Nimmitabel. Nimmitabel. Sounds nice, doesn’t it? It’s one of my favourite-sounding place names. Nimmitabel, down in the Monaro. The fact that it’s so windswept, desolate and Russian steppe-like that only a Cossack or rugged-up brumby dodger could love it is immaterial. It just sounds nice.
But then there’s my very favourite, and it’s local. Billilimbra. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Billil-imbra. Such a sweet-sounding name for a hulking, kilometre-high scrub-clad eminence on the Gibraltar Range, west of Baryulgil. I’ve been there. You’d like it, but it’s rugged like a hydrochloric Harpic hangover, and the views are elusive.
How do you get there? First, pack a fortnight’s worth of packed lunches and source some politician-hide walking boots stout enough to kick a grizzly bear up the Khyber. Motor to Tabulam, cross the river and head south until the road stops making sense. Light out on foot until you stop making sense. You’re now on Billilimbra.
What does it mean? Ah, that’s a linguistic poser too deep for this humble scribbler. If the custodians still know, they’re not telling. I’m sticking with onomatopoeia and bird call (not sure which bird). Has the true meaning already gone the way of the thylacine? Time will (or won’t) tell.
Anglicisers back in the day insisted on ‘Billyrimba’, which sounds like a demented goat dance. I suppose they had their reasons, but so did Samuel Marsden – the Flogging Parson, the flour poisoners,and also the characters who imported foxes and lantana cuttings.
What was I doing on Billilimbra? Research. There are some, led by Ofay Slavering, 35, aroma-homeopath of Theresa Creek, who claim that Waxy Noggins, legendary surfie builder and visionary, went there in 1964 to prove the theory that Billilimbra was the only location on Earth from where you could see the Sleeping Giant, Mallanganee Lookout, the Dulgigin Sphynx, Woollool Woolloolni (Wellington’s Hat, near Tenterfield) and the Casino Water Tower.
You can’t see those things from Billilimbra. The scrub is too thick. If Waxy did go there he would have found the same thing. That Ofay Slavering has got form for slinging cosmic debris. She said that Taylor Swift was coming out to play the part of Miranda in a remake of Picnic at Hanging Rock, to be shot at Nimbin Rocks.
She said the zipper from Harold Holt’s wetsuit was found washed up on Air Force Beach by a Labradoodle with a metal detector, and she said there was a secret square on the Kyogle Council ballot paper where you could vote for Trump and it would be counted.
The tick bite infections are clearing up, and the doctor says that what I’ve got is not necessarily Lyme’s Disease, but I have to admit the Billilimbra expedition took it out of me.
Still, it’s a beautiful name.
But what’s your favourite? What place name rolls off your tongue and into your ears and dopamine receptors like Beethoven’s Chocolate Dopamine Mousse Concerto? Put it up as a comment. It’ll be fun, and a great way to boost the Indy’s Like stats.
There are always mad stories and myths associated with mountains. Everest, Fuji, Ararat, Uluru, Mt Panorama, Wolverton Mountain…
The number of folks who have been turned into mountains over the years is truly frightening. Often, they were doomed to guard something or other forever. This got very tedious. No wonder volcanos blew off from time to time. In this day and age, mountains don’t do as much guarding, but Billilimbra, sweet-sounding sentinel of the Washpool Wilderness, looms on, a lesson to us all.
Bullgoose
and then