SAM NEILL: This is the Pacific Highway,
Cairns, North Queensland.
What do you reckon?
I'm sort of wondering what the hand gesture is.
It looks kind of fascist.
Really?
I'm a little bit worried about this from your point of view, Sam.
I mean, I love you and I respect you, but he's one of yours.
(LAUGHS)
There's an old board game here which is probably as old as me.
That old? (LAUGHS) Yeah. That's right.
Australia in the 1960s thought nothing of a board game
based on the notion that the country was discovered by James Cook.
Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained,
and my mate, Ernie Dingo, and I are having a crack at it.
I... I have trouble trying to understand
that Captain Cook discovered Australia.
Yes. It wasn't lost.
(BOTH LAUGH)
Cook's charting of Australia's east coast in 1770
set off a chain of events
that led directly to the modern Pacific country we know now.
But I want to re-examine that first contact and hear stories untold
of a rich Indigenous culture as perplexed by the arrival of white men
as the white men were flummoxed by this strange land.
Ernie Dingo, you are Captain Cook. And you've discovered Australia.
Tell you what, don't tell anybody that.
They'll be talking about this for the next 200 years.
(LAUGHS)
James Cook's first voyage in the Pacific
had brought him and his crew into contact with fellow seafarers,
the Polynesians.
In Tahiti and New Zealand, they'd immersed themselves in their ways,
traded with them, enjoyed their hospitality,
though not without incident and, on occasion, violent.
In New Zealand, contact was aided by a Polynesian interpreter, Tupaia,
and Cook, no doubt, hoped to use his skills throughout the Pacific.
But as he sailed west from New Zealand,
Cook was, in fact, leaving Polynesia behind him.
No Europeans knew what lay ahead.
The Dutch had mapped all but this coast
of the continent they called New Holland.
William Dampier, the English pirate,
had called it, uncharitably,
home to "the miserablest people in the world".
Cook would make up his own mind.
On 19 April, land was spied - Point Hicks.
Cook turned north, began charting...
..and naming things.
Over there, in the murky haze, is Cape Howe,
which Cook names after Admiral Earl Howe,
who was the treasurer for the Royal Navy.
It's always a good idea to name things after your superiors,
and Cook was smart about sucking up to his betters.
The coordinates that he gave for the Cape
are almost precisely those surveyed today.
As they tacked along the coast, they spied smoke.
Cook thought they were camp fires.
Parkinson, the artist, thought perhaps they might be smoke signals.
Whatever the reason, it was clear New Holland's east coast was inhabited.
For 10 days, Cook searched in vain for places to land.
And then, finally, a fine wide bay.
This is Botany Bay, and Sydney Airport is just across there.
That's where I first landed in Australia,
a matter of absolutely no historical importance at all.
However...
..Cook landed just here,
and there's a bloody great obelisk there to mark the very spot,
except it probably isn't the spot.
It was about half a kilometre down the beach. No matter.
That's just the sort of erection you need to mark the birth of a nation.
It was erected in 1870 to mark the centenary of Cook's arrival here,
by the Australian Patriotic Association.
Somewhat ironic title, given that it was primarily concerned
with reminding Australians about their British origins.
With Tupaia by his side, Cook rowed towards shore,
attempting first contact,
only to be met with rocks and spears.
This commissioned painting by E.P. Fox reimagines the scene.
It was painted in 1902, just a year after Federation,
and its function is to mark the birth of a nation.
It's rather like Washington crossing the Delaware.
It's inspirational and heroic, and there's Cook front and centre.
He steps upon a new land, hand is outstretched, beseeching his men
not to fire upon these two Aboriginal blokes,
marginalised on the edge of the frame.
The problem here is it's largely fictional.
Cook himself was actually armed, and he fired twice upon those men.
I want to start on the day that Cook arrives here.
What it was, Sam, it was a... a UFO, unidentified floating object.
(LAUGHS)
So, you can see by looking at this ship, Sam,
that we would have got an ideal view of Cook's vessel
as it came in here as well.
Look how close we are to it. Yeah.
Diary notes say,
"They called to us very loud in a harsh-sounding language
"of which neither us or Tupaia understood a word,
"shaking their lances and menacing."
(SPEAKS INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
So... so, what... so, what... what did that mean?
"Go! Go! Go away!" "Just go away." Yeah.
I mean, I knew that
just by the way you said it.
