SAM NEILL: I'm off on the greatest journey of my life.
Some 250 years ago, a little-known British naval lieutenant, James Cook,
was doing something similar, sailing into the vast Pacific Ocean.
10 years later, he's Captain James Cook
and is known for what many believe
are among the three greatest sea voyages of all time.
I am following in his wake.
I'm fascinated by Cook. I want to know him better.
I want to see what Cook saw, go where he was forbidden.
And I want to meet the people of the Pacific,
whose lives, for better or worse, were changed forever
because Cook was there.
(LAUGHS)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
And here a disclaimer. Look, I'm not an historian.
I'm not a navigator. I'm not a sailor.
I'm not an expert at anything, really. I'm just an actor.
But I am vitally interested, and I hope that you will be too,
and I hope that you will follow me as I follow Cook.
When I was a boy, there was a huge old map on the wall of the classroom.
It was a map of the world, and most of the world was coloured pink,
which meant it was British, it was the old British Empire,
which was supposedly a very good thing,
because it brought order and enlightenment and, above all, cricket
to the darkest corners of the world.
After Cook, there were barely any places in the Pacific
that weren't pink.
And here he is.
Cook went to the trouble of sitting for this portrait between voyages,
and we're told by one of his officers, Samwell,
that this is a good likeness,
and he certainly looks the part -
rugged, resolute, a visionary.
But who was James Cook really?
For those already in the Pacific,
Cook's adventure might be seen more as a misadventure,
one that might bring disease, dispossession and death.
Not such a happy story at all.
So I want to see Cook's adventure, Cook's story,
from both sides of the beach.
This story starts in 1769.
Eight months after having left England
in an old Whitby collier, renamed the Endeavour,
Cook was close to Tahiti...
..an island conquered and claimed two years earlier for the British Crown
by another naval officer, Samuel Wallis.
Wallis extinguished any resistance by the overwhelming use of firepower.
As they entered the Pacific,
Cook's crew remembered Wallis's sailors' accounts
of the fleshy delights to be found in the South Seas.
Now they were desperate to get ashore.
Cook, fully aware of their expectations,
made a speech before anchoring.
Rules - number one,
do not ever trade for sex.
Well, that was never going to fly.
Cook dropped anchor here on April 13, 1769.
To his lice-infested, half-starved crew,
after eight months of tedium and hardship at sea,
this didn't just look like paradise,
it WAS paradise.
Wallis had made Tahitians nervous of visitors with cannons.
Perhaps as a result,
this time, the British received an energetic welcome.
(RAPID DRUMMING)
I'm at the annual Heiva festival.
It's a joyous celebration of Tahitian culture
that runs for a riotous fortnight.
Dance, music, many competitions, and even a beauty contest.
(HORN HONKS)
That's Miss Tahiti.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Always strong, like Superman.
(PEOPLE SING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(PHONE BEEPS)
Thank you.
That's my kind of music.
(STRUMS)
Today's Heiva is a reimagining of old traditions, lost since Cook,
but now revived by passionate enthusiasts.
One of the most popular is dance.
This is the largest Heiva dance competition in Polynesia.
We living today with the blood of our ancestor.
Let's talk about just dance for a minute.
Recovering dance.
The dance for me, the Ori Tahiti,
it's an expression of our happiness.
You shaking all your body from the head to your feet
and your... and your hips and everything,
for love, for making love, for... for the beautiful flowers,
for the beautiful fish, many fish.
Everything. Wow.
When Cook was first confronted by a dancing Tahitian,
he described it as "a very indecent dance".
We're shaking our body.
Don't means every time, "Oh, we want to jump on somebody."
(LAUGHS) No!
We're shaking our body because we're so happy.
That time when they arrived, Wallis, Cook, our men,
they just cover here, back,
and our woman live with... with...
..with their titty out.
It's so nice.
(LAUGHS) Sure!
(LAUGHS)
(PERFORMERS CHANT)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Well, I'm quite overwhelmed, to be honest,
and for the British back then,
Tahiti must have been as nothing they'd ever experienced before,
quite astonishing.
WOMAN: When the British arrived,
they were definitely seduced by this way of life.
Here, they had a beautiful landscape, honestly, objectively.
Yeah.
You have water everywhere.
They had been drinking stale water for months...
Disgusting. ..stinking biscuits.
And they had scurvy and they had lice.
And so of course when they arrived here and they saw those people,
they were clean and always wearing scented flowers,
and they were impressed, because people would bathe twice a day.
Of course!
