Dee Why
- Jeremy Steele
- 10 minutes ago
- 2 min read
It seems unlikely that any place name in Australia could have led to as many theories about how its name arose as Dee Why, a coastal suburb of northern Sydney. Here is how it all began:
The source of it all was an entry made by Irish explorer-surveyor and ex-convict James Meehan (1774-1826). Transported for a political ‘offence’, Meehan arrived in Australia in 1800 and was soon to be working as a surveyor out of Sydney, his duties taking him around the State, and to Victoria and Tasmania. On 27 September 1815 Meehan recorded in his Fieldbook 86:
From this tiny beginning, Meehan’s Dy became D.Y. then Deewhy and finally Dee Why. And so the speculation about the name began. A politician-adventurer Archibald Meston (1851-1924) was to write in The Sydney Morning Herald on 9 November 1921:
“Narrabeen and Deewee-deewee were the aboriginal names of the well-known lakes near Manly. “Narrabeen” was the swan ... and “deewee-deewee” was a widely spread name of the little grebe... Five aboriginals who were camped there called the honeysuckle ... “gnarrabeen,” ”
Much more was to follow the ‘little grebe’ suggestion:
— an Aboriginal word for stingrays in Dee Why Lagoon;
— Dona Ysabel, initials supposedly carved onto a rock nearby;
— and finally in 2009 there was a cogently argued text by Richard Michell dismissing one theory after another, to conclude that the name must have been Aboriginal—though he did not know what.
If ‘Dy’ were the whole word, then it might be rendered to sound with ‘y’ as either in Sydney, and hence ‘dee’. Respelt for Aboriginal language purposes, this could be di or diyi.
It is possible the Aboriginal informants were telling Meehan the place was ‘here!’, and not providing an actual name.
If Dy were D.Y. and hence diwayi, the nearest word to this would be:
but unless any nearby grass were regarded as hair, this seems unlikely, especially with the additional ‘-ra’.
That Meston should have so confidently affirmed the name as diwi challenges the ‘here’ possibility just proposed. And some support for Meston is found in the name of a bird recorded by one of the First Fleet painters, diwid-gang:
Jeremy Steele
25 October 2024
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