by Mark Mckenna
In 1998, John MacDonald began ‘beavering away’ on the journals of Cook and Banks with the intention of translating them into ‘dramatic script’. He was in frequent contact with Eric Deeral, who was also re-reading the journals.112 When the James Cook Museum received a 2.3-million-dollar federation grant, the National Trust of Queensland commissioned Eric to write the text that would form part of several panels to be installed in the museum’s new wing and opened in 2001. It was a potentially groundbreaking opportunity. Eric was asked to explain the Guugu Yimithirr perspective on Cook’s landing in 1770.113 From the late 1990s until Deeral’s death in 2012, MacDonald and Deeral shared a close relationship, poring over every detail in the journals and working hard to introduce the untold story of Cook’s visit into the re-enactment, which they succeeded in doing from 2009. Deeral also encouraged his niece, Alberta Hornsby, to read Cook’s and Banks’s journals, which she did, somewhat reluctantly. ‘I was never that impressed with Cook’, said Alberta. ‘I didn’t talk about Cook growing up. It wasn’t part of our history. My grandfather said Cook was responsible for raping our women and everything that happened to us.’ Alberta recalled only a few of the older women at Hope Vale speaking of Cook in verse: ‘Captain Cook swallowed a hook and found himself in the history book’.114
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Eric Deeral discovered Cook through the journals. As a young boy at school in Woorabinda, Eric was told by a teacher that he showed signs of leadership. He also encouraged him to read history, a passion he would retain for the rest of his life.115 Working on the Guugu Yimithirr’s perspective on Cook’s landing for the new museum wing, Eric immediately saw the importance and value of the story to the Cooktown and Hope Vale communities. As both Alberta and Loretta later explained, ‘he was like the “old man” in the story, who in a gesture of peace, came forward to meet Cook and Banks and ordered his men to lay down their weapons’.116 In the last decade of his life, Eric paved the way for an Indigenous-centred interpretation of Cook’s time at the Endeavour River. After his death in 2012, both Alberta and Loretta felt they had to carry on with Eric’s work, especially by incorporating the Guugu Yimithirr’s story into the annual re-enactment of Cook’s landing. Alberta, who proudly describes herself as an ‘unlettered, self-proclaimed historian’, has continued to research both her Indigenous heritage—including a Guugu Yimithirr dictionary started by Eric and his wife Ellen White that currently has over 4700 entries—and European historical records. The story has grown richer over time, allowing us to see what took place at Gangaar in 1770 in an entirely different light. Alberta recently recorded her account of Cook’s meeting with the Guugu Yimithirr, complementing Eric’s text which has been displayed in the James Cook Museum since 2001. Like Cooktown’s Milbi Wall, we now have a remarkable account to place beside those of Cook and Banks, one created by applying Eric and Alberta’s knowledge of traditional Guugu Yimithirr law and culture to British documents.117
Eric Deeral, 2009
Eric Deeral: Ngarrbal-ngay wanhu? Nguba ngaadaal wuwu-thirr, ‘visitors who may need help’.
Prior to the 10th June, 1770 We the Kuku Yalanji and Guugu Yimithirr Bama-ngay who lived along the eastern seaboard, between what we now know as Mossman and the Starcke, north and south of Cooktown were open to the concept of others. We would observe strange sailing vessels going by and we were usually aware of their purpose. They would be looking for fish, dugong, beche de mer, trochus or shells. Sometimes they would visit to replenish their water supplies, repair canoes, or look for women. But they were transients. They did not intend to stay. Often they were islanders who knew and respected our territories. On the morning of the 11th June, 1770 a strange large canoe which the coastal people had kept under observation was seen just east of Kulki (in Kuku Yalandji) which is now known as Cape Tribulation. It appeared that something was not right. Then it started moving along the coast again. At times our Bama [people] lit small fires to inform other clan members regarding the whereabouts of this strange canoe. Two days later our Bama saw it drop anchor at the mouth of the Wahalumbaal Birri, which Captain Cook later named the Endeavour River. Our Guugu Yimithirr ancestors considered that these boat people like others who came and went would not cause problems. After these strange beings beached their large canoe our Bama decided not to make contact but to observe. They decided to do what they normally did. Bama got into their canoes; they speared fish; women and children collected wood and other things from the beach, two Bama even paddled close to the visitors’ boat.
