The name was originally given “by Forestry Dept workers in 1930”. The Nomenclature Board records also state it was because of the unusually large number of cut staves they used when they surveyed it, which resembled the poles Scouts use . . .
That's all very well,
but where does the word come from? And what is the connection between
boy scouts and forestry surveys?
Boy Scouts
The first definite
use of the word that I can find is in 1927 when Boy Scouts from all
over Australia held a Corroboree at the scouts' camp-site at Dog’s
Head, Lake Sorell.
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| scouts at Dog's Head 1927 |
At the end of the camp one troop was given
custody of the Tikkawoppa and an hour’s start before the
rest of the boys were set loose. The troop with the Tikkawoppa in
their possession when they reached Hobart was deemed the winner. They
hiked out to Tunbridge where they caught the train to Hobart, but
history does not relate who won or what they received as prize, if
anything. This activity was repeated in different places on other
occasions.
 |
| scout camp - Dog's Head, 1927 |
Nobody seems to know
precisely what the Tikkawoppa was, but I think it safe to say it was
whatever the scoutmaster chose to improvise. Here are some more photographs taken at the 1927 camp at Dog’s Head.
 |
| Preparing for departure - scout Corroboree 1927 |
Unfortunately,
they show nothing indisputably identifiable as the Tikkawoppa.
 |
| Scouts have adult leaders . . . |
The Forestry Department
Appointed in 1920,
Tasmania's first Conservator of Forests Mr Llewellyn Irby had a
staff of four: Working Plans Officer, draftsman, a clerk and a
typist. They oversaw the work of a very small army of forestry
workers, and the Working Plans Officer and Conservator spent much of
their time in the field.
 |
| Forestry Camp, 1929 |
In the early twentieth
century the first extensive forest surveys were undertaken, and
workers camped out for weeks at a time in remote forests. Although
the Department boasted its own motor car, called Walzing Matilda,
roads were few, tracks were rough, and often the only transport was
by packhorse. The surveyors set up substantial camps with big, heavy
canvas tents supported on a large number of poles which were cut in
the forest around the camp site and they drove in wooden staves all over
the forest as survey markers. The denser the forest, the more markers
were required.
Colonel Lane
 |
| Denis Lane at Dog's Head camp, 1927 |
Apart from tents, the
other thing the Boy Scouts and the Forestry Department had in common
was Lt Col Denis Lane, who joined the public service on his return
from the Great War and was the Forestry Department's first Working
Plans Officer. He continued to serve part-time in the Army and was
also very active as District Commissioner of Scouts. All together,
these activities ensured he could spend the greater part of his life
camping out in the bush somewhere drawing maps, his favourite
occupation. In January/February 1930 he and a team of bushmen spent two weeks
surveying the west coast of Tasmania for the Forestry Department.
But What About the Tikkawoppa?
Denis Lane was born in
Christchurch, New Zealand, seventh of twelve children. The Lane family
moved to Australia at the end of the nineteenth century and
eventually settled in Hobart when he was about seven years old. They
were educated, literate people with a keen sense of humour and a
love of language and word games. Like many families, they had a
collection of nicknames and private words and tikkawoppa was
just one of them. They might have made it up; they might have
mis-heard or deliberately corrupted an existing word, perhaps of
Maori origin. It is impossible to say.
We can be quite
certain, however, that it was Denis Lane who introduced tikkawoppa to both the scouts and the Forestry Department as a
general term for an otherwise undistinguished object, and it was
probably in general use for a while. At least among impressionable
young lads and bored bushmen working alongside the Colonel.
An uncle told me the
tale of the scouts and the Tikkawoppa when I was asking him about my
grandfather, Colonel Lane. It was some time after this that I
discovered the Tikkawoppa Plateau on a map of the west coast of
Tasmania and contacted the Lands Department to check whether
Grandfather had anything to do with it. He had.
Denis named many
features on the west coast and in other parts of Tasmania, and some
years later the Nomenclature Board named Lanes Peak, near Mt Field,
after him in recognition of the work he had done for them.
The picture at the top
of this entry is called Tikkawoppa, and I painted it after my
uncle told me of the Boy Scouts and the Tikkawoppa. But I still don't really know the origin of the word.
If you're a New
Zealander and happen to have come across a similar word somewhere, I'd really like to
know!
