Names
Australian Placenames of German Background
Arkona, Victoria
Place name sign at the entrance to Arkona in the Wimmera in Victoria.
Arkona is a hamlet on the Dimboola-Rainbow Road in the Wimmera in the west of Victoria. It was settled in 1890 predominantly by Germans. The locality used to be called Katyil West until the name changed in 1913. Katyil West State School (State School #2766) was renamed Arkona State School in 1913.[1] Local history has it that the name Arkona was selected because Cape Arkona in Germany was a favourite place of the local Lutheran pastor of that part of the Wimmera.[2] Cape Arkona is a 45-metre high cape on the German island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea. Cape Arkona is affectionately known in Germany as "Germany's North Cape". (Professor Lodewyckx of the University of Melbourne, who wrote a book in 1932 about the Germans in Australia, stated that the name Grünwald also existed for Arkona in the early days.[3])
This origin of the placename Arkona is also given in a 1944 book about placenames in Victoria and Tasmania, although it is not expressed very clearly.[4]
Information board about Cape Arkona for visitors at Putgarten near the cape in northern Germany.
Photo source: Derzno, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Cape Arkona in northern Germany.
Photo source: Andreas Steinhoff, Attribution, via Wikimedia Commons
♦ Notes:
1. Blake, L. J. (general editor) & Education Department of Victoria. (1973). Vision and realisation : a centenary history of state education in Victoria. Melbourne: Education Department of Victoria. Volume 2, p.195
2. Klinge, Sally. Principal, Dimboola Memorial Secondary College. Personal communication, email 30/09/2021
3. Lodewyckx (1932), p.56
4. Martin, A. E. (1944). Place names in Victoria and Tasmania. Sydney (New South Wales) : N.S.W. Bookstall Co, <https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1184342170>, p.7
♦ References:
Lodewyckx, Prof. Dr. A. (1932). Die Deutschen in Australien. Stuttgart: Ausland und Heimat Verlagsaktiengesellschaft.