Alberta Hornsby: Guugu Yimithirr Country [which comprises thirty-two clan lands] extends from the Annan River (Yuku Baja) in the south, north to the Jeannie River and west to Normanby River. Waymburr [where Cook landed] was a neutral zone where no blood was to be deliberately spilt. This Country was a free zone, a place for the surrounding clans to come together, a place of mediation and ceremony. It is possible that Cook could have been speared if he had landed on the other side of the Endeavour River, however, I believe that the spiritual belief of the Guugu Yimithirr people also prevented harm to the Endeavour’s crew. Their belief is based on the principle of ‘wawu’, which is the inner spirit of Bama, at death the wawu travelled to the east. When the wawu returned back to their homelands, they would return white skinned and would not return empty-handed. At that time our ancestors were awaiting the return of their ancestors Milganduur (masked plover) and Galgarungal (wallaroo). It was believed that these two ancestors travelled from the west and at their death their wawu travelled to the east. The arrival of these visitors would have caused mixed feelings amongst Bama-ngay [our people] and it was a wise decision that they chose to observe them before any contact would be made. If these visitors were indeed their ancestors then they would know the laws.
Eric Deeral: The strangers gave our Bama fish and beads. Next day four of our men went back and gave them fish in return, which is customary. Though our Bama recognized the predicament these visitors were in, they were discreet because they need to make sure the visitors were not reincarnations of ‘wawu-ngay’, spirits of our ancestors. Every effort was made to be tactful. Women were not allowed to approach the strangers. Then one morning ten of our men were invited to inspect the visitors’ boat. To their horror, they saw a number of turtles on board, presumably taken from our waters. When they asked if they could have one it was refused. To our Bama it became an offence. The sharing code was broken. The visitors had trespassed. They should have got permission from us as the owners or custodians. Then things got out of hand. Our Bama were so confused and angry that they set fire to the camp site. Then they heard a loud bang and saw a puff of smoke. One of the men could not believe that something invisible punctured his leg and blood started to flow. They all ran away. Before going back to their camp our Bama lit more fires to warn other clans that something had gone wrong.
Alberta Hornsby: On the ninth of July two men came by canoe from across the other side of the river. The Endeavour Journals describe this time of contact. They paddle the canoe right up to the Endeavour. Gifts of cloth, beads and nails are thrown into the canoe, the men are not impressed or interested in the gifts, however, a small fish is accidently thrown over to them and this gift pleased the men. They soon leave and return with two other men.
This was the first of six visits to the Endeavour by Bama-ngay. No women visit, only men. Parkinson recorded what he believed to be the names of nine men. The names he records are names of where these men came from and some are kinship names. Parkinson also records a wordlist of 150 words, which is a great achievement, most of these words are recognisable today. The Guugu Yimithirr Bama could fluently repeat any words the British said to them but the British had great difficulty speaking Guugu Yimithirr.
On the second last visit by Bama they are invited on board the Endeavour. On deck there are twelve turtles weighing between two hundred and three hundred pounds. They are not pleased to see this many turtles on the ship and they quickly leave. The next day ten men arrive, they leave thei
r spears with a young boy before boarding the ship and attempt to take one turtle, they are stopped from taking a turtle and soon leave the ship, one of the men grabs a firestick from a nearby fire and sets the grass on fire, which quickly spreads. They run to the nearby stream, where the crew are washing and nets and other items are drying on the grass. The man with the firestick attempts to set this area on fire too. Cook shoots the man with a small shot and apparently wounds him in the leg, spilling blood on Waymburr. The man is rescued by his friends and they behave aggressively towards the Endeavour mob. However, when they see the muskets raised, they calm down. Their spears are seized by the British and they take off into the bush and mangroves.
