he name of the Sydney beachside suburb Dee Why has long been a puzzle.? Meehan’s biographer Tony Dawson thinks he’s solved it. The mark in the surveyor’s notebook was an attempt to capture the sound of the beach’s Aboriginal name. Transcribing Aboriginal placenames into our Latin alphabet has always been a bit haphazard – and this is another example of a European struggling with the local name. (Mind you, 75 per cent of Australian placenames are Indigenous words, so the newcomers did their best!)