About ten years ago I drove from Melbourne to Newcastle to enjoy a wonderful holiday with close friends.

Accompanying me were my partner and two teenage daughters. For most Australians, the long laborious road trip is a rite of passage when navigating our vast brown land and the Hume Highway is one of the most tedious.

My daughters were actually well behaved and surprisingly non-combative during the drive from and to Melbourne, quite happy to listen to music. I interjected them occasionally with anecdotes from my inane and pointless life to which they responded with a grunt or a condescending chuckle, then would return to their Ipods.

For reasons beyond my control, perhaps out of sheer tediousness, I spotted a sign highlighting the turn off to Wangaratta on the way up. I immediately thought, “I wonder what the origin of that name is?” and I came up with something like the following and shared it with the other unsuspecting members of the vehicle.

“In the early to mid 1800s there was a large influx of Chinese to Australia in search of gold. They headed to the goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo but some like Wang Lin discovered his passion was for fruit and vegetables that could be grown in the rich soil along the Ovens River. His Australian wife Beverley and their two children Eric and Daisy lived in a timber cottage that Wang built on ten acres backing onto the Ovens. Life was great and there was little to be concerned about other than the odd rodent that would infiltrate the floorboards from below. Wang owned a shotgun but never used it until one day he was relaxing after a hard day’s toil on the farm. Beverley was in the kitchen and suddenly she saw an enormous rat in the living room where Wang was sitting. She screamed, “Wang a rat!” Boom went the shotgun and the rat was dead. “Ta” Beverley replied. And so the name Wangaratta was given to this new community. True story.”

On the return trip my partner Lynda decided to chime in to interpret the origins of a NSW town.  The sign read Bowna.

“Did you know that republicanism isn’t such a recent thing and goes back a long way in our history. Not everyone agreed with colonial rule and there were protests going back to the goldfields in Ballarat most famously in the 1800’s. Little does anyone know that there was one incident that received little attention but had such an impact that they named a town after it. In 1920 King George V rocked up in Australia on a royal tour and sensing a significant amount of push back towards the royal family, decided to take his tour away from the crowds of the city and into the bush where he could pretend to care for the great unwashed who undoubtedly would gush all over him. Little did he know when he toured Albury he would be confronted by Terry Jamieson, an Irish immigrant and pig farmer who lived in a tent city on the northern tip of Lake Hume. As the King walked along the heaving crowds, his loyal subjects and footmen were ordering the locals to bow in the King’s presence. Terry refused and when the King himself demanded he bow, Terry replied, “Bow? Nah.” So impressed by Terry’s stance, the locals formed a petition to have Terry’s home named Bowna. True story.”

So you can clearly see the idiocy this game creates. You don’t need to be on a long journey to engage in such puerile pleasures. Before we moved to Ballarat, we would take the train into Melbourne on the Glen Waverley line. One of the stops is Glen Iris. Allow me.

“Colin Edwards was a former WW1 officer who saw active service over three years in the most horrific conditions. He was in the medical corps where he was a highly respected eye surgeon. When he returned to his native Melbourne, Colin formed his own practice in the leafy and growing eastern suburbs. The suburb was still in its infancy but Colin had managed to employ three opticians to work in his burgeoning practice. Colin was highly regimented and unable to break the shackles of his military training and subsequent disciplined attitude to work. He instilled it into his opticians Alex, Roger and Bruce who repaid Colin with excellent standards and precise delivery on Colin’s demands. One of Colin’s little rituals was what can only be described as a medical roll call. He would do it randomly without warning and the opticians had to respond immediately. Colin would want to know the name of the patient and the part of the eye that was being worked on. As he marched down the common hallway of the practice he would call out, “Alex!” Alex would reply, “John, Retina.” Then it would be, “Roger!” who would reply, “Walter, Cornea.” Finally, “Bruce!”, who would reply, ”Glen, Iris.” When Colin was knighted in 1930 for his services he was given the opportunity to name his suburb and be Mayor of that suburb. He chose Glen Iris. Why not John Retina or Walter Cornea? Because they sounded stupid. True story.”

If you think this diatribe is ridiculous, you’re right, however my challenge to you is to try and develop your own town origin and recite it to a loved one whilst keeping a straight face. It’s lots of fun and a great way to whittle down some time during those long boring trips.