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Place Names Register Extract

Fannie Bay

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Name Fannie Bay
Type Designation Suburb
Place Id 2035
Place Type Administrative Area
Status Registered
Date Registered 10 January 2001
Location (Datum GDA94)  
Latitude: -12° 25' S (Decimal degrees -12.427)
Longitude: 130° 50' E (Decimal degrees 130.8402)
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Locality / Suburb  
  (None Found)
Local Government Area  
  Darwin City Council
History/Origin The suburb of Fannie Bay takes its name from the adjacent bay, which is believed to have been named by George Woodroffe Goyder?s surveying expedition in 1868, during their survey of what is now Darwin. The bay was named after Fanny Carandini, a popular opera singer of the time.

Frances (Fanny or Fannie) Carandini (1849-1904) was the daughter of Count Gerome Carandini, the exiled Italian nobleman who held the title of tenth Marquise of Saranzo. He settled in Hobart, Tasmania, in the 1840s and married Mary Burgess, a noted opera singer. Madame Carandini and her daughters - Fannie, Rosina, and Lizzie - formed a celebrated singing group that toured extensively throughout Australia and overseas.

In 1868, the Carandinis performed concerts in Adelaide shortly before Goyder and his party departed on the ship Moonta to establish Palmerston (present day Darwin). One of these concerts was a benefit night for Fannie Carandini, and it is highly likely that some of Goyder's surveyors attended.

William Brackley Wildey, in his 1876 publication Australasia and the Oceanic Region, described Palmerston in 1874, noting: "PALMERSTON is laid out in 1019 half-acre allotments, and extends nearly three miles across to Fanny Bay, so named by the surveyors after Miss Fanny Carandini - this is prettily and healthily situated, facing the ocean, about four miles from town, a little beyond the town boundary". Meanwhile, William Webster Hoare, a member of Goyder's survey party, wrote in his 1869 diary about Fannie Bay, further confirming the name's early usage. Early maps of Darwin also used the spelling 'Fannie'.

The variation in spelling may be attributed to the Carandini family's own promotional choices. Although Fanny Carandini's death certificate uses the spelling 'Fanny', contemporary newspaper reports and advertisements frequently used 'Fannie'. Similarly, her mother altered her name from Mary to 'Marie' for professional purposes. It is possible that Goyder's surveyors adopted the 'Fannie' spelling from concert programs or posters promoting the Carandinis in Adelaide.

Sources:
MADAME CARANDINI'S CONCERT. (1868, October 24). The South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1858 - 1889), p. 2. Retrieved September 21, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31983551
Wildey, William Brackley (1876). Australasia and the Oceanic region : with some notice of New Guinea : from Adelaide - via Torres Straits -to Port Darwin thence round West Australia, p. 92. Retrieved September 21, 2023, from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3820861&seq=96
Hoare, William Webster (1869). Diary 1868-1869, p. 24. State Library of South Australia, PRG 294/1. Retrieved September 21, 2023, from https://archival.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/prg/PRG294_1_Hoare_diary_1869_transcript.pdf

Register & Gazettal information

Date Gazettal Comment
04/04/1984 NTG13
10/01/2001 NTG1 Revocation of 4/04/1984 gazettal and renaming of suburb due to changes to boundaries from originally gazetted
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