Can You Pronounce These Australian Town Names?

Pronounced: Duh-nill-a-kwin

This town in the Riverina region of New South Wales neighbours the world’s largest red gum forest, and hosts a festival each Spring that’s sensibly abbreviated to the Deni Ute Muster.

Pronounced: Wool-uh-muh-loo

There’s a very simple way to remember how to spell the name of this fashionable inner-city Sydney suburb: cow-toilet-sheep-toilet.

Pronounced: Nin-gun

This tiny sheep-shearing town smack bang in the centre of New South Wales has a fun name to pronounce, and belongs to a shire with an even better moniker: Bogan, Australian-English for an unrefined gentleman.

Pronounced: Ood-nuh-dadda

The minuscule township of 300 people located 1000km north of Adelaide is basically a pink roadhouse surrounded by Mars-like landscape as far as the eye can see.

Pronounced: Coo-buh Pee-dee

The opal capital of the world is hardly visible above ground – it’s so hot in Central Australia that most residents live in underground ‘dugouts’ to escape the heat.

Pronounced: Gun-duh-windy

Three hours’ drive inland from Brisbane along the NSW-Queensland border lies a classic country town of 6000 residents, whose name literally means ‘duck poo’ in the local Aboriginal language.

Pronounced: Wun-yoo

In the Goulburn Valley 200km north of Melbourne is a tiny town with a great sense of humour: a mural on a water tower welcomes visitors to the world’s smallest sheep station, riffing on the town’s name, pronounced ‘one ewe’.

Pronounced: Way-eye

This former railway town not far from Wunghnu is only 400 strong but still organises an annual tractor pull to raise funds for local community groups.

Pronounced: Moh-wee

This large town in the Latrobe Valley in eastern Victoria isn’t named after the bartender in the Simpsons or the member of the Three Stooges with a bowl cut – in fact, it’s pronounced altogether differently.

Pronounced: Mug-ruh-bah

The name of this historic 19th Century village in the Gold Coast Hinterland comes from an Indigenous expression meaning, politely, ‘place of infant’s excrement’.

Pronounced: Lye-a-wee-nee

The name of this fishing village in central Tasmania comes from an Aboriginal word meaning ‘frigid’ – that’s a pretty accurate label for a place with a maximum summer temperature that’s colder than Brisbane’s winter climate.

Pronounced: Jin-jin

An hour north of Perth in Western Australia sits a town whose name sounds like a stuttered drink order.

Pronounced: Zan-tip-ee

The only place name in Australia beginning with X owes its name either to philosopher Socrates’ wife, or an Aboriginal word meaning ‘looking for water from a deeper well’, the favoured local explanation.