(BOTH LAUGH)
From this side of the beach, what do these strange people look like?
What do they... what do you make of them?
Some people thought they were ghosts.
It was believed in the camps that when a black man dies,
he goes over to the other side and comes back white.
So, these are ancestors coming back. Ancestors coming back.
So, when you see white people on this vessel, it just passed right here,
it's kind of scary.
They thought they was ghosts.
But as the sailors were going up the masts,
we also thought they was goomeras, so a goomera is a possum.
So, they must have been...
..actually, that's quite a...
..quite a good visual thing, isn't it,
that... that... that they've got that agility of possums,
going up on the... on the mast and so on.
Yeah.
But as, you know, the vessel was sailing up the...
..the east coast here,
they noticed lots of fires along the way.
We believe strongly
that it was us also sending messages to one another.
The way we sent messages is we used different kinds of leaves
to produce different colours.
So, the Aboriginal people here knew that that vessel was on the way,
you know, well before it got, you know, even halfway here.
Cook lands with his landing party,
and there's two Aboriginal men with spears.
Yeah, Cook describes this particular one as a pike.
But, as you can see, this one has a single head on it.
Rod is actually the manufacturer of it.
You made this? Yeah, I made this here.
And... and that's for spearing large... large-scaled fish.
And...
..two of these are thrown, I think.
But they miss. Yeah, that was deliberate.
Like, our people were so skilful with the spear
that if they really wanted to, you know, hit 'em with the spear,
they would of.
So, it was just like warning shots.
"We don't want to hurt you." Yeah.
"Just go away." "Go away." Yeah.
(GUNSHOT)
Musket fire was used.
They just retreated into the bush.
Over the next few days, they would continue to see people every day,
but usually at a distance,
and whenever the Europeans approached, they'd be waved away
or the Aboriginal people would just evaporate, disappear into the bush.
There's such a contrast to the rest of the Pacific,
where they were always challenged on the beach.
People would swarm aboard. There was so much curiosity. Not here.
Eventually, some people did start to return,
and they fished in canoes out here, around the Endeavour.
The curious thing is that they studiously ignored the English.
It was as if they didn't exist at all.
And Tupaia captures this brilliantly in this painting.
This chap is concentrating very hard on spearing a fish.
These two, possibly women, are fishing over the side,
and the one at the back is sneaking a little look
at the people on the Endeavour, just for a moment.
The Englishmen must have been stumped.
They offered nails and beads,
prized in other parts of the Pacific but ignored here.
The Aboriginal people had no need for any of it.
They clearly didn't care for their alien visitors.
Cook lamented,
"All they seemed to want from us was to be gone."
So Cook and his naturalist, Joseph Banks,
turned their attention instead to the countryside.
But no-one was really prepared for how different things were here.
Everything had evolved differently - plants, animals, trees -
and the naturalists on board were completely entranced.
But the one animal that really engaged them
was, of course, the kangaroo.
Parkinson made what was obviously a very quick sketch of a kangaroo,
and that was later elaborated upon by the great George Stubbs.
Cook himself had a fair crack at describing these strange creatures.
He writes in his journal, "It was of a mouse colour.
"I should have taken it for a wild dog
"but for its walking or running,
"in which it jumped like a hare or a deer.
"It bears no sort of resemblance to any European animal I ever saw."
This animal was so different,
they couldn't even come up with a name for it,
sticking with the local name - 'gangurru',
misheard as 'kangaroo'.
To the English, Australia was a scientific goldmine.
Banks and his assistant, Solander, filled envelopes with plant species
ready to be shipped back to the Royal Society.
MAN: The specimens that we can show you now
are some of the actual collections
that were made by Banks and Solander on that voyage,
and here at the National Herbarium of New South Wales,
there are, I think, about 820.
The technology that Banks and Solander used
is really the same as what we still use today.
Yes, we have GPS units and things like this,
and we drive around in cars,
but the way we press and dry plants is essentially the same.
Banks and Solander, they used sheets of paper.
They used pages of Milton's Paradise Lost.
We use newspapers and sheets of cardboard.
In a broader sense, what did these discoveries lead to?
I think, in many ways, they changed the course of science
and, in some ways, the course of history,
certainly of the Southern Hemisphere.
This was a very successful
scientific expedition.
Prior to this voyage, it was usually just the ship's doctor,
the ship's surgeon, that did the natural history,
and so subsequently, many British expeditionary voyages
had a team of naturalists and scientists on them.
