Australian Town's Streets Named After Historic Luxury Ocean Liners

Street corners in the coastal town of Orient Point, north of Jervis Bay, Australia, offer a unique reminder of a bygone era of luxury ocean liners.

More than a century ago, the sleek vessels of the Orient Steam Navigation Company were a common sight along the south coast of New South Wales. Today, each road, street, and avenue in Orient Point bears the name of a liner from this company, whose ships all featured names beginning with the letter 'O'. This distinctive naming scheme was inspired by the cruise ships and established by Henry F Halloran, a surveyor and land developer, when he founded the estate in 1917.

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The study of toponymy and how maritime history impacts how we name places, street names, suburb names, everything up to names of pubs is really an interesting indication of how maritime trade has impacted our social history.

Inger Sheil from the Australian National Maritime Museum notes that the street names provide a snapshot of global maritime activity and social history during that period. The study of toponymy, or place names, reveals how maritime trade has influenced everything from street names to pub names. In New South Wales, prior to 1993, surveyors or landowners typically named streets.

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They were emblematic and they're establishing important trade; they're bringing people but they're also bringing our goods back to the UK. We were a new country, we were newly federated and these ships are symbolic of an emerging nation.

The Orient Steam Navigation Company, established in the 1870s, inaugurated its first purpose-built steamer, SS Orient, which completed its journey to Australia in 40 days. Sheil explains that the street names in Orient Point, ranging from 'Orama,' the largest liner to sail to Australia, to 'Ormand,' which transported post-war migrants, signify the pride Commonwealth nations held in British shipbuilding. Even if Halloran himself was not directly involved in the maritime industry, his choice of names clearly reflects this pride.

These ships were emblematic of burgeoning trade routes, transporting both people and goods between Australia and the UK. For a newly federated Australia, these vessels symbolized the nation's emergence. Researching Orient Point Estate, Sheil found it to be a unique case, offering insight into the shipbuilding priorities of the 1910s and reflecting international shipbuilding trends of the time.

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This was not a particular subset of street names I was aware of. But this neighbourhood is a snapshot of what was important in shipbuilding in that decade in the teens. It's not just about Australian shipbuilding, if you know about international shipbuilding, it is there, it's just caught in the moment.