18

"Nyleta".
Union Street,
Toowong, S.W.1.

Mr. Sydney May,
Hon. Secretary,
Q'lqnd Place Names Committe,
University of Queensland.

Dear Sir,

With regard to Grassdale and the waterhole Eumgubba,
the lateer part of the latter name, gubba, is,without doubt,
a contraction of the word gubung, meaning a hole. The first
syllable, Eum, could be satisfactorily rendered as yum, for,
although the aboriginal rendering of the initial letter is as
much like a vowel as a consonant, the use of Y would cause
less liability to mispronunciation by the English-speaking
tongue. The meaning of the first syllable is doutful, it
may be a white man's contraction of yimbun, and the whole
phrase being Yimbun-gubung, meaning "Reedy (water) hole" or
possibly,"Muium gubung", meaning "(Water) hole of blue water
lillies. The word Mu-i-um, is pronounced rather indistinctly,
as "Moo-ee-oom"[correction of Moo-se-oom] and could be easily be mispronounced by a
white man as "Ee-oom" [correction of Ee-oom] I wonder if any old resident could
say if either condition applies.

In any case, I would suggest that the name be perpetuated
as it seems to be the only land mark of truly aboriginal
origin.

Yours faithfully
FJWatson
(F. J. Watson).

Note. The letters U in gubung are pronounced like
oo in the English word good.