This is really what the Enlightenment's all about, is it not?
Indeed. Mm.
And... and this is really famous, obviously,
because it's... it's not just a great specimen
but it's the actual plant that was named after Banks
and has become so...
Yes, it... it certainly...
..of the collection of Banks and Solander specimens here,
this is the iconic specimen.
But it is remarkable that this is soft vegetation. It's 200 years old.
If I had thrown that onto my compost, it would...
..it would have dissolved in a week.
Is... is it too late for something, you know, to be named after me?
Oh, there's always a possibility for that.
It may not be as spectacular as a banksia.
I'd like a big tree, the... you know, the 'Arbus neillae'.
Yes. (LAUGHS) Could... could you arrange this?
Oh, we can... we can see what we can do, absolutely.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Yes. (LAUGHS)
After a week in Botany Bay, the Endeavour resumed its journey north,
as will I, for thousands of kilometres.
It is one long, spectacular coastline.
And Cook couldn't have known
he was actually sailing by many different nations of people,
each living in a region their country for tens of thousands of years.
Dulingbara people described his passage
as "a mysterious white-winged object
"passing along the ocean like a gigantic pelican".
I'm now about 1,200km north of Botany Bay.
Cook had been slowly charting his way up the coast here,
anxious to replenish his supplies and looking for somewhere to land.
Of course, what he knew was that he was being observed from the coast.
What he couldn't know was that he was being recorded.
That's right, recorded.
In song.
And those recordings still remain to this day.
(SINGS IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
Their words have been passed down through generations
and now translated into English.
This is sort of amazing, really,
because Cook sails past here,
he calls this bluff Indian Head,
'Indian' being a catch-all phrase for anyone who wasn't European.
And a few feathers in their hair. Yeah.
And... (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
..your people see him on his craft and he sees you from his craft.
Yep. And this song survives.
And this song records that meeting. Yeah.
"Strangers are travelling with a cloud.
"Areeram."
'Areeram', there's no English word for it.
It's, like, exclamation, like, surprise.
"Wow!" "Wow!" Yeah.
"It has fire inside. Must be a bad water spirit.
"It's stupid.
"Maybe it's going directly to that serpent place.
"This is the truth I bring.
"Coming up and going back like a sand crab."
Now, that's a really interesting line.
We can take that to mean that the ship is actually tacking
like a crab walks along the beach.
That's exactly it. Fantastic.
"The sea carries this ship here.
"Why?"
Yeah. That's the question they're asking.
I think the special thing about this song is that...
..that it records his movements going past,
but if you read Cook's journal,
it corresponds with this song.
Right.
And I think that's the... the thing about it, really,
is that it's something that is proven on both sides
that it definitely happened.
Yes. Yeah.
(KIDS CHANT IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
There's an irony here.
Cook, the great cartographer with his charts,
and just a few hundred metres away, other mapmakers.
The Indigenous people had their own maps, but instead of charts,
they sang and danced to convey information.
Quickly tell me, Gemma, about songlines,
which is a quite difficult thing for, you know,
the European mind to gr... to grasp.
It's like a big web that sits over the whole of Australia,
and they all interconnect.
Everything interconnects all the way out.
In the old days, when we walked the Dreaming trails,
you'd have to sing the songs of all the land that you went past,
of that tree, that rock, that ridge, that lake, that creek.
You sing the songs of that as you go through that country.
When I'd come to the border of my country
or maybe to the end of my section of the song,
my... in my clan land,
it would then just be picked up and taken on by the next people,
and then they would carry it.
Songlines are the... the creation ancestors,
all the feats and the deeds and the heroic things they did
and the... fights they had,
it's all a picture in the land, it's all there,
so we don't need a map and we don't even need to use the stars
to guide ourselves through country.
In another time, with a different past,
perhaps this headland could have become
a place to celebrate shared history of two great cultures.
But it, unfortunately, tells a much bleaker story.
Long after Cook, in the 1800s,
growing tensions with colonists led to shocking events
that have modern Australians shaking their heads in shame and disbelief.
So, this is a major massacre site
for Badtjala people.
There were massacres, in fact,
all across Fraser Island.
That's right.
But this was the worst massacre of all here.
They drove my people off this headland.
It was hundreds of people, apparently.
It was women and children and old people.
The ones that were supposed to be protected.
