The Ghosts of Hotham

In the north-east end of North Melbourne, not far from the activity of the Royal Melbourne Hospital, is a quiet laneway behind a pub with the name Hotham Place. Among the stacked tables, empty kegs and recycling bins, the grand epithet is a poetic end for the legacy of a man whose name used to describe the entire area.

This is because the suburb of North Melbourne was once the town of Hotham, named in 1859 after Charles Hotham, who took over from Charles La Trobe as lieutenant-governor, and later became Victoria’s first full governor.

Its renaming in 1887, only 28 years later, is unusual because it may be an example one of Australia’s earliest renaming debates, of the kind that has received renewed attention after the national protests that followed George Floyd’s death in May 2020.

 Unlike Arthur Phillip or Lachlan Macquarie , Charles Hotham has not been linked to injustices against Indigenous Australians, and his name remains less contentious.

But his ghostly presence throughout Victoria poses again the question,  as Guardian columnist Calla Wahlquist has written,  of whether less "overtly racist" names also represent an opportunity for new names with more positive associations for all Australians.

Hotham’s tenure was nonetheless controversial: it was defined by the Eureka Rebellion, which culminated in a battle on December 3 1854 in which, by conservative estimates,  at least 22 mostly Irish-immigrant gold miners and five soldiers died.  Hotham wrote in November 1854 that he had authorised troops to “use force…without regard to the consequences which might ensue” and his heavy-handed approach to the crisis  was criticised by contemporaries and recent historians . The strain of events may have been too much for Hotham, who died from a chill six months later, after which places throughout Victoria were named in his dubious honour. North Melbourne is where many of these spectres appear. In the area informally known as Hotham Hill are the Hotham Hill LPO and the Hotham Hub Children’s Centre. There are  the historic Hotham Gardens flats  built by the Housing Commission on and modern luxury apartments at  The Hotham Hill . Outside the town hall on Errol Street, the 1877 drinking fountain donated by Mayor Thomas Henderson bears Hotham’s coat of arms, flanked by figures eerily resembling the Eureka Rebels.

Before the town was formally renamed in August 1887, debates in council meetings and newspapers did not focus on the name’s controversy, but on the  reputational  and  financial  advantages of the name North Melbourne. However,  an 1885 letter  from a self-professed “Hothamite” did ask: “why should Sir Charles Hotham’s name not be held in honour as well as Lord Melbourne’s name?” This appears to be a rare protest, reflecting North Melbourne's new demographics: after the end of the urban exodus of the Gold Rush,  it had grown into the city’s most densely populated area, with a strong working-class character . Hotham, meanwhile, had become for some a symbol of autocracy, with  a May 1887 letter to The Leader  describing Hotham, with his "brutal policy of coercion", as "the best hated man in the land".

Today there is a reduced appetite for renaming. Dr Joseph Toscano, an anarchist radio presenter  who has previously called upon Victorian Police to apologise  for the Eureka massacre, said that he did not think Hotham had made any real contribution to Victoria and “may be in the Pantheon of names to be removed”. For Toscano however, Hotham is “not on the top of [his] list”, coming below colonialists with a “much more difficult legacy”.

Tom Rigby, a public servant and Hotham Gardens resident, also says that renaming is unnecessary because less well-known colonial administrators like Hotham "don’t have any hold on Australians’ collective imagination”, and the name would likely disappear when the flats are eventually demolished.

However, a committee member of local history society,  the Hotham History Project , revealed that the group is in the early stages of consultations with Indigenous groups - North Melbourne is on Wurundjeri land - on a more inclusive name, because of the general colonial associations of Hotham's name, but declined to comment further. This is an interesting development in a debate which has often focused just on highly controversial names. Whether or not Hotham’s involvement in Eureka was shameful, his name’s use throughout Victoria for places without lasting ties might offer more potential.

The federal division of Hotham, which partly coincides with the city of Monash, was the subject of 2018 calls from Councillor Geoff Lake for it to be renamed after Sir John Monash. (The name Monash was instead given to the  former division of McMillan , previously named after  the infamous architect of the Gippsland massacres. )  In an article  in The Age, Lake characterised Hotham as “incompetent", and “not even an Australian” asking: “Surely it is only in Australia that a foreign citizen in such circumstances would be bestowed with the enduring distinction of a seat in the nation’s parliament in his honour?”

The expansive slopes around Mount Hotham are another candidate. According to the  Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Register and Information System , traditional owners for the area have not been formally recognised, although the  Mount Hotham Resort management  acknowledges the Gunaikurnai and Taungurung peoples' strong cultural connection.

The Gunaikurnai Land and Aboriginal Waters Corporation and the Taungurung Land & Waters Council were not immediately available for comment.

The notion of "erasing history" is a trope of the renaming debate which overlooks the fact that colonial figures often have multiple places named after them. There is an interesting historical lesson in keeping the ironic grandeur of a name like Hotham Place. But the natural grandeur of a setting like Mount Hotham need not be forever associated with a fading colonial name.