I was on the hunt for Darren Lockyer Road, in Juba, the capital of South Sudan.
This incongruous road nomenclature, half a world away from Queensland in Australia, where the rugby league great is a household name, first came to my attention via a tweet. Not just any tweet – an official government tweet.
On the eve of this year’s National Rugby League grand final, the Australian embassy in Ethiopia posted about “an NRL connection in South Sudan” (the ambassador in Addis Ababa also oversees Australia’s relations with Juba).
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“Did you know that some of the streets in Juba, the world’s newest capital city in South Sudan, are named after Queensland State of Origin legends and no one knows why?” the tweet read.
No one knows why? That sounded like a challenge to me. Was this a rugby league-loving civil engineer in Juba, or just an elaborate internet hoax? It became my mission to find out – a month-long investigation ensued.
The tweet offered my first lead: it linked to an article in the Gold Coast Bulletin. Published in 2014, just three years after South Sudan gained independence, the newspaper had identified a string of Queensland rugby league-related streets in Juba. Darren Lockyer Road was joined by Mal Meninga Drive, Allan Langer Road, Arthur Beetson Way and streets named after Wally Lewis, Gene Miles and Paul Vautin.
The Bulletin had even reached out to Miles himself, a former Broncos captain, who had no explanation. “Maybe it’s just an Australian ex-pat who is a town planner there,” Miles said at the time. “I’m not sure I want to rush over there and drive down the streets, though”.
The story had blossomed across the News Corp network of publications, with similar pieces appearing in the Courier Mail, Fox Sports and news.com.au. The Mail went with the headline “Where the streets have Maroon names”.
Each article ended with a plea for insight. “Can anyone shed light on this mystery? Leave your comment below.” Regrettably no-one weighed in on this South Sudanese enigma.
But there was one clue in the articles – reference to an earlier piece in The Australian, in a weekly column by journalist Simon King. A reader, David McQuinn from Glenelg North, had written in to King after spotting these street names while browsing Google Earth.
“As my travel budget is limited, health not what it used to be and many places would be rather risky to visit, I zoom in to locations currently in the news,” McQuinn had said. “South Sudan and Juba are in the news … So I thought I should familiarise myself with the area. I looked for the [United Nations] base and airport where fighting was reported and up popped the league player streets.”
The diligent column had fact-checked the claim, providing visual proof. “Still not a believer?” King wrote. “Please see the attached screenshot.”
Having identified the source, I set off for Juba – or at least, satellite images of the city on Google Earth. But try as I might, I could not replicate the screenshot taken by The Australian a decade ago. I thought I recognised the location, just south of Juba International Airport, but no rugby league street names were apparent.
Next I tried Google Maps. Here the mystery deepened. In the area near the airport, there are no obviously incongruous street names; instead, Airport Road leads to Havana Street, which takes you to May Street. But some searching did turn up two businesses – the Juba Transit Hotel and the Rotana Commercial Center, which, according to Google, reside on opposite sides of Darren Lockyer Road. Had I struck gold?
Unfortunately, I could find no reference beyond Google to these businesses using the stated address. It was impossible to know whether the alleged street name was the doings of a local rugby fan – the sport is gaining in popularity in the otherwise football and basketball-obsessed country – or someone with too much time online.
Next, I turned to some local expertise. The Guardian’s East Africa correspondent Carlos Mureithi is based in Kenya, but has previously reported from South Sudan and has contacts there. Mureithi returned with bad news. “I did some digging,” he replied, after consulting with a journalist in Juba, “and my finding is that there are no roads or streets there named after Australian rugby league greats.”
It was a disheartening finding. Perhaps far from being an unlikely tale of international admiration for Maroons greats, there was a more straightforward explanation: a Google Earth vandal, whose work had spread across to Google Maps. Over time the invented street names had been removed, but Darren Lockyer Road lived on for the hotel and commercial centre – a fake street name with meaning only for rugby fans on the other side of the world.
It felt apt that my discovery came amid contentious debate around laws which seek to regulate misinformation and disinformation in Australia. This was a story too good to be true – and yet it had spread across Australian newspapers and even been posted by an official diplomatic social media account.
I had two last lines of inquiry. The Juba Eagles are a leading local club – they recently became the first South Sudanese team to compete in an international rugby sevens tournament, in Uganda. But my email missive to Eagles headquarters went unanswered. Finally, I tried South Sudan’s Ambassador to Australia, His Excellency Monday Semaya Kumba, who represents the small nation from Beijing, where he is primarily ambassador to China. Again, no explanation was forthcoming.
And so there may not be a Darren Lockyer Road in Juba. But the league legend can console himself with a street sign closer to home. In 2011, the same year South Sudan gained independence, an 85km section of the Warrego Highway between Toowoomba and Ipswich was renamed Darren Lockyer Way.
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