And I think most Indigenous people have that painful past,
no matter where they come from in the world.
(CLEARS THROAT)
And it was...
..it was a change in history.
It was that change for... for... for us, as a people.
And that's what that song's about.
It was that... that omen, that foretelling, of what was coming.
(SINGS IN INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE)
Without our knowing it, I think this seems to have become,
as much as anything, about impact.
Cook started so many things in the Pacific,
but can we blame Cook for what followed,
for everything that happened?
I don't know.
I have to be honest. I'm finding a lot of this journey quite difficult.
(LAUGHS)
For... for one thing, the more I learn,
the more I realise how little I know.
I mean, I had some idea of how Aboriginal people
got around this vast continent,
that they followed songlines,
but I wasn't quite sure exactly what they meant.
The idea that this entire continent was already charted in song
for at least 60,000 years, it's...
..it's a lot to... (LAUGHS)
..it's a lot to take on board,
and more than that, the people that followed them,
the drovers, the telegraph engineers, the road makers,
they were more often than not following those very same songlines.
And, in fact, I might be driving on a songline right now.
As he continued to head north, past Fraser Island,
Cook may have been puzzled to spy more Badtjala people,
not running and hiding but attempting to communicate.
They waved at each other. Cook thought they were being amicable.
The Badtjala people were, in fact, waving,
"Don't go that way. It's dangerous."
But Cook sailed on.
He was entering what is a paradise today,
but in a lumbering tub of a boat totally at the whims of fluky breezes
and funnelling directly into the Great Barrier Reef.
You're negotiating this maze of reefs
and you've got no idea what's coming up.
To press forward into the Great Barrier Reef at night
without charts, it's sort of like Russian roulette.
If you don't know there's a reef coming up,
suddenly you're in amongst it.
And then, at 11pm on 11 June...
(THUNDER CRASHES)
..they slammed directly into a reef.
For 24 hours, they were stuck high and dry on the reef.
You cannot imagine anything more terrifying.
All men were on the pumps. Hardly anyone could swim.
They were 12km from land.
And there were not enough boats to save all souls.
Cook ordered the ship to be lightened,
throw anything overboard that could possibly lighten its load
and get it to float free on the high tide.
Eight cannon went overboard.
With so much damage to the Endeavour,
the crew fully expected that once they got free of the reef,
they would sink straight to the bottom of the ocean.
So, the damage was right up here, on the bluff bow.
That's a massive hole, isn't it? It is.
And so you can see, the ship would have gone down pretty quickly
with that extent of damage.
Yeah.
They've obviously got to get it off the reef
as quick as they possibly can,
because the reef is just grinding the ship to pieces.
The rising tide finally lifts the lightened Endeavour
and its exhausted men off the reef,
but now she's sinking.
In a beautiful indicator of Cook's leadership,
one of the junior officers comes up with the idea of fothering,
and Cook takes up that recommendation.
They just grabbed the next sail and... and...
..and pulled it down over that.
I think they put some sheep... Yeah.
Because they had animals on board,
so they were taking anything that could make it sticky.
Absolutely.
They hauled a sail down over the hole
and managed to get a line that ran
under the ship and up the other side.
It wouldn't have sealed up the hole completely.
It really just would have slowed the water down.
Every day is a matter of life and death on the Endeavour.
Totally.
With the men taking turns on the pumps 24/7,
it takes a full week for the stricken ship to limp into a safe harbour...
..Waalumbaal Birri, later renamed Endeavour River, and Cooktown.
The 300 or so tonnes of ship beached for repairs.
They say that every great commander or general needs two things -
genius and great good luck -
and the first thing they discovered when the Endeavour was beached here
was that the very coral head
that had actually made a hole in the hull of the Endeavour
was still stuck in that hole,
and without this freakish good fortune,
it's highly likely that the fothering bandage wouldn't have worked at all
and they would have perished out there on the reef.
The second stroke of extraordinarily good luck
was that where they landed was traditionally a safe place,
a neutral space.
Anywhere else that they might have landed up or down the coast,
they would have been sitting ducks.
Because it was forbidden to spill blood on this sacred place.
Cook beaches at Cooktown, where your mother lives.
Yeah.
That was the only place that the ship actually landed.
And they smoked out all the cockroaches and the rats.
Yeah, they thought, "This is a really good time
"to get rid of all the bed bugs,"
so they smoked the boat and then basically infested that whole area
with cockroaches and rats.