Eric Deeral: Ngamu Yarrbarigu an elder of the clans called all the members together to discuss the day’s events. A strategy was agreed on. Ngamu Yarrbarigu and a number of men would visit the stranger’s camp the next day and every effort would be made to make peace, because our Bama now knew that the visitors possessed a spirit which was more powerful than they had experienced. Next morning before our Bama left camp, a customary ritual was performed by the Elders. Each man was wiped with sweat from the armpit of the Elders—‘ngaalaan thuulngal’ and our women chanted—‘ganhil gunday’. This was for them to be protected, to practice self-control and to leave camp with a blessing. When our Bama confronted the strangers, each had four spears. The Elder Ngamu Yarrbarigu carried one spear which had no barb. Our elders were afraid to do anything that might result in the spirits of our departed ancestors being upset, in case Cook’s mob were indeed Wangaar or reincarnations of our ancestors. And so, with this doubt and fear in their minds, they used discretion, deciding against any rash actions. Ngamu Yarrbarigu said to Cook’s men: Ngahthaan gadaai thawun maa naa thi hu ‘We come to make friends’. Sensing that the strangers were not sure of their intention and did not understand what their leader, Ngamu Yarrbarigu, said, our Bama then put their plan into action. They withdrew to an outcrop of rocks, where it is possible that more Bama were positioned. There they placed their spears on the ground and sat down. At this point, Cook may have become aware that his life was in danger. However, diplomacy was used by both sides. It may be that the caution on the part of the Guugu Yimithirr saved Cook’s life. A cautious agreement was reached.
Alberta Hornsby: Cook and his mob can hear them and they follow them for about a mile. Cook and his mob rest on a rocky outcrop, the Bama men sit about one hundred yards from them. Then a ‘little old man’ comes forward, he performs a ritual called ‘ngalangundaama’ where he draws sweat from under his armpits, and blowing the sweat on his hands into the air, this is to call for protection and calm. He carries a spear with a snapped spearhead. He approaches Cook and speaks, Cook gives back the spears they had taken earlier and he takes this action as a sign of Reconciliation, which he records in his journal. The men return to the ship with Cook and his mob but they don’t go on board. The Endeavour Journals say that they sit for about an hour and then leave, never to return to the site. By now, our Bama would have realised that this mob were not their ancestors. The gifts that were given to Bama were found ‘carelessly’ thrown around, which suggested that they had no use for them. In Cook’s Journal he writes that their gifts were not wanted and they would not part with any of their articles.
Alberta Hornsby, at home with her grandchildren, Cooktown, 2016
Banks writes in his journal that on leaving the river all the hills are set on fire. This was the way that Bama cleansed the area from any bad spirits that may have been left behind and cleansed the area of the British presence.
Eric Deeral: Then Ngamu Yarrbarigu told his men to leave their spears and follow the strangers towards their camp-site. There were some men who wanted to have a close look at the boat but they agreed to be more cautious. They stayed for a while and then left. Before leaving to board their canoes, our Bama agreed between themselves that the things that the strangers gave were to be got rid of and that no further contact was to be made and that the visitors should have freedom of movement. Then, finally, one day they watched the ship sail out of the Wahalumbaal Birri and away from our Guugu Yimithirr land. Although contact had been limited, it had for the most part been surprisingly friendly. These strangers showed respect for us and our families and it was very sad to see them go. We called them Wangaar, spirits of our dead ancestors. And that name is still used today.
