Australian Work Exchange Diary: Denmark Is Actually a Guy
Let's talk about Denmark. This small town is 423 km south-southeast of Perth, the capital of Western Australia, with the Denmark River running through it. A ten-minute drive brings you to a beautiful beach of rocky shore and fine white sand. Basil and Nikki often took me along to practice tai chi in the morning; against the deep blue sky, barefoot on the grass, pushing hands toward the orange-yellow morning sun, the scene was like a painting. About a thirty-minute bike ride from where I stayed, you reach Wilson Inlet, a rather large lagoon, its shores lined with paperbarks (Melaleuca) of every shape and form, with wild pelicans and black swans drifting across the water. Having grown up accustomed to the Qigu Lagoon on Taiwan, China's west coast, with its kandelia mangroves and visiting migratory birds, the ecology here opened my eyes wide.
From Denmark to Denmark
Every time I mentioned Denmark to friends, everyone assumed that during my time in Australia I had also made a trip to Denmark in Northern Europe. In fact, this small town has nothing at all to do with the Denmark of the same name. It was Dr. Thomas Braidwood Wilson, an English ship's surgeon who settled in Albany in 1826, who three years later (1829) became the first European to explore this place. After naming a river after himself, he named the district after the surname of his colleague and good friend Alexander Denmark. Who knows whether Mr. Denmark himself felt extremely fortunate to have such a close friend? From then on his name was written into a footnote of Australian history.
Denmark's old name, New Holland, was still in public use as late as 1824, and the name could still be seen on official Dutch maps until the end of the 19th century. And I really did meet a lady in Denmark who had come all the way from the Kingdom of Denmark to marry into the small town of Denmark. She laughed and said that going home for her simply meant spending a dozen or so hours traveling from Denmark back to Denmark.