And he was also really lucky that he landed in a neutral space.
Which is the irony - you know, we had embassies,
we had actual places of safety,
where if you had grief... griefs with other tribes,
this is a place where you could actually sit down with them
and actually have a good talk about it
without actually spearing anybody or killing anybody.
You weren't allowed to kill anybody on that place.
And, actually, a lot of these places are beaches,
where they're so sacred that multiple tribes can get together,
trade... you know what I mean, share,
but actually have really big arguments
about problems that other tribes have created
or... you know what I mean?
Without violence.
It's instructive that 250 years ago, the Indigenous nations of Australia
had a very structured way of dealing with conflict.
But in the time since,
this way of settling grievances has largely been silenced, like so much.
So people like my friend Warwick Thornton
are doing their bit to reclaim that voice.
..like a barrier between youse two,
but you're gonna come around the horse and chase him out.
Are you angry? Um... no. I'm not.
I like to get...
..emotional about it, but...
..um...
..you know, having this conversation is making me happy.
(BOTH LAUGH)
It upsets ME. No! You know what I mean?
We're talking about it. Yep.
That... that is... that's exciting.
I get the feeling there's such a push
from Indigenous people, in... in the arts, people like yourself...
Yeah, yeah.
..and, obviously, the bit that interests me the most is in film.
Don't you think that sort of consciousness
generally among Australian people is beginning to lift,
or... or do you think we're still just scratching the surface?
No, I reckon there's way too many beautiful human beings out there
who are really interested in...
..in a different version of Australia's history.
And they're getting it through art.
You try to run
and I will shoot you in the back.
Do you understand?
WARWICK: We've got a lot to say about our version of history,
which is quite different to
actually what's been written in textbooks, history books
that are in schools or in libraries.
The different point of view
can help shape generations of people
that have been abused and... and belittled
to be empowered by making a movie.
It's clear Australia has a shared history
of Indigenous and non-Indigenous viewpoints,
but they're seldom told together.
So, here in North Queensland,
they're telling the story from both sides of the beach.
(BELL RINGS)
So, Alberta, we're in the Cooktown Re-enactment...
Association.
..the Cooktown Re-enactment Association,
which is as much about telling the story of that time.
And every year, you re-enact. We certainly do.
So this is Cook's uniform.
It certainly is.
Now, when we started this series, I...
..I said I didn't want any re-enactments
or... or, you know, people writing logs
with feather pens and things like that.
OK.
But I think I might just put this on for a moment.
Well, I think you... I think you ought to, because that's what we do.
You know, we have... OK.
..Captain Cook with the feather pen and...
Yeah. OK. ..writing in his journals and...
So, I'll make an exception today. Yep. OK.
What do you think? Does it... does it suit me?
Yes, I think it... it does, yeah. OK.
With a frilly shirt underneath and...
Yeah, OK. ..some white tights.
Can I carry it off? Um...
Am I good enough an actor for this?
Well... Come on.
That's a little bit of a delay there. Oh, look, no.
Well, our... our... our... our current Captain Cook, his name is Ric.
Yeah.
And he does a fantastic Captain Cook.
Oh, OK. In that case... Yeah.
And he has the... the English accent down to a tee.
Yes. OK. Alright.
That's... well, that's me out of a job.
Their re-enactments, without yours truly, tell the story.
It took a full three weeks before four local men sidled up to the ship.
You can see they weren't overly impressed with the offered trinkets,
but they were delighted with the fish.
A month later, the Endeavour repaired,
the crew had gathered provisions, readying for departure.
Relations have been generally good until one fateful event.
Tell me what's happening here, Alberta.
This is the Endeavour. It's already packed, ready to go back home.
Everything's been loaded on board.
You see a lot of turtles.
This is the first time our people had been on the ship.
When they sight the turtles on board, they are not happy at all.
And the turtles were taken off a reef that was a place of...
..guurrbi, what we call guurrbi, it was a sacred place.
In essence, unwittingly, Cook and his men had absolutely broken the law.
They certainly did.
An ancient, ancient law. An ancient law.
So, it's no wonder that people are furious.
They are. Seven of them came on board.
They went on board unarmed.
They demanded two turtles.
And they showed it by grabbing two turtles
and trying to haul it down the gangplank.
Cook would have nothing of it, so they were stopped from doing that.
