This short piece below I wrote for my writing group homework recently - "What's in a name?"
What’s in a name they
ask? It’s just a name. But without names where would we be? How would we
explain our location for instance?
In our own homes we
say….. out the front, out the back, down the side, or even down the back if you
have a long back yard.
It is common for
farmers or station owners to give their yards or paddocks names developed over time so property
owners know which part of the farm they are talking about.
In USA or England you probably call a paddock a field or meadow and in USA and Canada you might know large scale cattle grazing properties as ranches, which we call stations in Australia. I found this fascinating website giving translations - Fiona Lake - rural words.
On my family’s Western Australian wheatbelt farm
they have the wood yard, house yard, chook yard, shed yards, shearing shed yards,
sheep yards, and cattle yards.
There is also the home
paddock, front paddock, back paddock, one tree hill, the long paddock, the
quarry, and the firing range. The image you see above here is the "front" paddock.
You might have paddocks
named for the crop that is growing, its use or events that happen there – like
wheat paddock, horse paddock or jumps paddock.
From my search on the
net I’ve found….just to name a few..... the top and bottom paddocks, next doors paddock, windmill paddock, the airstrip,
tea tree, pine tree paddock or plantation paddock, thistle flat, river flats, gully, railway paddock, powerline paddock,
Skippies, Molly’s, kitchen field, doublegee, the pipeline paddock, the sand
paddock where nothing grows, a hilly paddock called Devon and
a flat paddock, Somerset. There was even
bathtub paddock and the tiny paddock with no gate paddock.
My family also name
their blocks - home block, Periclies,
Buttons, Finks and Macarthies, named for the previous owners of farms they have
purchased.
Bruce Rock where their
home block is located, was originally named Nunagin (Noonegin) but this name
was easily confused with Nungarin and Narrogin, which are other towns in the wheatbelt, so it was changed to Bruce
Rock, after a nearby rock said to be named after John Ruufus Bruce who cut
sandalwood near there around 1879. If you go up to the rock which is not far out of Bruce Rock you can see an old stone well.
Here is a pic of the main street of Bruce Rock early on a quiet Sunday morning.
The list of paddock
names seems to go on forever. Take a look at Stockyard on the net, then search
for “who else names their paddocks” on the forum tab.
Finally “long paddock” has
several meanings. Sometimes farmers refer to being “turned out into the long
paddock” when they retire. In Australia the “long paddock” also refers to
droving stock routes along roads or between grants where there was no road but the feed was often better. In drought times farmers might graze their
stock in the long paddock. You can even book to do a Long Paddock Cattle Drive.
You can check out more rural words and paddock names on the links below -
Stockyard - Who else names their paddocks?
ABC Net - Creative Paddock names buck farmer stereotype