Who wouldn't have been attracted? Yeah.
Of course, with all these things on offer
and no common currency, what to do?
C'est taro? No. (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Turnip.
Turnip? Yes.
Ah. Where's the taro? Madame?
C'est taro? Yeah. Taro. Yellow.
Yellow taro?
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Soon, people learnt to trade.
There... there were only two things the British wanted -
pua'a and vahine - pigs and women.
And... Terrible when you say it like that.
(LAUGHS) Yeah.
The visit of the Dolphin under Wallis established a precedent.
The British had one thing above all the Tahitians desired -
the humble nail.
The British, of course, desired the women.
The trade was brisk, and over time, the women demanded more nails
and then longer nails.
The men of the Dolphin resorted to pulling nails out of their ship,
which was close to sinking.
(CREAKING)
So, something like this. Yes.
Extremely valuable for a Tahitian. Why?
Because you can do so many things with a nail.
You can go fishing. You can make hooks.
Yeah. You can engrave.
You can use it as a drill.
It seems such a humble thing to... Yes.
..that was so... that could be so valuable.
Yeah. It's just a matter of perception.
And it bought so much. (LAUGHS) Yeah, but it's the way it was.
So... Right.
BOTH: Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
And speaking of cost,
the voyage's botanist, Joseph Banks, paid to go on the voyage.
Handsome, isn't he?
Joseph Banks, a man of wealth and taste.
Banks was not an aristocrat,
but he came from a background of wealth and privilege.
So privileged, in fact, he paid £10,000
to take him and his retinue on this voyage.
This at a time when an average sailor would expect a salary of £14 a year.
Cook added to Banks's duties,
making the wealthy botanist responsible for trade.
And every morning, he negotiated the day's prices
in his tent on the beach.
But, clearly, he had had other things on his mind.
He was, let's face it, an energetic and lusty young man.
He described a time when two women offering Tahitian mats
undressed fully in front of him.
Banks clearly interpreted there was more on offer than just mats.
He writes, "To both of them, I made presents
"but could not prevail upon them to stay more than an hour."
Banks got it wrong.
In Tahitian culture, disrobing was a mark of respect and not a come-on.
Banks had a classical education, and he considered Tahiti as Arcadia,
an ancient Greek ideal of universal innocence.
He soon found a flower to assist his fantasy.
This is a plantation of tiare, the snow-white symbol of Tahiti,
and this beautiful fragrance when mixed with coconut oil
was liberally applied to the English sailors prior to sex
in order to mask the stench of the English.
So, for the British, the Tahitians had everything that they wanted.
I mean, it was perfect.
Except when the Tahitians started stealing.
Right.
To the British, it looked like stealing.
Mmm.
To the Tahitians, something different.
Yes, definitely, because they didn't have
the same sense of property.
The English saw that as stealing,
but they didn't see that THEY were stealing the fruit.
They came here and cut down trees. Yes.
They just couldn't imagine that trees
were not supposed to be cut like that.
They were fishing in the lagoon,
ignoring the fact that, no, you can't fish...
Ah. ..anywhere.
So they didn't see that they were thieves too.
Oh, right.
The bittersweet reality is that ultimately,
more than resources would be stolen.
A whole way of life would be lost,
a lifestyle brilliantly captured in these drawings by Sydney Parkinson.
Banks's artist, barely 23 years old,
perhaps saw the fragility of Tahiti more clearly than his shipmates.
And without these paintings,
knowledge of aspects of the culture would have been completely lost.
Was Cook aware of the impending threat to the Tahitian way of life?
Probably not, as his mission here had global importance
way beyond this tiny paradise.
Cook wasn't just here for R and R. He was here to pursue science.
His orders were to record the transit of Venus.
This meant timing the planet Venus as it passed between the Earth
and across the face of the sun.
And why was observing the transit of Venus important?
Because it could help establish longitude,
and longitude, if you like, was the missing part of the GPS of the day.
In the 18th century, more lives were lost than in warfare
because captains didn't know where they were.
They hit obstacles and sank.
Solving the puzzle involved three observation stations,
two in the Northern Hemisphere
and Cook's in the Southern.
As the only observer in the south,
Cook's measurements would be critical.
Making accurate celestial measurements
required a secure platform.
Cook spent weeks constructing Fort Venus,
earthworks, ditches and palisades, complete with armed guards,
to protect the telescopes and quadrants
essential to observe the transit.
The Tahitians, of course, had no idea what it was all for,
but they certainly realised that the objects inside
were really, really valuable.
