Stuff you didn't know about Cook - Part 2

In some ways, Australia is lucky that it doesn’t belong to the Dutch or the French.

Captain Cook claiming it for the King of England was almost a complete fluke.

He and his crew had just finished some astronomical measurements in the Pacific and had decided it was about time to head home. Rather than taking the most direct route, Cook decided to cut across previously uncharted southern waters. This passage home was kind of out of obligation because, once at sea, he had opened sealed papers which ordered him to also try and discover the mysterious southern continent.

(Up until this point, the great south land had not recieved a great rap. The Dutch had bumped into the coast of Australia in the 16th cent. but passed quickly on commenting; “We could not find one fruitful tree or anything that could be of use to mankind.” William Dampier, an English privateer who visited the northwest of Australia in 1688 also added, “The inhabitants of this country are the most miserable people in the world.”)

Nevertheless, Cook’s probing loop brought him right into the Eastern coast of Australia, which he followed and charted all the way up to the tip of far north Queensland. He wasn’t looking for Australia; he just wanted to get home. If he had been a less adventurous soul, it would have been left up to someone else to bump into the great south land. But as it turns out he charted most of the East coast and as a result gave the big boys back home an ‘out of sight – out of mind’ option for the relocatation of it’s overcrowded prisons 7 years later.

So why has Cook been greeted with the excitement that meets a dry piece of toast?

Tony Horwitz (the author) reckons it’s because Cook wasn’t bad enough,

“Ned Kelly was eventually hanged, the Eureka Stockade fell after a 15 min battle, and the ‘jolly swagman’ drowned himself. But Australians love losers, so long as they lose with panache against overwhelming odds, or as martyrs to British authority. The true national holiday wasn’t Australia Day; it was Anzac Day, commemorating the doomed, British ordered assault by Australian troops at Gallipoli in 19156. James cook – a winner, faithful servant of his majesty, a wigged pom without much flair or humour – had little hope of entering Australia’s pantheon of antiheroes”. P148

One more Cook insight to go - his brutal death and dismemberment in Hawaii.

Scott