Deptford? Woolwich? No, Ballina is just fine!
How does the name ‘Deptford’ sound to you? Or ‘Woolwich’? Would you like to live there?
Had it not been for the early settlers to this region, Ballina may still be known by the name Deptford.
According to Glen Hall’s book, Port of Richmond River, Captain Henry Rous was probably the first white man to sail into the Richmond River (in August 1828). Then in 1843, surveyor James Burnett named the new settlement Deptford.
Hall wrote in his 1983 publication that Deptford became Ballina probably because of the Aboriginal name, Balloonah, which Irish settlers adapted to Ballina, which is a town in County Mayo in Ireland.
Former Northern Star editor Cliff Murray, in his book Across Three Bridges, wrote that the town’s name was gazetted as West Ballina in 1856.
But it was not until 1967 that the Geographic Names Board accepted that West Ballina should actually be Ballina. And Murray writes that East Ballina, which was previously known simply as Ballina, was accepted by the Geographic Names Board as actually being East Ballina.
Murray also gives a variation on ‘Balloonah’, spelling the Aboriginal place name as ‘Bullenah’, which some people suggested meant ‘Blood running from the wounded’ (a possible reference to the massacre of Aboriginal people in the 1850s), or ‘place of the oysters’.
So where does ‘Woolwich’ come into this? Well, Murray writes that in 1855, a surveyor was sent north to lay out the proposed town of ‘Woolwich’ at the mouth of the Richmond River.
Thankfully, the locals had the last say. ‘Woolwich by the sea’? ‘Deptford by the sea’?
No, Ballina by the sea is just fine by me.
