James Cook's second in command was keen to be the first to catch sight of the east coast of Australia (New Holland, back then). With a fresh SSW gale blowing it had been nearly three weeks since they sailed from New Zealand and it had been a rough voyage and the prospect of land, foreshadowed by the increasing number of land birds, would have been greatly anticipated. Cook named the land Point Hicks in his memory. Today we might suggest it was Wingan Inlet or Bemm River and, as they sailed south, briefly they lost sight of land where 90 mile beach runs nearly directly to the west.

By April 21, the Endeavour was sailing north past our beautiful coastline and as my golfing colleague, Paul Ingamells, has pointed out to me on his Royal Navy survey map, at 0400 it was nine minutes south-east of Montague Island, but which he misread as an extension of Cape Dromedary.

At midday they were east of Burrewarra, at 1500 near Batemans Bay and close to Point Upright.

The bark Endeavour, which historian Geoffrey Blainey in his new book (2020) reminds us was not much bigger than a tennis court, had nearly 100 people, animals and plants on board.

Another new book by the insatiable author of sorts, Peter Fitzsimmons, who can by the way afford three editors and four project writers, like Blainey and before him Manning Clark (1969) asserts in different ways that the main value of Cooks voyage 1768-1771 was less in the land he found than in the aids to navigation which he had proved.

He had indeed tamed two of the traditional foes of long voyages in the surprising success he had in alleviating scurvy, a vitamin deficiency which had been fatal to many sailors and passengers.

Cook also had demonstrated new skills in navigation with a relatively quick way of finding a ship's longitude and hence their "exact" position at sea.

A ship that carried Greenwich time plus compasses and other technical items on the most arduous of voyages allowed for more accurate charts and shorter routes between distant ports. Cook would be the first to agree he didn't discover the great south land and that Tasman, Dampier, Hartog and others foreigners had already visited our shores over many centuries.

Another myth that Cook queried is to do with the noble savage, our first people the aboriginals, during the second half of the 18 th century. Whereas Dampier wrote " the miserablest people in the world" , Blainey (1970) suggests they " metamorphosed into a people who had discovered the secrets of human happiness" and Cook wrote in his journal "They appear to some to be the most wretched people upon the earth: but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans ... the earth and the sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life."

The east coast of Australia had many significant Aboriginal sites, camps and settlements, many of which Cook mentions. His appreciation of the Aboriginal people on the east coast appears to deepen the further north he travelled and he seems to have developed greater insight and understanding of their contented and healthy lives.

Perhaps the time spent in and around the Great Barrier Reef and Endeavour River in Far North Queensland left him humbled.

In a future article I would like to cover in more detail Cook's journal and other entries with respect to his landings at Botany Bay, 1770, Endeavour River and Possession Island. Plus I will maybe "raise the bar" by proposing a First People's cultural centre/museum as a means of ensuring a permanent record of this great history of our ancient lands.

Bill Baker, Potato Point, member of the Moruya and District Historical Society and the Canberra and District Historical Society