Hume council will officially name a Sunbury park, formerly referred to colloquially as Village Green, to Noogal Park.
In the July 22 council meeting, Cr Jarrod Bell said that the idea for naming the park located near Rolling Meadows Drive was to avoid confusion with the Sunbury Village Green.
“[It] has created a great deal of confusion and continues to do so,” Cr Bell said.
He said that because of this confusion, there have been cases where local emergency services attend the wrong location.
Cr Bell said that the choice of the new name Noogal Park – noogal being a Woiwurrung word meaning ‘belong’ – was to “celebrate a critical part of our community … our First Nations people.”
The naming comes after community consultation on the proposal earlier this year.
Cr Bell said that he was “incredibly disappointed to see some of the language that was used,” in community responsed and “found it to be incredibly distressing [and] in some circumstances, pretty racist.”
Cr Jack Medcraft, who supported the naming of the park to a Woiwurrung name, said that doing so could help with drawing attention to other parts of our history.
“My grandfather … he couldn’t go into a bar and drink with his ex-soldier mates [and] he couldn’t get a housing loan. So I think people should sit down and have a good think about how they are positioned and how my forebears were treated,” Cr Medcraft said.
According to a Hume officer report, during community consultation, there were 85 submissions opposing the naming and 78 submissions supporting it.
Cr Trevor Dance voted against the proposed naming at the council meeting, saying that those in the community consultation who opposed the proposal did so largely due to financial considerations.
This was in reference to a fee of $3,500 to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation for the ongoing use of the word noogal.
In a right of reply, Cr Bell said that it was important to consider the role Hume could have in support of a culture and language through financial and symbolic means.
“If it means that we can save a portion of a culture that is so incredibly important to this country, I think it’s worth it,” Cr Bell said.
