Blessed be the fruit.

Margaret Atwood did not invent the word Gilead, but The Handmaid’s Tale certainly shifted its meaning. It may be a place of religious significance in Jordan, but in our cultural consciousness it’s associated first-most with Atwood’s theocratic nation of nightmares.

It’s also the name of a delightful bit of country just off Campbelltown in South West Sydney. With a population around 400 people, it’s currently a quiet place, befitting of Gilead’s biblical definition, ‘hills of revelation’. And sometime later this year, those hills will be live with the sound of urbanism, as developers Lendlease open a planned community — also called Gilead.

As Daile Kelleher points out on Twitter, the utopic descriptions of the site’s amenities take a slightly ominous turn if you’ve watched The Handmaid’s Tale.

When the website mentions that “Gilead will offer a new kind of community and lifestyle”, we’re not exactly picturing neighbourhood book nights and poke bowls.

WOWWWW way to miss the mark Lendlease… “Gilead will offer a new kind of community and lifestyle…” https://t.co/ruCHr6gFNx pic.twitter.com/DbIJPnTYrv — Daile (@DaileKelleher) July 5, 2018

Of course, it’s something of a Catch 22. It’d be silly to rebrand a town with a 200-year-old name, just because of some small cultural phenomenon. But still, it’s a little… uncomfortable.

We’re sure it’ll be a lovely place to live, raise a family, and enjoy democratic freedoms. But our tv-addled brains are a little too creeped out by the prospect — perhaps it’s actually just a genius marketing technique to keep droll prestige TV viewers away, the type who would continually badger their neighbours for never watching The Wire or Six Feet Under.