There are moves afoot to scrub colonial businessman Benjamin Boyd’s name from the map. The owners of historic Boydtown on the NSW south coast are planning to change its name, while Ben Boyd National Park may also be renamed. Residents in North Sydney will take part in a survey to rename Ben Boyd Road, too.
The reason: Boyd’s links to “blackbirding” in the 19th century.
Blackbirding was a term given to the trade of kidnapping or tricking Pacific Islanders on board ships so they could be carried away to work in Australia.
Boyd instigated this practice in the late 1840s, bringing the first group of Pacific Islanders to work on land in the Australian colonies. Although his scheme ultimately failed, other labour traders would deliver approximately 62,000 islanders to Queensland and NSW between the 1860s and 1900s.
Dear Mr McCormack,
We are writing to you to congratulate the Auckland University of Technology on its contribution to Pacific media and journalism and – at a time when Pacific journalism is under existential threat and Pacific journalism programmes suffer from underfunding – to urge you to ensure your university continues to play the globally pre-eminent role in supporting media, communication and journalism education, research and collaboration.
AUT’s Pacific Media Centre (including its associated projects in audio, video and online production and its engagement with Asia and Pacific academic institutions and communities within New Zealand) is the jewel in AUT’s crown. As you know, the PMC is the world’s leading Pacific journalism programme is looked to by media professionals and academics from around the world, including in the Pacific and here in Australia. The centre’s research publications and staff and postgraduate student journalism websites (such as PMC Online