Captain Cook, 24th May 1770

On this day, Lieutenant James Cook (captain of the ship but ranked Lieutenant) brought the HMS Endeavour in to make his 2nd landing on the shores of Australia (and first in what was to become Queensland).

In fact, as you can see, Steve found the exact same rock that Cook set foot on, all be it, the tides out on this occasion...

The famous portrait of Captain Cook was painted by one of Jen’s ancestors, Nathanial Dance (Dance being Jen’s maiden name) and it hangs proudly in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. The black and white drawing also done by Nathanial is in the National Portrait Gallery.

On May 23rd 1770, Cook anchored at Bustard Bay; named for the wild bustard bird they shot and ate. Sure it wasn’t a bush turkey?

They stayed one night on the ship before he, Joseph Banks & couple of others, went ashore to collect samples for Bank’s botanical studies. Their landing spot was in the vicinity of the very caravan park we’re staying in (developed in 1978), where a stream at the southern end enters the beach just north of the remaining mangroves.

Cook made eleven landings on the eastern seaboard and ten of these were in Queensland. As the woods behind Round Hill Head and adjacent to Round Hill Creek were the locality of the first botanical type-specimens collected in Queensland, the area was recognised in 1989 as the Joseph Banks Environmental Park.

Not a great deal of exploring today except to the memorial itself... weather rather inclement (it’s raining!) so we’re definitely doing the ‘chilling’ we planned.

WILDLIFE: Some sort of stingray (see if you can spot his tail in our very blurry picture); blue crabRead more