"As we approached the shore they all made off except two men who seemed resolved to oppose our landing. As soon as I saw this, I ordered the boats to lay upon their oars in order to speak to them but this was to little purpose for neither us nor Tupaia could understand one word they said."
- James Cook, 29 April 1770
This is the moment, 250 years ago, that two worlds collided.
In a hostile encounter, British explorer Captain James Cook stepped off HMS Endeavour and onto the shores of what is now known as Botany Bay in South Sydney.
There, he tried to communicate with two Gweagal men using a Tahitian Polynesian translator, Tupaia, who had helped him in New Zealand.
Cook shot at the Aboriginal men, says Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales, John Gascoigne.
Captain Cook and his landing party encounter two men at what is now Botany Bay. Source: National Library of Australia
“Small shots, so the intention was not to kill," he told SBS News.
The men on the shore threw spears and "retreated into the bush".
One of the men, Cooma, was wounded by the shots.
His descendant, Rodney Kelly, says Cook and his landing party then took shields and spears from the area and left something else for his ancestors on the shoreline.
"One story that's not in the history books is told by my great, great grandmother, Queen Emma of La Perouse," he said.
"She was told by her elders that in 1770, Cook left [explosives] on the shore, rigged to blow up."
“It is a story that has been passed down by my family who has lived in that area since that day.”
Mr Kelly has spent the last four years travelling to the British Museum in London and the Museum of Archeology and Anthropology in Cambridge to repatriate artefacts that were taken on that day.
He has been quite vocal on his disapproval of the 250th anniversary commemorations and the replica Endeavour that was due to be circumnavigating Australia - a project that has since been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis.
“I was happy that it was cancelled because it's a false history. Captain Cook never circumnavigated Australia,” he said.
“I’m feeling quite emotional about the anniversary because since then, so many terrible and bad things have happened to my people."
“To us, we think of that date as the beginning, when we started to lose our culture, our language, and many of our tribes.”
A spokesperson from the federal government said it will still be marking the anniversary with a number of initiatives, including helping to repatriate cultural artefacts from around the world back to Aboriginal communities.
Captain Cook claiming the east coast of Australia. Source: The National Library of Australia
"The Endeavour voyage was a pivotal moment in the story of Australia," they said.
"The anniversary is an opportunity for Australians to reflect on, discuss, and think about the lasting impact of the voyage.
"It provides an opportunity to understand our story — reflecting on more than 60,000 years of Indigenous custodianship, through to more recent migrant stories."
The journey of the Endeavour
In 1768, HMS Endeavour and Cook's crew of 94 people left the English port of Plymouth on a scientific expedition to chart the transit of Venus across the Sun in Tahiti.
They were under secret instructions from the British royal family to discover and map out the rumoured great southern landmass, known only as 'Terra Australis', Latin for 'south land'.
After Tahiti, the Endeavour circumnavigated New Zealand, before mapping out the east coast of Australia and arriving in Botany Bay.
The ship continued up the east coast until it ran into a reef off the coast of Far North Queensland. The crew had to wait for several weeks in what is now known as Cooktown, while it was repaired.
It was during this period that a lesser-known story of contact between Cook and Australia's Aboriginal people occurred.
Some of his crew took about a dozen green sea turtles from the area and brought them on board the ship.
The Endeavour, a replica of Captain Cook's 18th century ship Source: AAP
Professor Mark McKenna, a historian from the University of Sydney, says the Aboriginal people in Cooktown, the Guugu Yimithirr, protested by coming on board the ship.
“Cook refused to share the turtles because of the long journey he and his crew had ahead of them,” he said.
“The Indigenous men went ashore and set fire to the area where Cook and [his botanist Joesph] Banks had kept their provisions.”
A tense scene broke out that involved Cook and Banks firing at them from the shore.
Eventually, an elderly Aboriginal man emerged from the bush and led a group of men towards them.
He broke off the tip of his spear, the men behind him followed by laying their spears at a nearby tree.
The elderly man began to collect sweat from his armpit on his fingers, bring it to his mouth and blow it towards Cook and Banks.
"This is one of the most intimate gestures of peace and reconciliation,” Profession McKenna said.
Controversial legacy
Cook had received specific instructions from the British royal family to open up discussions with any people he came into contact with on Terra Australis. Their intention was to set up trading posts in the name of the British crown.
Professor of Indigenous History at the University of Newcastle, John Maynard, says Cook ignored these instructions.
“We know he never opened up discussions with the Indigenous people.”
“He ultimately went onto Possession Island [in the Torres Strait, off Queensland], jammed the flag into the ground and claimed the entire east coast of Australia for the British crown,” he said.
To some, Cook was a courageous explorer, but to others, he stole land, and more, from the first Australians.
Professor Maynard says he has a complex view of Captain Cook and how his arrival has affected his own Indigenous community.
A portrait of Captain James Cook. Source: Getty Images
“I've got the greatest admiration for him as a navigator, cartographer, and certainly an inspiring leader of his crews," he said.
“But you've got to take into context the stories that Aboriginal people retain in so many different communities about the impact of James Cook.”
Professor Maynard says he does though concede that his Indigenous ancestors would have come into contact with others at some point in time.
"We can't live on in that fantasy that things were not going to happen, they were going to happen at some point whether it was the British or someone else,” he said.
Professor Mark McKenna from the University of Sydney is an expert in the contemporary understanding of Cook.
An illustration of Captain James Cook's death in Hawaii in 1779. Source: Getty
He says Australians often confuse Cook with Arthur Phillip and the arrival of the First Fleet and the convicts in 1788.
“We often get into the mistake of thinking Cook was already clear on what would happen in Australia when he first arrived," he said.
“He had no idea that it would be used as a penal colony.”
Cook died on a Hawaii beach in 1779, stabbed in the neck by an islander.
A statue of Captain James Cook vandalised in St Kilda, Melbourne, ahead of Australia Day 2018. Source: AAP
Mr Kelly feels strongly that Cook showed a lack of respect for Indigenous people and his ancestors in that first interaction.
“For people like myself, my family, my people, we think of his legacy as something that is on the wrong side of history,” he said.
“A lot of those things he did were so bad, we could never think of him any other way."
"He shouldn't have shot at them when he arrived in Botany Bay."
Correction: A quoted reference to Captain Cook leaving dynamite on the shore has been corrected to [explosives]. It is believed this was gunpowder.
