A shamble of boats huddle in the lee of the dogleg bend where the Thomson River joins the Grand Canal, the artificiality of the canal’s origins made plain by shores neatly buttressed in concrete and a waterway whose broad, even cut scores a line through parklands, farmlands and bush that could only be achieved by engineering.
Across the Port’s small expanse of placid water the complex that houses the town library, the art gallery and other council facilities looms over a carpark in a utilitarian hive, almost brutalist in weight.
Wellington Shire Council, based in Sale in South Eastern Australia’s Gippsland region, has confirmed it is renaming the western shore of the sleepy river port not to improve navigation, to promote tourism, or to prevent public confusion – but to avoid the political implications of the words “West” and “Bank”.
Billie-Jo Thorburn, Acting Manager Customer and Communications says the area is being renamed “because people were concerned about calling it anything with West or Bank, from a political perspective.”
In October 2025 council launched a webpage as part of its Your Wellington, Your Say site calling for public input into renaming the area, part of the historic Port of Sale officially known by its Victorian Land Registry number, 10~7\PP3468.
The public consultation – what the council refers to as a “visioning process” – involved members of the public submitting names, with a brief explanation of their suggestion. After submission the suggestions appeared live on the page and were available for upvoting by the public until the 2nd of November.
In public submissions names from the Gunaikurnai – the First Nations clans who have lived in the region for millennia on millennia – proved most popular; Wayput – meaning The Heart – the original name for the entire region around Sale, whose rich wetlands were central to Gunaikurnai life and culture, Nirramaloo Place – which means “together,” Jiddelek – the frog who drank all the waters from the river, then threw them up again when Snake made him laugh, or Borun Park, after Borun, the Pelican ancestor who travelled down the coast, with the Musk Duck Tuk hiding in his canoe. Others referenced figures from the area’s local and maritime history; Lewis Reserve, Mowat Point, Grainger Place. Still others took a more prosaic approach, based in location or usage; Anchorage Point, Westport, Mariners Green.
Peter Synan, a local historian who wrote a briefing paper on the colonial era history of the site for the council, strongly recommended Kerferd Place or Kerferd Park, after Sir George Kerferd, the state’s Attorney General who backed the plan and drafted the Sale Canal Enabling Bill in 1885. Synan’s briefing also discusses how in Australia the project saw the transition from the labour of draught horses and navvies armed with shovels, rope, fire and force, to steam-driven tractor engines and mechanical cranes. The Gunaikurnai, who had lived in deep harmony with the timeless rhythms of the landscape over tens of thousands years, in five short seasons witnessed violent machineries spewing steam and smoke, breaking gathering sites and riverbanks, uprooting mothertrees and direction trees, gouging deep into the Heart, leaving a sundered and unrecognisable landscape.
Now the area on the western side of the port accessed via Park Street over the modern Park Street Bridge comprises a boat ramp, docks, the Port of Sale Boat Club shed, historic markers, carpark facilities, and a greensward reserve along the west bank of the Grand Canal.
The area hosts a range of ongoing and one off events, including The Sale Music Festival, and the Rainbow Road Run Colour Run in 2024, as part of a broader season of public events in the town’s cultural precinct. Council records show the naming process did not begin as a political matter. Minutes indicate the issue was first raised earlier this year following confusion about how to refer to the location of the Sale Music Festival. At a council meeting on 7 October 2025, this confusion was formally noted and Councillor Rossetti recommended the matter be referred to the Place Names Committee.
At a Place Names Committee meeting on 11 March 2025, the matter was resolved for future consideration. On 10 June 2025, the committee resolved that council officers undertake a community engagement process to gather naming submissions for the west bank of the Port of Sale, including the boat ramp, car park and picnic area.
While not explicitly stated on the Help name the Western side of the Port of Sale! page, the assertion that the site is only known as 10~7\PP3468 implies that naming an unnamed site would prevent public confusion, facilitate public access via its official gazetting and inclusion in maps, and aid council marketing of such events, both distinguishing it from, and including it in the Port of Sale cultural precinct.
However it’s clear from the visioning process itself that the area has had both historic and more recent informal names. According to Daniel Parker-Estoppely it was once known as The Netherlands. A lifelong resident, CM, from nearby Dargo St, says locals have always referred to it as “the Port or the Port Reserve.” Google, pragmatically, names it Canal Reserve, pragmatically marking the middle of the canal’s waters, so the name could apply to either side.
The range of suggestions – from Indigenous dreaming figures to colonial powerbrokers – highlights how toponyms reflect which histories are elevated, and which dismissed.
A 2023 media release from Wellington Shire Council discussing a $1.7 million refurbishment of the Port’s mooring facilities specifically refers to the site as the “West Bank of the Port,” indicating the vernacular use of the name had achieved a semi-formal recognition in official documents.
While Thorburn says letters were sent to key stakeholders, “including GLaWAC [Gunaikurnai Lands and Waters Aboriginal Corporation], DEECA {Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action] as public land, Sale Historical Society, adjoining landowners along with the adjoining residents,” it isn’t apparent who raised concerns over referring to the area as “the West Bank,” or whether this issue was broached internally or from outside council. Seeking clarification on who raised the concerns, Thorburn replied that there was no particular source, it was “general feedback.”
Nor did council elaborate on how the term “West Bank” is politically sensitive. It remains, like the general feedback, an unthought – beyond explication, ration, reason.
The political sensitivity is not sub rosa. It is not something we cannot analyse, understand, think about. The West Bank is a landlocked territory west of the Jordan River comprising major Palestinian cities including Ramallah, Nablus, Bethlehem and Hebron. It has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Under the Oslo Accords, parts of the territory are administered by the Palestinian Authority, while Israel retains varying degrees of military and civil control. The United Nations and most of the international community regard Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal under international law and do not recognise Israel’s annexation of any part of the territory. Israel’s encroachment on Palestinian lands and rights has continue since the state’s creation, which saw Israeli militias violently expel three quarters of a million Palestinians from their homes. Since October 7, 23, Israel has redoubled its efforts to occupy and ethnically cleanse Palestinian territories in the West Bank.
Given the popularity of Indigenous names for the site in the naming process, part of a correction after Australia’s long history of erasure of Indigenous names and culture, it is ironic that a local Indigenous name is likely to be restored to a place subject to deep physical and cultural damage to prevent an oblique reference to the Indigenous people of Palestine currently subject to ongoing occupation, cultural erasure, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
In the often overlooked appendix to George Orwell’s 1984, The Principles of Newspeak, Orwell discusses the erasure of words to shape what is acceptable and unacceptable thought. That an Australian local council is doing the same in 2025 goes beyond irony; it reveals that Australia’s history of genocide, intertwined with Israel’s, is not so far behind us as we like to imagine. The violent erasure of landscape is buttressed by cultural erasure. In the elimination of discomforting language, across seemingly placid waters, they echo a dystopian silence.
The naming, (or unnaming) of the West Bank of The Port of Sale, according to council, is still to be determined.