They were so angry.
One of our mob grabbed a firestick from the fireplace.
He put the whole settlement area on fire.
The journals tell us that they followed our men
a mile up from the settlement area.
In this place of peace, this conflict was escalating rapidly,
until something remarkable happened.
Out of the scrub came this older gentleman.
He's referred to as a little old man in the journals,
but we know that he is a Waymbuurr Warra elder,
because he has the authority to speak for this country.
He carries with him a spear that has a tip broken.
He talks to Cook.
Cook could not understand what he was saying,
but just by his gesture, he knew that this little old man
was making an attempt to resolve this...
..this conflict between the two.
So, it works. It works.
It's peace. Yes. It's peace.
Cook calls this a reconciliation.
He says this reconciled everything.
And what a point to the future. Yes, it is.
When we talk about reconciliation today, you know,
they set an example in 1770...
Absolutely. ..of what can be done.
Yep.
Right.
It's a very touching story. (LAUGHS) It is, yes.
Very touching.
I can say I got cuddled by Sam Neill.
Cook chose to ignore a key lesson of Indigenous law,
quite frankly, still relevant today -
only take what you need.
Nick. G'day, mate. How you going?
This group have a green sea turtle
and are learning about sustainable living.
He weigh 5-7-5-5-6.
I've never eaten turtle. Have you?
Yeah. (LAUGHS)
Aboriginal people are legally entitled to their customary food.
Yep. Right there.
OK.
And luckily for this fellow,
today's lesson is rehabilitation
and release methods for rescued turtles.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
Of course, Cook, Banks and co could only scratch the surface
when it comes to learning about New Holland.
The land around Cooktown showed the evidence of great bushfires.
The Englishmen could never imagine they were deliberately lit.
What could be more terrifying than fire in the Australian bush?
But what I'm actually looking at here is knowledge,
knowledge that was accumulated over thousands and thousands of years.
Bruce, the most terrifying sight for me in the world is a bushfire.
What are we looking at here?
Why are they lighting fires at all?
They're looking after the country.
If you don't burn, you get weed species growing up,
and that's what these lads are doing.
They're burning the country to get rid of the weeds,
to leave the country nice and open, for the animals and for themselves.
It's an age-old practice.
As the first explorers often said,
looked like a gentleman's park, an English gentleman's park.
So they were preparing the ground
with an agricultural purpose in mind.
Cook couldn't possibly have seen that, could he?
Well, he must have known that something was happening,
because he was taking...
..Captain Cook spinach, or warrigal greens,
he was taking it off the roofs of the Aboriginal houses.
He wanted it to cure the scurvy of his sailors,
so it must have occurred to him, surely,
that these people are growing food.
Why did he never talk about it?
Because he was there to possess.
So, the Aboriginal thing... ownership of the land is kind of a...
..it's a different idea, isn't it?
We believe that the land owns us.
We punished greed.
Whereas in European law, we actually reward greed.
So, what we're doing here is, in effect, caring for country?
Yeah. It's a... it's a love.
I think all Australians, black and white,
can benefit from this knowledge.
If we don't learn about the country, we're doomed.
Cook marched up this hill on 19 June 1770
and plotted his way out through the reefs.
In a few short weeks, he'd seen and communicated with people here
who fished, hunted, grew crops, lit fires, built dwellings and so on.
But botanist Joseph Banks must have been looking the other way.
For Banks was to champion the idea of a penal colony
in what was to be known as New South Wales,
arguing later that the people they met were nomadic
and had no connection to the land, despite clear evidence otherwise.
It allowed future generations to adopt the Latin term 'terra nullius',
'nobody's land'.
Ponder that for a second.
The history of a whole country determined
on the obfuscations of one man.
Cook leaves Cooktown and, despite the danger,
he deliberately chose to hug the coastline,
charting among the reefs, intent on proving New Holland
was separate to New Guinea, further north,
no doubt passing multiple tribes as he went.
Far from being terra nullius,
we now know that Australia was not only entirely populated
but it consisted of at least 400 different languages,
400 separate nations, and there were borders everywhere,
borders that could only be crossed by observing the strictest of protocols.
Cook wasn't to know this, but every time he landed here,
he broke all kinds of law and protocol.
Today, of course, for many reasons,
borders seem to be more important than ever,
and this vessel I'm on belongs to the Australian Border Force.
