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Rame Head

A visitor to our website has contacted us with information he has published on RAME HEAD. Not the southern extremity of our own peninsula, but one from the antipodes!

He writes thus:

I have just discovered your group via an internet search.You may be interested in the attached article published in Cook's Log, journal of the Captain Cook Society.It contains interesting information about Rame Head, Victoria, Australia, named by James Cook in 1770 after Rame Head, Cornwall.Because of a number of confusions discussed in the article, it is not well known (in UK or Australia) that Australia's Rame Head is the first place named by Cook on the Australian coast.It is also the first place in Australia named after a place in Britain.Cook left England on the first voyage from Plymouth and would have passed Rame Head, so it is a wonderful topographical coincidence that the first place that he named in Australia looked so similar.


The author and copyright holder of the article, Trevor Lipscombe has allowed us to use the following article. (click on the title to view - article revised November 2013)


Rame Head a Remarkably Overlooked Point

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Rame Head
(more details)

  • Rame Head or Ram Head is a coastal headland in eastern Victoria, Australia, within the Croajingolong National Park.
  • Little Rame Head lies to the east, past Wingan Inlet.
  • The local aboriginal people call the headland Konowee or Kouowee.
  • The name Ram Head was given by Lieutenant James Cook ( Captain Cook) to a point on the coast which he passed on 20 Feb 1770.
  • He named it after Rame Head in Plymouth Sound, which its shape resembled.
  • Cook wrote the name without an "e" and that spelling was adopted by Bass and Flinders and became official.
  • At some point, perhaps quite early, the Royal Navy (and later Royal Australian Navy) used the spelling Rame,
  • while Ram continued in civilian use. In 1971, the gazetted it as "Rame" to match its Cornish namesake.
  • A view from partway up Rame Head, looking north along the beach towards Wingan Inlet
  • Locals pronounce the name like "Sam", whereas the headland in Cornwall is pronounced like "same".
  • The former reflects the initial spelling, and perhaps an idea it referred to a ram—as in a male sheep—although that is the case neither there nor in Cornwall.


Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rame_Head_%28Victoria%29





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