Joseph Banks – In Australiaboard a map prepared by Alexander Dalrymple, the hydrographer to the Royal Navy,
which indicated the voyage made through the strait by the Spanish explorer Luis Vas
de Torres in 1606. The Endeavour passed the cape which Cook named after the Duke
of York, found a passage through the Torres Strait and then what was later named
Endeavour Strait into the ‘Indian Sea’.
Before leaving Australia, Cook sent a party ashore to what he named Possession
Island. Hoisting the English colours he claimed the east coast of Australia for King
George III, naming it New South Wales. ‘I now once More, hoisted English Colours
& in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third took possession of the whole
Eastern coast by the Name of New South Wales together with all the Bays Harbours
Rivers & Islands situate upon the same Coast.’
Cook had now achieved his objective of exploring the previously undiscovered east
coast of New Holland and navigating a passage between it and Papua New Guinea:
We got to the westward of Carpentaria or the northern extremity of New-Holland and now
had an open Sea to the westward, which gave me no small satisfaction not only because the
dangers and fatigues of the Voyage was drawing near to an end, but by being able to prove
that New-Holland and New-Guinea are separate lands or islands, which until this day hath
been a doubtful point with Geographers.After so many years at sea and after almost twice being shipwrecked on the Great
Barrier Reef they were now, to the relief of all on board, in charted waters and sailing
for home. Banks felt the same relief as all the crew and as they left Possession Island
he wrote:
As soon as ever the boat was hoisted in, we made sail and steered away from this land to the
no small satisfaction of I believe three fourths of our company, the sick became well and the
melancholy looked gay. The greatest part of them were now pretty far gone with the longing
for home which the Physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of
Nostalgia; indeed I can find hardly anybody in the ship clear of its effects but the Captain,
Dr Solander and myself, indeed we three have pretty constant employment for our minds
which I believe to be the best if not the only remedy for it.James Cook had explored and mapped the east coast of Australia. An entire continent
populated by the Aborigines, covered with sparsely clad eucalypts and acacias, filled
with the riotous shrieks of colourful birds and strange pouched marsupials had now
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