Putting the boot into Ferntree Gully

Flickr photo by Gullybogan.

Dear Reader,

The name ‘Ferntree Gully’ harkens back to a time when all about here was paddocks, and there was this, you know, gully filled with treeferns to which picnickers from the big smoke would travel by Studebaker and Steam Train in order to take in the ambience.

Lovely.

But then, as these things happen, the paddocks filled up with houses.

Since ‘ferntree gully’ was ultimately an abstract arcadian idyll, the resulting Ferntree Gully, as a suburb, is as huge as that concept. It covers a vast area, most of which is at quite a distance from that legendary treefern-filled gully.

So the practice of place names offering a means of locating a place has, for Ferntree Gully, clearly broken down.

Consequently, an attempt was made to break Ferntree Gully down into manageable pieces of landscape.

The Name Game

Older residents can remember a time when there were two Ferntree Gullies – Upper and Lower. While Upper Gully has retained its spatial qualification, Lower Gully reverted over time (for no clear reason) to just plain Gully.

The resulting problem was that someone saying they lived in ‘Ferntree Gully’ could be describing anywhere in about a hundred square kilometre area.

So they tried inventing little local nicknames for some of the areas within that region.

‘Mountain Gate’, for example, is nowhere near the gully of treeferns, but is still in the same coveted 3156 Ferntree Gully postcode.

Likewise, places like the putative ‘Gully North’ are in the same highly esteemed postcode, but a good ten to fifteen minute drive from other, more southerly parts of ‘Gully’.

But now there is a much more serious threat facing Ferntree Gully than the problem of ambiguous geographical location of residents.

Evil Developers

It seems that evil developers are about to evilly develop Ferntree Gully into a suburban ghetto of tiny houses on microblocks, populated by bawling babies tended to by drunken welfare mothers and abusive/absent fathers.

Which is what we all thought Boronia was set aside for.

The only solution, according to Cr Karen Orpen, is to rename part of the suburb (the part we don’t want Boronia-ised) to ‘Ferntree Gully Foothills’.

I have a great deal of respect for Cr Orpen, as she is, by all accounts, that rare thing: a politician who is there to serve the ppl, and not to further her own career, increase her power base, and bignote herself in the media.

But in this, i think Cr Orpen needs to have a bit more of a think before she gets stuck into renaming suburblets.

There are three reasons why.

1. It’s ugly

‘Foothills’ has the word ‘foot’ in it. Unless you’re a toe-sucking foot fetishist (not that there’s anything wrong with that), feet are one of our more unattractive body parts, no?

Plus, it’s got that tee-aich conjunction, so it looks like it could equally be pronounced ‘Foo Thills’, or ‘Footh Ills’. You know, like that syllabically-challenged suburb ‘Chatham’ that no-one knows how to pronounce.

And if it has to travel in company with its parent suburb name, ‘Ferntree Gully Foothills’ is way too long, and they’ll have to make the phone books all over Australia an inch wider so that the name’ll fit into the postcode section at the back.

2. It’s stupid

Apart from Mt Dandenong itself, the whole of the Dandenong Ranges are foothills, really.

And as if the area that they’re trying to rename is even in the foothills! The bit they’re trying to rename is more brae than foothills. It’s undulating, rather than hillified.

It would be ignoring the topography and making a mockery of the whole concept of topographic placenames.

And the concept of topographic placenames should NOT be mocked, ppl!

3. It’s unnecessary

The reason they want to rename it is to stop development.

Or, specifically, ‘over development’.

Which means that the ppl who live in the area have found a little piece of paradise, and they don’t want to share.

Of course, if the ppl who lived there before the current paradise-dwellers’ houses were built had felt that way too, then, well. You do the math.

Apparently, when the government authorities who give approval to developments give that approval, all they do is glance at the name of the suburb, and then reach for their rubber stamp.

I would have thought that there was a bit more to it than that. You know, dear Reader, things like zoning.

Apparently not.

But, if there were such a hypothetical zoning system, and a process where proposals for development are looked at carefully, rather than shunted through with short shrift, then we wouldn’t need to rename suburblets things like ‘Ferntree Gully Handsoff’.

Ambleside?

But mainly i don’t want it called ‘Foothills’ (see 1, above).

There’s this historic homestead, somewhere in the rough middle of the disputed area, called ‘Ambleside’. It’s the home of the Knox Historical Society, and the homestead dates back to when all about here was just paddocks.

I think ‘Ambleside’ is a much nicer name than ‘Foothills’.

And also using that as the name would be suitably ironic, given that it was the first domicile in the area, and that everything else all around it is the result of overdevelopment by evil developers.

So if we have to stupidly and unnecessarily rename that part of Ferntree Gully, let’s call it that.

Yours territorially,
Gullybogan