Alberta Hornsby: This is a really outstanding story of the extent that Aboriginal people go through today to extend that peace to others they share this country with. This visit of Cook is a very important part of our community history. It paved the way for this nation we now call Australia. It’s good that we celebrate this history because there’s such a lot in the story that we can learn from. The interaction between Cook and our Bama, we’re still having that interaction today.118
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To have both the British and Guugu Yimithirr interpretations of this extended moment side-by-side dramatically alters our view of what occurred. In the Guugu Yimithirr telling, except for the shooting incident, they are in control. In both Cook’s and Banks’s journals, it is British strategy that largely determines what happens. But in Eric’s and Alberta’s telling it is the Guugu Yimithirr’s law, cautious diplomacy and strategic thinking that guide the course of events. They are not acted upon. They are initiators. While Cook and Banks thought the Guugu Yimithirr timid for running away, we now see that this too was part of their initial strategy of observing their ancestors from a distance, just as it was some weeks later, on Possession Island, when the Kaurareg took flight and Cook claimed possession of the entire east coast of the continent for the Crown. The Guugu Yimithirr’s spiritual beliefs explain the Endeavour’s presence and largely determine their response. In Eric’s and Alberta’s rendition we see the complexity of Indigenous Country. The country Cook saw as a wilderness inhabited by wandering natives—‘diversified with hills and plains and these with woods and lawns’—becomes the intimately interconnected territories of thirty-two different Guugu Yimithirr clans.119
Almost two hundred and fifty years after Cook set foot on the shores of the Endeavour River, we see everything that he could not see. We see the Country through the eyes of Guugu Yimithirr law, the ‘sharing code’ broken with the taking of the turtles and the place where Cook landed part of a neutral zone where blood should not be spilt, an insight that radically shifts our understanding of events. We see the old man’s deeply personal gesture of offering the sweat from under his arms as a means of guiding Cook to act according to his law. And in Eric’s telling, we also witness the strategic and political expedience of his decision to make peace: ‘the visitors possessed a spirit which was more powerful than they had experienced’.120 The reconciliation scene is transfigured because we see and hear every aspect of the drama differently. The actions of the Guugu Yimithirr are named. We have two languages. And we can sound at least some of the words that were uttered by the Guugu Yimithirr in 1770. The story suddenly opens out. The document reveals more than it was thought to reveal. As with the journals of Cook and Banks, the details in Eric’s and Alberta’s interpretation both concur and vary, with different points of emphasis between them. Eric conflates the two days of the turtle conflict and he makes no mention of neutral ground. His conclusion that the Guugu Yimithirr were ‘sad to see [Cook] go’ differs from Alberta’s observation that they cleansed the country after his departure, and appears to gesture towards the contemporary politics of reconciliation, a movement which was then drawing awkwardly to a formal conclusion in 2001 when the text was unveiled in the James Cook Museum. But gesturing towards the present in the telling of history is inherent to its resonance. The past matters not only for itself. It matters because we give it life, because we seek to understand both its difference from the present and the traces of commonality that bind us to the lives of those who have gone before us. Alberta explicitly equates the interaction between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr with her people’s interaction with n
on-Indigenous society today: everything that happened between them in 1770 remains perpetually present.
For both the Guugu Yimithirr and Cooktown’s non-Indigenous community, the shared history of Cook’s visit is one bridge to reconciliation, not only locally but for Australia as well. In the eyes of Alberta and Loretta, Cooktown’s founding moment is not the arrival of thousands of miners in the 1870s but the moment of reconciliation between Cook and the Guugu Yimithirr elder in 1770. ‘They managed to communicate somehow’, said Loretta, ‘and Cook wrote in his journal: “I handed the spears back to him, which reconciled everything”. And we believe that was the first recorded reconciliation in Australia’s history, and that occurred here, on the Endeavour River’.121 John MacDonald, who worked for several years on the script for the new re-enactment, admitted that he had faced opposition: some locals felt we ‘took the jolly out of it’, he said, ‘but I saw the healing possibilities and therapeutic value of the drama. The re-enactment gave people a chance to meet on neutral ground. Doctors who performed met Aboriginal people in a completely different context’.122 For Alberta, it was this spirit of peace and accommodation that ultimately ‘paved the way’ for the Australian nation and which will continue to sustain it in the future. As she explained, the reconciliation story also has a direct cultural relevance for Guugu Yimithirr people today.