A Surprising Earful in 1788
When the First Fleet dropped anchor in 1788, British officers carried more than soldiers and convicts to the shores of what is now Sydney. They also brought a host of assumptions—none more telling than what they expected Indigenous language to sound like.
Watkin Tench, one of those officers, admitted he and his peers were “at first inclined to stigmatise this language as harsh and barbarous.” The unfamiliar rhythms and combinations of sounds jarred against their expectations of what “civilised” speech should be.
From ‘Harsh’ to ‘Mellifluous’
Yet Tench’s judgment didn’t last. Listening more closely, he began to separate long strings of speech into individual words and names. The effect startled him. Stripped of his prejudice, the language revealed itself as rich in vowels and, in his own words, “sometimes mellifluous and sometimes sonorous.”
He lingered over people’s names: Colbee, Bereewan, Bondel, Imeerawanyee, Deedora, Wolarawaree, Baneelon; and women’s names such as Wereeweea, Gooreedeeana, Milba, Matilba. To his 18th‑century English ear, these no longer sounded rough but strikingly musical.
A Map of Names, A Map of People
Tench also noticed a deep link between places and people. Parramatta, Gweea, Cameera, Cadi, Memel—place names that, in turn, gave rise to tribal names. Cemeeragal: “the men who reside in the bay of Cameera.” Cadigal: those from the bay of Cadi.
To Tench, this was a linguistic curiosity. To the people around him, it was identity mapped onto country.
The Echo That Remains
Today, many of these names still appear on maps and signs. Behind each is that moment of first contact, when a dismissive ear slowly learned to hear music instead of noise.
