>>> my associate seems to think
>>> this page has to be /index
>>> and I amwondering if this is so
The homepage is usually named something like 'index', 'default' or
'home', yes.
>>> whether we could simply have an additional
>>> version of the home page with the more desired URL.
That would be of no use at all, because Google would drop one of both
(original or 'additional') for being one and the same thing.
>>> for natural listing purposes I wanted
>>> something like thebestfurniture.com.au/furniture
You could configure your server to deliver 'furniture' as homepage
instead of 'index', but that wouldn't change anything. Google doesn't
care too much about the filename.
-luzie-