Places/walyalup.html
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Walyalup
Griffiths Architects:
Walyalup has been a significant area in Whadjuk Noongar boodjar for tens of thousands of years. [2] The name Walyalup was first reported by a colonist when Robert Lyon [3] published a guide to the Noongar language in 1833. He noted the area included “both sides of the river; North and South”. Unfortunately, Lyon offered no translation of the name at the time.
The City of Fremantle has since undergone consultation with the Whadjuk Traditional Owners and have adopted the place name Walyalup as “the place of the Walyo or Woylie” or kangaroo-rat. [4] ‘Wal-yo’, a variant pronunciation of ‘Walyalup’, is described by George Fletcher Moore in 1846 as “Wal-yo - the Kangaroo-rat. An animal nearly as large as a wild rabbit, tolerably abundant, and very good for eating”. [5]
Without future detailed archaeological and anthropological investigation (including interviews with Aboriginal people who may have oral histories they may be willing to share) it is impossible to offer evidence for pre-contact Aboriginal usage of or associations with the subject site. Even so, some evidence is available for the wider area: The site has not been the subject of an in-depth study and has not included on the register of aboriginal sites or recorded as a place of interest to date.
Notes:
2. Whadjuk Noongar boodjar means the home (land) of the Whadjuk people, who are part of the wider Noongar people of Southwest Australia. Please note no Aboriginal consultation was undertaken during the writing of this report, which relies on secondary literature and archival material. As a consequence, the information given here may differ from that provided by local Indigenous informants. No public use (e.g. interpretation) should be made of any Aboriginal history given here unless appropriate consultation with relevant people and families has been completed or the source material indicates relevant consultation.
3. Lyon, R. M., ‘A Glance at the Manners, and Language of the Aboriginal Inhabitants of Western Australia; with a short vocabulary,’ 23 March 1833, in N. Green (ed), Nyungar – The People: Aboriginal customs in the southwest of Australia (Perth: Creative Research, 1979)
4. The City of Fremantle consultation meeting on 15 October 2014 with Whadjuk Traditional Owners via Southwest Aboriginal Land and Sea Council. Statements of Significance for the Fremantle Area and Registered Aboriginal Sites - Cantonment Hill, Rocky Bay and Swan River, 2016, (report prepared by the City of Fremantle and Mood Jar Consultancy), see: [https://www.fremantle.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/Statements%20of%20Significance_Whadjuk%20Nyoongar.pdf Statements of Significance for the Fremantle Area and
Registered Aboriginal Sites – Cantonment Hill, Rocky Bay and Swan River] (accessed 24 August 2020).
N.b. The interpretation offered here differs from that described by Ken Macintyre and Barb Dobson with several Noongar Elders in 2009, who describe: “Walyalup may derive its meaning from walyal (lungs) and up (place of) literally signifying ‘place of the lungs.’ Body part metaphors were often used when naming parts of rivers, headlands, hills and other prominent features of the landscape. Walyalup is probably an indigenous body part metaphor describing the simulated lung-like action of the alternating land and sea breezes which blew daily up and down the river with seasonal regularity, especially during summer and early autumn when Noongar people were camped in the riverine-estuarine coastal belt. The effects of these winds would have been most pronounced at the mouth of the Swan estuary close to where Fremantle is located”. Macintyre Dobson and Associates Pty Ltd., ‘Meetings with Nyungar Elders, January and February 2009’ (unpublished report prepared for Fremantle Ports, 2009), see: Pre-contact indigenous Fremantle (accessed 19 March 2020)
5. Moore, G. F., Pingelly-Brookton Leader, 20 June 1946:3.
References and Links
Griffiths Architects, Fremantle Arts Centre Conservation Management Plan, August 2020.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on Anzac Day, 2020 and hosted at freotopia.org/places/walyalup.html (it was last updated on 16 April, 2024). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.