which I just don’t believe is in the business community.” We’ve got to be very protective of the great society that has emerged out of Blacktown The push for a name change is not the first bad publicity the council has generated amongst Darug people. When it first took control in 2012, it brought prayers and the Queen’s portrait back to meetings, changed the council’s Welcome to Country policy, and became embroiled in an inter-Aboriginal dispute over the recognition of the Darug as traditional owners. Labor councillor Charlie Lowles, Blacktown’s Liverpudlian former mayor, says he took it upon himself to take one of the queen’s portraits down when it was first put up. He says a name change would not only be costly, but damaging to the social fabric. “They’re saying it’s only going to cost a million. Even a million could be better spent on housing, education, health,” he says. ‘The idea of calling Blacktown ‘Western Sydney’ is actually ludicrous … If we’re gonna be fair dinkum, we’ll call Sydney East Blacktown.” “But it’s going to cost a lot more than that; the cost in human relationships is going to be even greater. We’ve got to be very protective of the great society that has emerged out of Blacktown. People will see it for what it is, and then we’ll be labelled as racist city, and that will actually stop growth.” Local newspaper polls have the community dead against the changes. But what seems likely is that any support for it would come from the newer, Liberal-voting areas far from Blacktown proper and places like Mount Druitt. Not every Darug person in the area in total opposition. Actor Richard Green, who also teaches Darug language, says if a suitable Darug word could be found, it might get his backing “if it changed to a Darug word with proper meaning”. Two others not keen on going on the record due to ructions within the Darug Aboriginal Corporation, the body representing Darug voices, say they’d also consider backing a change if it were a Darug word. Šiljeg says he is not opposed to a Darug name as replacement. “It would be quite welcome if people want that, it would be an appropriate name … It rights with a little gesture a big wrong that was done a long, long time ago.” But Julie Jones says the damage would be done with the referendum. “It just feels like the eradication of our history here, that bit of connection. It’s troubling that council can’t seem to embrace that history and that heritage.” Smithers agrees. “The name Blacks Town or Blacktown maintains a link to that first community. It’s quite a beautiful thing to see people coming together and surviving, and in their own little way thriving and maintaining some of their culture. That’s something we have that most of us don’t want to have taken away from us.” |