I am tickled pink there is actually a place in this wide, brown, irreverent land called Buggery, and that I can count myself among those to have visited it.

It's Mt Buggery, to be precise, and it's situated in fairly remote, inhospitable Victorian bush in the Great Dividing Range.

I climbed it as a teenager on a school camping excursion from Melbourne.

The choice of Mt Buggery struck me as odd, considering there was a scandal at the time concerning allegations of inappropriate activity between a teacher and some boy boarders.

At any rate, we climbed it - not a pleasant memory - and found a logbook at the summit in which previous wits had written unsurprising entries like: "Climbed Buggery, and I'm buggered!"

I thought of Buggery this week as I read news of a row over the renaming of another Victorian peak called Mt Niggerhead, which coincidentally is not a million miles away from Buggery.

Now here's the thing - the group objecting to the name change is Aboriginal.

The Victorian Government has proposed renaming the 1846m peak Jaithmathangs, after one of the traditional languages of the Bogong High Plains.

But another Aboriginal nation, the Dhudhuroas, say the peak is part of their country and the proposed new name is just as offensive to them as Mt Niggerhead.

"It's a bit like renaming Australia as England," said spokesman Gary Murray.

"They might as well have taken any old name from Arnhem Land - it's bullshit."

I'm sure there used to be a toothpaste - or was it a shoe polish? - called Nigger.

I can also remember when a "golliwog" was a toy, and the word was used without a hint of political incorrectness.

It's amazing how a reference considered unremarkable in one generation can provoke deep passions years later.

Remember the row that bubbled along for years over the E S "Nigger" Brown grandstand at Toowoomba in south-eastern Queensland?