The Companion to Tasmanian History summarises the evolution of the official naming of places in Tasmania. It reveals that: "Until 1956 place names were applied by walking clubs and government bodies such as Mines Department, Hydro-Electric Commission and the Surveys Office. These names were loosely controlled by the Surveys Office with municipal councils responsible for street, road and park names within township boundaries."
Big Lake )'' The present Lake Flannigan was originally called Big Lake by the islanders. A scientific group, the
Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, conducted an extensive field trip to the island in 1887, and published many reports about it for the next 2 years. During the trip they recorded that: The Field Naturalists must have failed to notify or convince the islanders or the Lands Department in Hobart of their new name for the lake, because the name Big Lake continued in use until 1911, as can be seen on the official Lands Department map of King Island drawn in that year. On the 1911 map, the name Lake Flannigan is written over the original name of the lake, which has been erased. This was customary professional practice at the time – lithographs of maps had to do many years of service and were overwritten many times with updates, until it was deemed necessary to start afresh with a new map. Thus it appears that the lake was still known as Big Lake in 1911.
Lake Dobson , Tasmania The intention of the Victorian Field Naturalists to rename King Island's Big Lake to Lake Dobson in 1887 was never implemented. However, in 1953 the
Tasmanian Tramp reported that the name Lake Dobson had been officially assigned to a body of water in the
Mount Field National Park on mainland Tasmania, as is shown in the Parks & Wildlife Service's
Map of Mount Field National Park: It is the namesake of
Henry Dobson MHA (1841–1918), a prominent Tasmanian lawyer and politician, who founded the Tourist Association.
Lake Flannigan Although the Lands Department had no formal responsibility for naming places in Tasmania prior to 1956, several of the staff were keenly interested in nomenclature. The surveyors' field books of period are catalogued in the archives, but are not available, and the correspondence of the department does not reveal who was responsible for naming Lake Flannigan, but it may have been any or all of the following of Flannigan's colleagues: • Hall: In 2006 Smith wrote of Hall's interest in place names: “in 1885 Leventhorpe [Michael Hall, Chief Draftsman of the Surveys Office, drew up a list of Aboriginal words to be applied to any new towns, parishes etc.". So, even in 1911, in retirement, he may have had a part in the naming of the lake after his late colleague. • Hurst: Harrisson's colleague
William Nevin Tatlow Hurst spoke and wrote in detail about the naming of Tasmania's places, especially in 1911. Hurst was Acting Surveyor-General from May to September 1911, whilst Counsel was overseas on government business. He was not only a colleague of Flannigan's but also a personal friend. Flannigan witnessed Hurst's mother's will, in 1897 and he named Hurst as an executor on his own will in 1901, referring to him as “my friend”. cemetery, Bendigo, Victoria Flannigan conducted surveys on King Island several times from 1895 onwards, and bought two parcels of land there, above the Ettrick River. He was appointed as permanent District Surveyor for the island in 1899. But severe ill-health forced him to leave the island in 1901. He returned to his family (his Irish mother, Margaret O'Halloran and her son from her second marriage, William Higgs) in
Bendigo Victoria, and died there of tuberculosis in April 1901, aged 38. By 1913, he had become permanently commemorated by the naming of Lake Flannigan in his honour. The name Big Lake was transferred to a previously nameless lagoon on the edge of Colliers Swamp Conservation Area, in the southernmost locality of Surprise Bay, King Island. ==Climate==