Bateman Bay: Reinstating Cook's name for gateway to Canberra's playgrounds

But there's a more historically important reason to reconsider the name of the gateway to Canberra's south coast playgrounds, one that runs back almost 250 years.

In the past few years, it's been a personal interest of mine to petition for the renaming of the bay to better represent its history and the real intentions of its namer, Captain James Cook.

The bay Cook observed on April 21, 1770, was named by him as Bateman Bay. It appears today as Batemans Bay, which is not the historical name. Cook describes the observation of the bay and its naming in his Endeavour Journal as: "An Open Bay wherein lay 3 or 4 Small Islands, bore N.W. by W. distant 5 or 6 Leagues. This Bay seem'd to be very little Shelter'd from the Sea Winds, and yet it is only likely Anchoring place I have yet seen upon the Coast"

Charts of Cook's very clearly show him as having named it Bateman Bay.

In an effort to correct this historical wrong of an additional 's', I wrote to the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian in August 2017. I asked her to reinstate Cook's name to Bateman Bay instead to accurately reflected the historical geographic record for the place.

I had in mind the upcoming 250th anniversary of Cook's voyage along the east coast in 1770. It was also important to me to consider a dual naming of the bay with the local Indigenous name for it.

It was also of interest to me to know the NSW government's plans to mark the 250th anniversary of Cook's voyage more broadly, in 2020.

I received a reply from the Premier's chief of staff, advising that the submission for the reinstatement of Cook's name Bateman Bay, and dual naming for the bay, had been referred to Victor Dominello. He was the minister with responsibility for geographic place names.

Soon enough I received a reply from his chief of staff telling met the submission had been referred to the NSW Department of Finance, the department with those places name responsibilities.

And so I waited.

Within six weeks I heard from the chair of the NSW Geographical Places Names Board that they would consider my submission at their meeting scheduled in September 2017.

Alas, at its meeting the board determined it would not support the reinstatement of Bateman Bay.

In part of its reasoning its said the name Batemans Bay had been recorded in popular usage since 1821 and that changes to names must be considered in the context of not generating confusion, particularly for navigation aids such as global positioning systems.

But in response to the second element of my submission, the board had agreed with the the merit of the dual naming of Batemans Bay. I was advised the board would write to the Batemans Bay Local Land Council to initiate the process.

I agree with the practicality argument advanced by the Geographic Names Board of NSW but I would see that some heritage-based signage could be installed at the bay, similar to the Canberra Tracks signs used in the ACT.

I'm looking forward to hearing what comes of that process, as well as hearing how the NSW government will mark the 250th anniversary of Cook's voyage.