The day after the observatory equipment was set up,
a local Tahitian distracted the marine guard
and made off with the quadrant.
This was no simple theft.
Cook was furious.
Without the quadrant, the entire mission would be a failure.
The next transit of Venus would be in 105 years' time.
So Cook's entire career was on the line.
He determined to recover it by any means.
Banks set off across the island
to where they heard the quadrant was hidden.
Catching up with the thieves,
he discovered just showing them his pistols
was enough to recover the quadrant.
The day of reckoning dawned, June 3, 1769.
From nine in the morning, Cook and the astronomer Green
watched the tiny speck of Venus cross the face of the sun.
On the other side of the island,
Clerke, another officer, was doing the same thing,
and here on Moorea, Banks and his team were doing the same again.
The entire transit lasted six hours.
Cook was extremely anxious throughout,
as there was a halo around the planet.
Because of a blurring effect, Cook and Green were unable to agree
on the exact time of Venus's entrance and exit from the sun.
But as it turned out, they needn't have been concerned.
And what's impressive about this was how accurate the data was,
which wasn't improved for another 200 years,
when the radio telescope was invented.
Venus was also very important to the Polynesians.
It was the brightest object in the southern night sky,
and it was known as Ta'urua-nui, the beautiful eldest daughter of Atea,
who was the mother of all the stars,
so perhaps Cook was unwittingly being drawn
into the sphere of the Pacific gods.
Banks was drawn to more profane gods. Venus was also the goddess of love.
After observing the transit, three beautiful women joined him.
And he writes boastfully, "They agreed to send away their canoe
"and sleep in the tent,
"a proof of confidence which I have not before met with
"upon so short an acquaintance."
Banks sees this as a conquest,
but perhaps here he is the object, the object that is conquered.
What to think of James Cook.
He was of humble origins, the son of a farm labourer, and self-taught.
He was unusual in the Royal Navy,
where officers were appointed more by birthright and less on merit.
He was commissioned for his seamanship
and his skill as a navigator.
As yet, he could not know that here in Tahiti,
he was at the very centre of a great maritime civilisation.
A remarkable man called Tupaia sought out Cook for friendship.
Hi. Nice to see you. (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(LAUGHS)
Sam. How are you? Nice to meet you.
Cook was a navigator. Yes.
But he came across so many navigators that were here already.
He did.
One of the navigators that Cook actually met here, on this beach,
was Tupaia.
So Tupaia was standing right there on the top of the hill
when Wallis came,
and they discovered the power that those ships,
the cannon and the metal.
This is the bay where Wallis turns up.
The canoes come out. Yes.
It... they... they think it's... they're being aggressed.
And they open fire on the people on the beach.
And then two days later, they fire cannon up onto that.
They're killing the people at the top of that hill.
Exactly.
Like, we say in the writings, in the books, that you... you had, like,
tens, maybe hundreds of people dead on this beach right here.
Hundreds of people. BOTH: Yeah.
Tupaia, recognising the superiority of European weaponry,
sought alliance with Cook.
Contemporary artist Michel Tuffery has reimagined his meeting with Cook.
Tupaia's gaze is far-reaching, and it was.
Cook saw him as a source of local navigational skill,
not recognising that Tupaia's knowledge extended
far across the Pacific.
He belonged to a vast tradition of master mariners.
Tell me about Cook, what you think, good thing, bad thing...
I have to tell you, I hate when I see documentary or films
or even books saying that the first discoverers of Tahiti
were European, as if our ancestor weren't there,
or they're just part of the fauna and flora.
When Captain Cook came, they wrote and they actually painted
what they saw with their own eyes,
so we have pretty good records of what was here before.
Polynesians are people of the ocean, basically.
We are ocean people, yeah.
So the ocean wasn't so much a barrier or a border.
It was really a... a... a highway, because they knew how to use it.
They knew how to read it.
They understood how to build canoes and to... to go safely on the ocean.
It was a freeway. It WAS a freeway.
And this is what we're trying to do nowadays,
is to reconnect ourself with that knowledge.
We still have a long way to go, but we're doing it.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Since the time I was first introduced to the... the va'a,
it was... (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
"The canoe is... is an island, and... and the island is a canoe."
So, whatever experience, teachings, that you may get on the va'a,
it's always your responsibility to bring it back to the land,
to the community,
'cause it takes a whole community
to build a canoe and to maintain a canoe.
And it takes... it takes knowledge and cooperation
to make a successful society.
It does. It does. A successful society as a whole.
