Day 61: Cooktown, Or Not .... And Kangaroos!

Cooktown doesn't have a wharf to handle even a smallish passenger ship like ours, so boats must moor offshore and ferry passengers to land via a 30-minute tender using the ships' lifeboats. We arrived this morning in relatively good weather with a mix of sun and cloud and the occasional light shower. A few minutes later, the captain announced that the conditions were too dangerous to run the tenders. We previously had a few stops canceled in the South Pacific, and I certainly agreed with skipping those based on high winds and an impending tropical cyclone. Not this morning. But it's his boat, not mine.

One small blessing was a quite majestic rainbow that appeared no less than 60 seconds after the captain finished his announcement. This shot was taken from the balcony of our cabin. There is a faint double rainbow, but that didn't show up too well in the photo compared to the naked eye.

Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland, where Captain Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. He ran into the reef. The town and Mount Cook (pictured above at 1,415 feet), which rises up behind the town were named after him. The crew spent seven weeks on the site of the present town, repairing the boat, replenishing supplies, and caring for the sick. The scientist Joseph Banks and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, who accompanied Cook on the expedition, took advantage of the 7-week stay to collect, preserve, and document over 200 new species of plants, which formed the vast majority of the collection brought back to England from Australia. The young artist Sydney Parkinson illustrated the specimens, and he was the first British artist to portray Aboriginal people from direct observation. Banks spent much time with the local population, even learned a few words, and attempted some trade (lots of quartz around).

Of course, it all went wrong when Cook refused to share some turtles that he caught with the local populace. So they set fire to the areas around his camp, and Cook wounded one of the Aborigines with his musket. Cook, Banks, and a few others followed the Aborigines and caught up with them to attempt a reconciliation. This succeeded, and that area is now known as Reconciliation Rocks.

The first recorded sighting of kangaroos by Europeans was on Grassy Hill, which rises above the place where the ship was beached. Cook climbed this hill to work out a safe passage for the Endeavour to sail through the surrounding reefs after it was repaired. The natives called the animal gangurru (which he transcribed as "Kangaru"). Cook recorded the local name as "Kangooroo, or Kanguru"