European gaze. The earliest recorded visit was in 1606, when a party of Dutch sailors under a Willem Jansz, or Janszoon, stepped briefly ashore in the far north (and as hastily retreated under a hail of Aboriginal spears), but it is evident that others had been there earlier still. A pair of Portuguese cannons, dating from no later than 1525, werefound in 1916 at a place called Carronade Island on the north-west coast. Whoever left them would have been among the first Europeans to stray this far from home, but of this epochal visit not a thing is known. Even more intriguing is a map, drawn by a Portuguese hand and dating from roughly the same period, that shows not only a large land mass where Australia stands, but an apparent familiarity with the jogs and indentations of Australia’s east coast – something supposedly not seen by outsiders for another two and a half centuries.
So when in April 1770 Lieutenant James Cook and his crew aboard HMS Endeavour sighted the south-east corner of Australia and followed the coast 1,800 miles north to Cape York, it wasn’t so much a discovery as a confirmation.
Though Cook’s voyage was unquestionably heroic, its first purpose was mundane. He had been sent halfway around the world, to Tahiti, to measure a transit of Venus across the sun. Combined with measurements taken at the same time elsewhere, this would permit astronomers to calculate the distance of the earth from the sun. It wasn’t an especially complicated procedure but it was important to get it right. An attempt during the last transit eight years earlier had failed, and the next one wasn’t due for another 105 years. Happily for science and for Cook, the skies stayed clear and the measurements were taken without setback or complication.
Cook was now free to go off and fulfil the second part of his assignment – to explore the lands of the South Seas and bring home anything that looked scientifically interesting. To this end, he had with him a brilliant and wealthy young botanist named Joseph Banks. To say that Banks was a dedicated collector is to indulge in thedrollest understatement. In the course of the Endeavour’s three-year voyage, he gathered up some 30,000 specimens, including at least 1,400 plants never seen before – at a stroke increasing the world’s stock of known plants by about a quarter. Banks brought back so many items that the Natural History Museum in London has whole drawers full of objects that, 220 years later, await cataloguing. The same voyage also made the first successful circumnavigation of New Zealand, confirming that it was not part of the fabled southern continent, as Tasman had optimistically concluded, but two islands. By any measure, it had been a good voyage and we can assume an air of satisfaction as the Endeavour turned at last for home.
So when, on 19 April 1770, three weeks out from New Zealand, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks cried ‘Land ahoy!’ at the sight of what turned out to be the extreme south-east tip of Australia, the Endeavour and its crew were already on something of a roll. Cook named the spot Point Hicks (it’s now called Cape Everard) and turned the ship north.
The land they found was not only larger than had been supposed but more promising. For the whole of its length, the east coast was lusher, better watered and more congenially provisioned with harbours and anchorages than anything that had been reported elsewhere in New Holland. It presented, Cook recorded, a ‘very agreeable and promising aspect . . . with hills, ridges, plains and valleys, with some grass but for the most part . . . covered with wood’. This was nothing like the barren and savage wastes that others had met.
For four months they headed up the coast. They stopped at a place Cook named Botany Bay, ran disastrously aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and finally, after making some urgent repairs, rounded the northernmosttip of the continent at Cape York. On the evening of 21 August, almost
So when in April 1770 Lieutenant James Cook and his crew aboard HMS Endeavour sighted the south-east corner of Australia and followed the coast 1,800 miles north to Cape York, it wasn’t so much a discovery as a confirmation.
Though Cook’s voyage was unquestionably heroic, its first purpose was mundane. He had been sent halfway around the world, to Tahiti, to measure a transit of Venus across the sun. Combined with measurements taken at the same time elsewhere, this would permit astronomers to calculate the distance of the earth from the sun. It wasn’t an especially complicated procedure but it was important to get it right. An attempt during the last transit eight years earlier had failed, and the next one wasn’t due for another 105 years. Happily for science and for Cook, the skies stayed clear and the measurements were taken without setback or complication.
Cook was now free to go off and fulfil the second part of his assignment – to explore the lands of the South Seas and bring home anything that looked scientifically interesting. To this end, he had with him a brilliant and wealthy young botanist named Joseph Banks. To say that Banks was a dedicated collector is to indulge in thedrollest understatement. In the course of the Endeavour’s three-year voyage, he gathered up some 30,000 specimens, including at least 1,400 plants never seen before – at a stroke increasing the world’s stock of known plants by about a quarter. Banks brought back so many items that the Natural History Museum in London has whole drawers full of objects that, 220 years later, await cataloguing. The same voyage also made the first successful circumnavigation of New Zealand, confirming that it was not part of the fabled southern continent, as Tasman had optimistically concluded, but two islands. By any measure, it had been a good voyage and we can assume an air of satisfaction as the Endeavour turned at last for home.
So when, on 19 April 1770, three weeks out from New Zealand, Lieutenant Zachary Hicks cried ‘Land ahoy!’ at the sight of what turned out to be the extreme south-east tip of Australia, the Endeavour and its crew were already on something of a roll. Cook named the spot Point Hicks (it’s now called Cape Everard) and turned the ship north.
The land they found was not only larger than had been supposed but more promising. For the whole of its length, the east coast was lusher, better watered and more congenially provisioned with harbours and anchorages than anything that had been reported elsewhere in New Holland. It presented, Cook recorded, a ‘very agreeable and promising aspect . . . with hills, ridges, plains and valleys, with some grass but for the most part . . . covered with wood’. This was nothing like the barren and savage wastes that others had met.
For four months they headed up the coast. They stopped at a place Cook named Botany Bay, ran disastrously aground on the Great Barrier Reef, and finally, after making some urgent repairs, rounded the northernmosttip of the continent at Cape York. On the evening of 21 August, almost
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