Thursday, 21 April 2016

Esperance | Ravensthorp | Jerramunjinup

Drove through what looks like some very productive farming country, good rains recently has set them up for a good season.

Some sowing started, with some grazing or early planted cereals, so there must have been good rains in February March.


We also passed as a rough estimate about 5,000 tonnes of grain going down the road to Esperance in Road Trains and B Triples, looked a pretty efficient way to move grain, that didn't seem to be causing the traffic any problems.

Stopped at Ravensthorp, the town is abuz with a big expansion.

Galaxy Resourses Lithium Mine, getting the locals excited, mostly positive as its a source of employment other than farming.
Their Stock price has taken off, so someone thinks there a good deal!
Way to hot for me with 1.28 Billion shares on issue, (sourse Financial Times).







Some very good looking farming country heading south from Jerramjinup.

The towns name got us thinking about the large number of Western Australian towns that end in "up".

So I did some research, not much, just googled it whilst having a red really!
Courtesy of Western Australia Online.
So let’s start with a few names, Cardup, Wonnerup, Burekup, Yallingup and Karrinyup.
The “up” in these names comes from the Aboriginal Noongar language but there is some dissension as to whether it means place of water, or meeting place and most likely it is a combination.

All of these towns were originally spelt with a double “p” – so Cardupp, Wonnerupp, Burekupp, Yallingupp and Karinyupp.

The double “p” spelling in the original Western Australian Government gazette of these names was used because the Lands and Surveys Department had adopted a system for spelling Aboriginal names developed by the Royal Geographical Society. The RGS system had a rule that vowels are pronounced as in Italian and consonants as in English. 

Who would have thought of something so clever? You would have to drink a serious amount of red wine, to come up with that!, but it gets better!

This would have meant that names ending in "up" should have been pronounced as "oop", because the Italian "u" was a long "u", as in flute. These Aboriginal names were meant to be pronounced as "up", and the Department asked the RGS for a rule to assist in correct pronunciation.

The RGS solution was that doubling the following consonant shortened the preceding vowel, and this meant the "upp" ending ensured the "up" pronunciation. However, this particular rule was rescinded in 1915 for south west towns with the suffix "up", as the Australian way of
pronouncing the letter "u" was almost always short, and rarely the Italian "oo".
So now you know, pretty simple really, a ballsup!   Sorry couldn’t help myself!



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