Site 15: Captain Cook

PREV NEXT

 

On 15 May 1770, Captain James Cook sailing up the east coast of Australia in the Endeavour passed the eastern most point of the Australian mainland. He named it Cape Byron after Captain John Byron RN who sailed around the world in the Dolphin in 1764-1766.

Cook’s log for 15 May reads “…. As soon as it was daylight we made all of the sail we could …. At noon we were by observation in latitude 28o 39’S and longitude 206o 27’W….. A tolerable high point of land bore northwest by west a distance of 3 miles. This point I have named Cape Byron. It may be known by a remarkable sharped peaked mountain lying inland northwest by west from it…..”

From this description Endeavour’s location can be calculated. It was about 5.6 km southeast of Cape Byron lying off Tallow Beach.

The “remarkable peak” is now Mt Warning(Wollumbin).

Joseph Banks, botanist on Endeavour, records sighting aboriginal people in his journal of 15 May, “…..we observed them with glasses for near an hour during which time they walked upon the beach and then up a path over a gently sloping hill, behind which we lost sight of them. Not one was observed to stop and look toward the ship: they pursued their way….”

It is probable that the aboriginal people were walking along the southern part of Seven Mile Beach.

No one from the Endeavour landed in Arakwal or Bundjalung country that day. Cook sailed on northward claiming all of the east coast of the continent for England and naming it New South Wales. But his voyage was a harbinger of the arrival of the first European settlers to Australia in 1788.

PREV NEXT