MAN: Well, Sam, we've got an extremely large maritime domain
that takes up approximately one-tenth of the Earth's surface.
Within that, there's a number of maritime threats
that we keep an eye out for.
The maritime threats range from
illegal exploitation of natural resources,
or fish poaching of Australian stocks.
You've got illegal movement of goods across the border,
and then there's illegal maritime arrivals.
Illegal arrivals? We're talking about boat people?
Correct.
If we were to see some boat people, what...
Wait a moment.
That looks like the Endeavour.
And I can see a lot of blokes in naval uniforms,
and they're holding a Union Jack
and they obviously clearly intend to second Australia.
What are we going to do? You're in charge. Come on.
That would depend on what they said they wanted to do.
We might... we might need some extra help out here if that was the case.
They've got cannons on board. That's right.
We are surrounded by all this fantastic technology.
We know exactly where we are.
But Cook is sailing through these waters
and has absolutely no idea where he's going.
That's a monumental feat, where you've got reef and shoals
and shallows and the constant changing of depths.
It's a staggering thought that a ship half this size
could go right around the world and carry 100 crew, supplies.
It's quite a thing, isn't it? It's amazing.
I've always liked the thought of being Captain Neill,
so I pulled rank.
I'm going to take it 10 degrees to starboard. Correct?
Could I ask you just to make it 20 degrees?
20 degrees. We've got a sailboat out there.
We don't want to hit him.
No, I obviously don't want to hit that.
Are you all with me, crew? Yeah, we're with you.
I'd... I'd prefer if you said, "Aye-aye, sir."
Aye-aye, sir. Oh, that's better. Yeah.
OK. Here we go.
Yeah, it's following your command.
Rudder's going to 20 degrees. Yep.
Our bow is following. OK.
We're at 100 now.
See, I would have needed two sturdy men
to take the Endeavour round 20 degrees, wouldn't I?
That's what 250 years of advancement will do for us.
Yeah. But I can do this with two fingers.
It's very satisfying.
Cook rounded the northernmost point of the continent
and saw the oceans opening out to the west.
Realising he'd achieved his mission to complete the map of New Holland,
he then, as so often,
raised the Union Jack.
Well, the Dutch had mapped the west coast,
the French were sniffing around the Pacific,
so, all in all, first in, best dressed.
That's how empires are formed, sometimes by force of arms
and sometimes by simply raising a flag.
Cook knew exactly what he was doing.
He was taking possession of the east coast of Australia
for King George III and Britannia.
This is perhaps Cook's most complex moment,
still debated to this day,
as evident in the way Indigenous Australian artists
now portray the man.
What I wonder is, since setting foot in Botany Bay
and observing this land and doing his job and making his maps,
would Cook have been party to Banks's later proposals,
for colonisation and the notion of terra nullius?
And while they sailed away,
Cook's thoughts turned to the people he left behind,
the Indigenous people,
the very same people who were now burning country
to cleanse the land of his presence.
And this is what he wrote.
"From what I've said of the natives of New Holland,
"they may appear to be some of the most wretched people on Earth
"but, in reality, they are far more happier than we Europeans,
"being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous
"but the necessary conveniences so much sought after in Europe.
"They live in a tranquillity
"which is not disturbed by the inequality of condition.
"The earth and sea, of their own accord,
"furnishes them with all the things necessary for life.
"This, in my opinion, argues
"that they think themselves provided with all the necessaries of life
"and that they have no superfluities."
This, I think, is very insightful,
and I think it speaks very well of Cook,
just as he speaks well of the people themselves,
and to hell with Dampier and his description of them
as being "the miserablest".
I don't know how you exactly measure happiness,
but I think Cook's description of them
as being the happiest people on Earth
is probably rather more accurate than Dampier's, "the miserablest".
I mean, that's not even a word.
Cook returned home to England, one imagines,
expecting to be hailed a great explorer and hero.
He'd redrawn the map of the world,
charting Tahiti, the entirety of New Zealand,
and joined the dots together to almost complete the map of Australia.
But the reality of England's class system sunk in.
No matter Cook's rank, on English soil,
the highborn Joseph Banks outranked and outbragged
any of Cook's accomplishments.
But Cook had only just begun.
His day will come, when he returns to the Pacific, not once but twice,
venturing further than any explorer before him,
as far south as the Antarctic and as far north as the Arctic.
He will prove himself the master navigator and mariner.