NASA has agreed to name part of Mars as Nobbys Head/Whibayganba. Who’d have thunk it?
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We have Kurri Kurri’s Col Maybury to thank for this notable achievement.
A while back Col managed to convince NASA to name a small hill beside Endeavour Crater as Nobbys Head.
This is what Col does. After all, he’s president of the Astronomical Society of the Hunter.
Some time later, Col heard Nobbys had been given the dual Aboriginal name of Whibayganba. He went back to NASA to set things right.
Could the area on the red planet named Nobbys now be given the dual name, he queried. The answer was no. Col wasn’t deterred.
NASA offered to call another place on Mars – Marathon Valley – as Whibayganba.
This didn’t sit well with Col. He asked again if the Nobbys site on Mars could carry the dual name.
This time a superior was at hand. He agreed. Col was chuffed. And rightly so.
This all began some time ago when Col was reading Captain Cook’s journal about him sailing past Nobbys in May 10, 1770.
Then, Col read about the Mars rover heading towards a new crater. He looked up a map of Mars and discovered areas on the crater had Australian place names such as Cape York, Cape Tribulation and Botany Bay.
He thought it would be a good idea if they named a little promontory on that crater after Nobbys Head. The rest is history.