The Explorers by Tim Flannery Read Free Book Online Page B

as Europeans, of a very dark brown colour but not black, nor had they woolly frizzled hair, but black and lank like ours. No sort of clothing or ornaments were ever seen by any of us upon any one of them, or in or about their huts, from which I conclude they never wear any. Some we saw that had their faces and bodies painted with a sort of white paint or pigment.
    Although I said that shellfish is their chief support yet they catch other sorts of fish, some of which we found roasting on the fire the first time we landed; some of these they strike with gigs and others they catch with hook and line; we have seen them strike fish with gigs, and hooks and lines were found in their huts. Stingrays I believe they do not eat because I never saw the least remains of one near any of their huts or fireplaces. However, we could but know very little of their customs as we were never able to form any connections with them; they had not so much as touched the things we had left in their huts on purpose for them to take away.
    During our stay in this harbour I caused the English colours to be displayed ashore every day and an inscription to be cut in one of the trees near the watering place setting forth the ship’s name, date, etc. Having seen everything this place afforded we at daylight in the morning weighed with a light breeze at NW and put to sea, the wind soon after coming to the southward. We steered alongshore NNE and at noon we were by observation in the latitude of 33° 50’ s about two or three miles from the land and abreast of a bay or harbour wherein there appeared to be safe anchorage which I called Port Jackson.

J OSEPH B ANKS
    The Endeavour Holed, 1770

    Perhaps it’s his well-known portrait as the corpulent, bewigged and gouty president of the Royal Society that makes us think of Sir Joseph Banks as stuffy. His Endeavour writings, however, reveal a lively, enquiring young man with a delightful sense of humour, fully worthy of the maidens bestowed upon him by Queen Purea of Tahiti.
    The holing of the Endeavour on the Great Barrier Reef in June 1 770 is one of the most dramatic events in Australian exploration history. Banks’s account of the catastrophe is full of life, wonderment and terror. In it we meet a landlubber faced with the prospect of a watery death, and the marvelling of an outsider at the coolness of the ship’s crew in a moment of crisis.
    Banks was perhaps secretly jubilant at the enforced stay at the Endeavour River in north Queensland, where Cooktown now is. It must have been frustrating for the great botanist to watch the coastline slip by for weeks at a time, with a captain unwilling to land. It was at Endeavour River that a European first saw a kangaroo, and where a sailor from the Endeavour encountered what appeared to be the devil himself!
    8 June 1770—Still sailing between the main and islands; the former, rocky and high, looked rather less barren than usual and by the number of fires seemed to be better peopled. In the morn we passed within a quarter of a mile of a small islet or rock on which we saw with our glasses about thirty men, women and children standing all together and looking attentively at us. The first people we have seen show any signs of curiosity at the sight of the ship.
    9 June—…After dinner came to an anchor and went ashore, but saw no people. The country was hilly and very stony affording nothing but fresh water, at least that we found, except a few plants that we had not before met with. At night our people caught a few small fish with their hooks and lines.
    10 June—Just without us as we lay at an anchor was a small sandy island laying upon a large coral shoal, much resembling the low islands to the eastward of us but the first of the kind we had met with in this part of the south sea. Early in the morn we weighed and sailed as usual with a fine breeze along shore, the country hilly and stony. At nightfall rocks and shoals were seen