Today, we also have to talk about our own tipuna, our own ancestors,
because they deserve it.
Today's competitors at this championship
would make their ancestors proud.
I'm at the annual va'a races.
These are twin-hull canoes, quintessentially Polynesian,
and here we can see some of the love of the sea
that Cook realised was the essence of Pacific culture.
This is a 9km race flat tack all the way.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
This is the fourth accident we've found.
This boat has also crapped out.
They're in the water, and there's some pretty choice language.
"Putain! Putain!"
I don't know if you know what that means, but...
..I'm not going to tell you.
(SHOUTING)
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Popular winner.
Right to the end, they're going absolutely flat tack.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
What an amazing display of stamina and skill and teamwork.
They're buggered now. (LAUGHS)
Cook, with the transit behind him,
was keen to continue his instructions to chart the island.
Planning to circumnavigate it in a small boat along with Banks,
he sought a guide and interpreter.
He asked Tupaia, who'd been quickly picking up English,
but Tupaia refused,
revealing to Cook that his enemies occupied the far side of the island.
Cook began to suspect that there was a dark side to Tahiti.
Pacific islanders lived in a benign climate with very little materialism,
but this place was rife with factional divisions and civil war.
In spite of his fears, Tupaia wished to join them
near the end of their journey.
He had something very important to show them.
Cook and Banks embarked on a wonderful journey together,
these two very different men.
It was not without risk. They were a small party.
They only had one musket and a couple of pistols between them.
But everywhere they went, they were met with hospitality.
People stripped to their waist as a measure of respect.
As they continued round the island,
they came across something that would be a first for European eyes.
Cook and Banks dazzled to see something like 10 or 12 Tahitians
swimming in surf that would have killed Europeans, Banks thought.
He was truly fascinated that some of the group
were riding and breaking waves on an old canoe plank.
"Incredible swiftness" with which they rushed in
was fantastic, said Banks.
And they stood admiring this very wonderful scene for a good half-hour.
Yep. They were watching surfing.
Two-thirds of their way around the island,
they met Tupaia, who had arrived unscathed.
What he had to show them was a revelation,
the biggest temple in Tahiti.
Today, it is in ruins -
the great marae of Mahaiatea.
Banks called it a masterpiece,
and it was, without doubt, Tupaia's greatest achievement.
Today, I am visiting another marae, Arahurahu.
This beautifully restored marae gives you some idea
of the one that Tupaia built, its power and its mystery.
Except it's on a much lesser scale.
The one that Tupaia built had 11 platforms.
This one has four.
It was immense. It was 50 feet high.
10 years earlier, Tupaia introduced the cult of Oro to Tahiti.
Oro was the god of war, worshipped in his home island, Raiatea.
The people of Bora Bora had invaded Raiatea
and Tupaia had fled for his life,
taking with him Oro's sacred objects.
Tupaia designed and supervised the construction of his marae
while successfully converting the Tahitians to Oro.
Tupaia was, among other things, a great diplomat and politician.
At one point, he was the highest priest on all of Tahiti.
By the time Cook and Banks arrived,
Tupaia's authority had been usurped in a terrible war.
The evidence was everywhere.
Banks trod on the bones of the vanquished
and fresh jawbones hung in houses.
Tupaia was looking for a powerful new ally,
and the British could be very useful new friends.
Cook and Banks returned from circumnavigating the island.
They'd stretched local resources to their limit.
It was July and it was the season of scarcity in Tahiti,
and it became apparent that it was time to leave.
But a couple of the Endeavour's men begged to differ.
Cook had a desertion on his hands.
In a strange foreshadowing
of what would happen 20 years later on the Bounty,
the night before the Endeavour was due to leave,
two marines deserted, Webb and Gibson,
and they headed for the hills with their Tahitian girlfriends.
These working-class lads were offered land, even servants.
And then there's the matter of love.
But it was not to be.
Cook would not countenance such a thing.
He seized half a dozen innocent chiefs as hostages.
And after some severe negotiations and some diplomacy from Tupaia,
the miscreants were returned and received 24 lashes for their trouble,
four times what you'd normally expect.
But in the meantime, Cook was not to know
that the manhandling of chiefs
was considered highly blasphemous, tapu, forbidden.
And unfortunately for Tupaia,
the Tahitians associated him with Cook's hasty actions.
His future on Tahiti was now bleak.
He made the momentous decision to join the Endeavour
and travel to England with Cook.
In the meantime, Cook planned to chart the nearby islands,
and Tupaia would be an invaluable guide.
