What's in a Name

What’s in a name? with IAN ELLIOT

Lilian Stokes Rock

My brief visit to this feature in Frank Hann National Park at the end of February this year, just after the whole area had been so decimated by fire, recalled to mind the strange rumour that went around some years ago that it was so named because it was supposed to be the burial site of Miss Stokes. Admittedly, there is an arrangement of stones there that may resemble the vague outline of a grave, but investigation soon scotched the rumour. Miss Stokes never got there either alive or deceased. Explorer Frank Hann, forcing his way through the bush generally southwards from Southern Cross to Ravensthorpe, referred to it by this name when he took sights from there on 20 August 1901. Since no-one besides Aborigines are known to have been there before him, there can be no doubt that he named the feature. That he was acquainted with a lady of that name is confirmed in one of his later exploration diaries when he named Point Lilian in the Great Victoria Desert, adjacent to the present-day ‘Connie Sue Highway’. His diary entry, dated 3 June 1903, states, ‘Will call this Point Lilian S. after Miss Stokes of Sydney.’ I’ve waded through Sydney newspapers in Trove for any mention of this lady without success but certainly Hann was in Sydney for 17 days in September 1899 trying to raise funds to stock pastoral leases he’d applied for after his Kimberley explorations. I suspect that Miss Stokes may perhaps have been his landlady during that stay, or at least someone who’d been kind to him in some way, but we may never know the full details.

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