Do you live in one of Australia’s most oddly named towns?

Victoria was ablaze this summer. We fought fires from Walwa to Ruffy, from Carlisle River to Wonnangatta Valley. As a radio host, I know the names by heart, the traps of pronunciation. Who knew Colac Colac near Corryong is “Clack-Clack” to locals?

Yet one name shone through the smoke. Less a town than a smudge near Dargo called Peter the Swede. That’s right – Peter the Swede. Who was he, asked the audience. A bushranger? A meatball chef? ABC’s Landline journo, Tim Lee, sent me Placenames Australia, a quarterly devoted to the stories behind our toponyms, issued by our National Placenames Survey.

First, don’t expect much hospitality from Peter the Swede, let alone houses. The un-town is a jumble of empty gold pits where Peter probably prospected in the 1860s, his surname usurped by his nationality as was the custom.

Researcher John Schauble uncovered a debtors’ log from a Matlock pub near Woods Point, another gold rush spot. There, the publican awaited shillings from Bill the German, Yankee Jack and Scotch Jim. He’s probably still waiting.

Numerous Swedish Peters bobbed up in Trove, including one who lost his purse in a Fitzroy brothel (1871); who killed a man in Ringarooma (1884); who dodged a falling branch in the Yarra Valley (1897). Whether any is our man, the trail goes cold.

Yet such is the chase’s thrill embodied by Placenames, the gazette devoted to sifting records for the secrets behind the map. Editor David Blair and colleague Jan Tent sent me a few of their fondest quests, including Yo-Yo Creek.

Edmund Kennedy, exploring outback Queensland in 1848, bestowed the name, inspiring modern graziers to presume the label denoted the up-and-down nature of water levels. A folkloric gotcha, as yo-yo didn’t reach the Oxford Dictionary until decades later, while its verb debuted in 1967. Turns out the name is likely to have echoed the local Bidjara people, where yo (and yo-yo) were common assents, as diarised by Kennedy.

Confusion persists in NSW, where the River Lett flows between Bathurst and Lithgow. In 1813, surveyor George Evans originated the name. But who was Lett? A clue hides in the weird syntax, where the feature (river) lies before the unique name. Seems a government scribe misread Evans’ scrawl, and creative spelling, assuming “river lett” (read: rivulet) was the stream’s identity.

Leading us to Vrilya Point on the Gulf of Carpentaria. An idle inquiry may frame the palm cockatoo (known as vrilingathi in the nearby Tjungundji language) as the source, despite the bird’s patch being more Cape York, not to mention the name’s odd truncation. Maybe Dutch was the link, owing to its distinct vr-coupling, plus Arnhem’s brush with Abel Tasman. No dice. The cape kept its mystery, until Jan Tent opened the book on Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a sci-fi pioneer who wrote The Coming Race in 1870.

In the novel, Bulwer-Lytton coins vril – also vril-ya – as a cosmic energy. The magical notion clearly grabbed early readers, as seen in Lytton (Brisbane’s port), the Lytton electorate, plus Bulwer Island (near the city’s airport), even the Vegemite rival of Bovril (“ox-energy”).

A mere glimpse of four names, from vague Swedes to sci-fi woo-woo, shows how well this continent hides her gold – toponym gold – below her surface.

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