And for Tupaia, this was an opportunity
to steer them to his birthplace, Raiatea.
This journey would take Cook three days,
and I think I'll take another option.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
As someone who's often homesick myself,
I can fully understand Tupaia's longing to return to HIS island,
but what was so important to Tupaia to risk returning to a place
now occupied by his enemies...
..Raiatea?
Tupaia's dream was to bring his new friends to Taputapuatea Marae.
Not only was it Oro's most sacred site
but it had enormous significance
in the history of Polynesian settlement of the Pacific.
This is such a strange spiritual place,
and I get the same sort of feeling here as I've had at, say,
the pyramids in Mexico or at Stonehenge.
And I'm unsure why, but, clearly, it was very important
to Tupaia personally.
MAN: Tupaia was a priest from here,
from the site, actually,
and then he basically was educated over here,
he was trained here, as a priest and also as a navigator.
So tell me, why is this important?
It's important because the site is really a living testimony
of more than thousands of years of Maori... Polynesian civilisation.
Taputapuatea is now thought to be
where the great Pacific migrations left from,
in search of other islands to settle.
The whole Polynesian Triangle,
including Hawaii,
Aotearoa, New Zealand,
Easter Island, called Rapa Nui,
and also Cook Islands,
this is the living testimony that we're all one people.
We are ocean people. We are the ocean.
It's also where the spirits return.
It's Polynesia's motherland, its hereafter and its underworld.
Any navigator that comes from this site, for example, Tupaia,
is an ancestor for the sites.
So when we come here, we know that the spirit of Tupaia is still there,
and we come here, the Maoris knows that
the spirit of their own ancestor is still there,
because every... every... it's like a... it's like a hub.
As a Polynesian, as a Raiatean,
my... my ancestry, my... my blood,
is part of that history, and...
..and that's the reason why this site has to be
also revealed to the world and...
..as a part of its humanity.
The first thing that strikes you here
is how connected Taputapuatea is with the sea, you know.
It's almost like a... a pathway from the ocean to get to the land.
Yep.
Yeah.
Cook and Banks witnessed Tupaia conduct a ceremony to the god Oro
with chants and offerings
and asking for blessings for the rest of the journey.
Taputapuatea is not only a marae.
It's basically a whole complex of marae.
And that complex was the starting point
of a worship, a cult, the Oro cult,
and on the marae, people were sacrificed,
and then they have been used to increase the mana
of the ruling god of the maraes.
So you can still find today, for example, some bones
or... or... human bones just under...
..underneath the... the pavement.
At this marae, the world of darkness met the world of light.
Banks, oblivious to the consequences,
thrust his hand into a shrine and brought out a sacred idol.
This was sacrilege, and were it not for Tupaia's intervention,
Banks's crime would have been punishable by death.
Later, on his third voyage, Cook took part in a ceremony
that involved human sacrifice.
It was traditional before warfare, to prevent deaths and ensure victory.
(MAN CALLS)
The victim was usually an unsuspecting slave
clubbed on the head while gardening.
(CHANTS)
Hopefully, that's not MY fate.
(PEOPLE SING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Indeed, the prayers offered today
are for the health of these traditional medicinal plants.
(PEOPLE SING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
To be honest, I'm not quite sure what's going on.
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
(PEOPLE SING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
My friends here are a small group of enthusiasts
looking for a less homicidal way
to connect to Tahiti's pre-Christian pagan past.
Their rituals are something old, something new
and something that they freely admit they've just made up.
As religions go, it's joyous and harmless.
(MAN CALLS) (OTHERS TRILL AND CALL)
(SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE) (SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Cook didn't pay too much attention to religious observance.
His serious ceremonials were all to do with king and country.
After Tupaia's ceremony, Cook then decides to conduct one of his own,
one that he would repeat many times.
He plants a flag and takes possession of Raiatea
and three other islands
in the name of King George III.
This extraordinary European notion
that if you were the first to plant a flag in a place,
it became yours as of right.
However, Cook was under orders from the Admiralty,
with the caveat "with the consent of the natives".
There can be no question of consent here,
because we know that they weren't asked.
The British Crown did not follow up on Cook's sovereign claim,
and for now, the Tahitians were left in peace, but not for long.
Other empire builders from the West were close behind.
This part of the Pacific would never be pink
and, sadly, was thus deprived of cricket.
The French raised their flag in 1880
and have kept it flying ever since.
Bastille Day.
Liberte, egalite, fraternite.
Not entirely sure how that works in a Tahitian context.
It's very grand.
