District of Freedom, #8573311~!#

Mark Honeychurch - 7 August 2023

Okay, this one has me stumped, so I’m looking for some help. Robin Capper, from the Auckland Skeptics in the Pub group, messaged us recently to ask about a weird thing he’d seen on Google maps recently:

I went to work by train today and noticed Google maps locations refers to a “District of Freedom#8573311~!#” for the Grafton Station location. Seems odd that there are a few returns for that when I search (or ask Bing AI, below) but no other reference. Are you aware of anything, seems odd.

“There are a few references to “District of Freedom#8573311~!#” on the web. One of them is Lydenburg Medical Centre located in Lydenburg, South Africa. Another reference is to Mt Eden Station located in Auckland, New Zealand.”

A quick google search found this Reddit thread, which didn’t add much to the mystery - except that this also pops up on Google Maps in Greece:

There appear to be no other similar listings with different integers - just 8573311 (I searched for “District of Freedom” in google, and the only number that came up in the results was 8573311). Searching on Google shows links to a few different websites that appear to ingest Google Maps data and have cached different locations from Google that at one point or another have had the same “District of Freedom” string added to their name. These locations include:

• Grafton Station: District of Freedom#8573311~!#, Grafton, Auckland
• Eden Station: District of Freedom#8573311~!#, Mount Eden, Auckland
• Interislander Ferry: District of Freedom#8573311~!# Wellington
• Wellington Ferry Terminal: District of Freedom#8573311~!#, 1 Aotea Quay, Pipitea, Wellington
• Omonia Square: District of Freedom 8573311, Square, Athina 104 31, Greece
• Chicken Licken Restaurant: District of Freedom, #8573311~#!#, 18 Watt Ave. Sandton, Gauteng, South Africa
• Borough Hall: Freedom#8573311~!# New York US, Brooklyn, NY 11201
• Half Collared Kingfisher Trail Gate: District of Freedom, 8573311#, Waterside Rd, Hoekwil, Wilderness, 6560, South Africa
• The Greek Taverna: 7 Civin Drive District of Freedom, 857#3311, Johannesburg 2007 South Africa
• Scrapbook ‘N Things: District of Freedom, 8573311#, 283 Honeydew Rd W, North Riding AH, Roodepoort, 2169, South Africa
• Lemoore Golf Course: District of Freedom, #8573311~!#, 350 Iona Ave, Lemoore CA 93245
• Barberà del Vallès Train Station: District of Freedom#8573311~! #, 08210 Barberà del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain.
• Merlina’s Kitchen: District of Freedom, #8573311~!# Wahiawa, HI

These locations, especially the inclusion of train/ferry stations and restaurants, suggest to me that these might be created by someone who is travelling, changing the names of the locations they visit. But this is just a guess.

Between Robin and myself, we found maybe two or three potential leads, but they all looked like they were red herrings - websites that looked at first glance like they might be connected, but that under closer scrutiny were revealed to coincidentally have wording that matched “District of Freedom”, but didn’t appear to be related to these weird Google maps locations.

Mention of “Freedom” makes it feel like this could be some kind of Sovereign Citizen conspiracy nonsense, but it’s hard to be sure. If anyone is able to do some sleuthing and find out what the heck is going on here, I’d be very keen to hear what you manage to find.