Friday, 5 December 2008

Plympton

I hope that Brian and Daphne get to read this brief missive. We've just returned from Adelaide where I spent four days at a major international conference. Dot and her brother, Dick, came along for the trip too, but spent the days out and about in the Adelaide region visiting wineries, galleries and that sort of thing. Meanwhile, I was confined indoors at the Australian Wine Centre in the botanical gardens ... which wasn't so difficult to take.

I took part in a panel session, delivered a paper and chaired a session, which about the most that anyone did. The organising groups were the Australia and New Zealand Regional Science Association (of which I'm Treasurer) and the Australian Research Council Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Science (ARCRNSISS). I'm also a member of the latter, which paid my travel, accommodation and registration fees! So, I had a good bargain.

What's all this to do with Plympton? Well, after the last conference session I took the tram from downtown to Glenelg on the Gulf of St Vincent. That's unremarkable, but half-way down the the 10 km to the beach I was stunned to find myself going through Plympton, which doesn't look anything like its UK namesake. In fact, the tram stopped at Plympton South and Plympton Park. Does anyone know how Plympton (OZ) came to get its name?

AS

1 comment:

Richard said...

The S S Great Britain, one of Brunel's ships, made 37 or so round trips from Bristol to Oz so I would imagine that some brave travellers must have hailed from Plympton and named their new town after the old one.
Richard Snow.