(MAN GIVES ORDER) (CEREMONIAL MUSIC PLAYS)
The growing demand for Tahitian independence
is complicated by other fears.
Yeah, I resisted getting into politics for many years,
but, you know, it caught up on me.
Stuff does. (LAUGHS) Yeah.
Currently, what's the atmosphere with the Tahitian people?
I'm quite sure it's gonna stir up some mixed feelings
among our people.
Some of them are gonna be very sceptical as,
"Why are you attending this," you know, "colonial party?"
Do they want independence?
At the bottom of their heart, most of the Tahitians want independence.
But there's this fear that has been instilled in our minds -
we have to stay French, otherwise we're going to die,
or we don't have the financial means to support ourselves.
We don't have the people to lead us.
We cannot be a full-blown nation.
We have to stay under that... that French wing.
With the missionaries, the colonists,
what was lost and what has been regained?
(EXHALES) That's... that's a huge question,
because, you know, some... part of what was lost,
we don't even know...
..about it, because it was lost forever.
The traditions to... the religion, you know, the... the cults.
That place we're sitting at... Mmm.
..used to be a marae, here.
And now it's a parking lot.
So this was a... (BOTH LAUGH)
..a sacred place, and now it's covered in Toyotas and Peugeots.
Exactly. Well, that's what we call progress.
(BOTH LAUGH) That's right.
The islands of French Polynesia
were converted with extraordinary rapidity.
The missionaries were extremely zealous.
Granted, these men had the best of intentions,
but, in the name of the one true God, the one true faith,
they destroyed old gods and old beliefs.
They did all they could to ban tattoo, massage, nudity of any kind,
dance, music.
All the fun stuff.
They made everything that was sacred profane.
I think that's kind of cultural vandalism.
But there's no vandalism here at the Heiva festival.
The culture is coming back in surprising ways.
I'm about to see something I really wasn't expecting at all.
It's a fruit-carrying competition.
It's all about strength and endurance
and I think an awesome demonstration, perhaps,
of the kind of physicality that Cook and his men found
all around the Pacific.
I won't be taking part.
(MAN SPEAKS FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
And go!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) Go, go, go, go, go, go, go!
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
The fruit race is only one of many events at Heiva
that run for a fortnight around Bastille Day.
Once upon a time, this grand French military parade
was the only show in town.
(CHEERING, APPLAUSE AND WHISTLING)
Not anymore. Now Heiva outranks it.
And I know which one I prefer.
This picture, a scene in Tahiti,
is one of eight paintings by the same artist on Cook's first voyage.
It shows extraordinary botanical knowledge,
with Tahitian trees and plants
rendered in very fine detail on the page.
It's very beautiful.
And for the longest time,
the identity of the artist was a complete mystery.
But in 1997, research revealed the answer.
In one of Banks's rediscovered letters, he wrote,
"Tupaia, an Indian, learned to draw in a way not unintelligible."
Banks couldn't help but be patronising.
We know now that Tupaia was an arioi,
a master of Tahitian arts,
and these, in an entirely new medium, are remarkable.
With Tupaia's help, Cook charted a handful of islands
before departing Tahiti
to fulfil the last of his instructions,
to sail into the south-east Pacific
and look for the mythological great southern continent.
On 9 August 1769, the Endeavour sailed away.
Tupaia watched the islands dip under the horizon,
his tears a premonition he might never see them again.
Tupaia spends his time describing
a staggering total of 130 different islands
and makes a sketch of the islands around Tahiti.
And of that, this remains - a copy of a copy of Tupaia's sketch.
And Raiatea...
..is plumb in the centre.
And what's incredible about this
is that you see two world views coming together on the same page,
Tupaia's knowledge and Cook's pen writing the names of the islands.
It's a metaphor of sorts,
because nothing will be the same from here on in.
The two worlds are now known to each other and the charts are filling in.
The thing is, this is personal.
You can look at me and say, "He's European."
But, see, I don't really feel entirely European anymore.
My family have been here in the South Pacific for 150 years,
not that long,
but now my children, my grandchildren,
they're Asian, they're Polynesian, Maori,
and their ancestors have been here for thousands of years before Cook.
And it's not so much blood that binds us but...
..the waters of the vast Pacific.
We are all ocean people.
Tupaia and Cook, these two very different navigators,
would soon turn their attentions to my homeland, New Zealand,
the southernmost point of Polynesian migration.
Their time there would firmly establish Tupaia as a Polynesian icon
and elevate Cook in the pantheon of maritime exploration.