Andrew Roberts lost his real name on his first day in his new job “out bush” as a remote area pharmacist. His workplace spans a quarter of a million kilometres in Central Australia — and there, for the last four years, he’s been known simply as “Robbo”.
When he first introduced himself as Andrew, the local Aboriginal health worker responded, horrified, “That’s a Kunmarnarra name!”
“I had not considered that Andrew might be a truly horrible name before this day,” Robbo recalls, explaining that Kunmarnarra refers to a similar-sounding name to that of someone who has died — and in the local culture, the name cannot be used.
Not wanting to be known as “Mr Roberts”, he’s been Robbo ever since; throughout the...
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