A reader has questioned the appropriateness of the place name ‘Munyang’ in relation to the Snowy Mountains, as referenced on the new sign at Farrans Lookout on the Great River Road (pictured).

An online search revealed that the meaning of the Indigenous word ‘Munyang’ generally refers to a woman or something feminine in either a good or bad way (which is your decision at the time). It has also been used a slang word for a woman’s “private parts”.(*)

However, John Murphy, who has long held a strong interest in local Indigenous history, says that the word has a different definition according to records dating back to the late 1830s. Mr Murphy was consulted by the Towong Shire Council over the information contained on the lookout sign and said that ‘Munyang’ was a perfectly acceptable synonym for the Snowy Mountains.

“My research goes back to notes I discovered in the Mitchell Library in Sydney written in 1838, a few years after Europeans first entered the district”, he said.

“P. G. King took up a squatting run at Mannus near Tumbarumba at that time and with local Indigenous guides he toured much of the wider district.

“The name ‘Munyang’ – pronounced Money-ang – was given to him by the local Indigenous people as referring to the section of the Great Dividing Range we refer to the Snowy Mountains. That was where they ascended to collect the Bogong moths on their annual migration.

“The word is derived from a local Indigenous word ‘Monnong’ – a very tall-growing Alpine grass that once covered the Wilkinson Valley and much of the rest of the tops when Strzelecki and James Macarthur ventured there in March 1840,” Mr Murphy explained.

“It disappeared from the High Country after cattle started being grazed there.”

“The Ngarigo People of the Monaro referred to the same area as the ‘Moni- ong’. This information was given to NSW Government Geologist, William Branwhite Clarke, in 1851 by his two Monaro native guides and he recorded this in his notes and publications also lodged in the Mitchell Library.”

Mr Murphy also said one of the earliest cattle leases that covered this area above the snow-line was called the ‘Munyang Lease’ and White’s River, that flows from the top of the range near Dicky Cooper’s Bogong, is alternatively known as the Munyang River.

“There is also much other evidence from early records that support the belief that the Snowy Mountains and the Munyang are one and the same,” he said.

The dominating feature of the Upper Murray horizon is also believed to be the inspiration of the Corryong CWA branch, which was named ‘Munyang’ almost a hundred years ago.

The Munyang skyline has also been immortalised in an iconic photo by former local, Mark Whitehead.

(*) Source: The Urban Dictionary

This article appeared in the Corryong Courier, 14 September 2023.