National Library of New Zealand, 23153045
Landing of Captain Cook at Botany Bay, 1770, E. Phillips Fox, 1902. A colonist’s point of view. This iconic Australian painting depicts a noble Cook, hand raised to stay the action of his men, who point their weapons towards the Dharawal warriors in the distance – although in fact Cook himself was armed and shot twice at the warriors, wounding one in the legs.
National Gallery of Victoria, Gilbee Bequest, 119-2
Two of the Natives of New Holland Advancing to Combat, after Sydney Parkinson, 1773. This Parkinson image perhaps informed Fox’s work (above). Of this incident Banks wrote: ‘[They were] shaking their lances and menacing, in all appearance resolved to dispute our landing . . . 2 more muskets with small shot were then fired at them on which the eldest threw one more lance and then ran away as did the other.’
SP Lohia Collection, 5469_029
Dr Shayne Williams, Sam Neill and Rod Mason at Botany Bay. Days before Cook’s first landing, the Aboriginal peoples of southern New South Wales were observing his progress up the coast.
ROD MASON: They were asking themselves, what is this thing coming up the coast? The news travelled faster than a bushfire . . . My people were watching Cook for days, always wondering when and where they were going to land. We were ready. We were waiting for it.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Australian Aborigines Paddling Bark Canoes and Spear Fishing, Tupaia, 1770. Tupaia’s drawing reveals his acute awareness of Aboriginal body language, something Cook and Banks missed.
Bridgeman Images, BL3283454
Sir Joseph Banks left his name in Australia – or at least had it given to the iconic Australian woody shrub Banksia serrata by Linnaeus the Younger. This specimen was collected in Botany Bay.
Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, NSW133651
Sam Neill, Gemma Cronin and Badtjala Nation dancers on Fraser Island (K’gari), Queensland. As Cook sailed north, the people on land knew he was headed towards trouble.
GEMMA CRONIN: They saw the ship about seventy-five miles from here . . . The people got worried for the boat and ran up onto the headland to try and warn him about the shoal out there. They were trying to tell him to go back, but in his journal he thinks we were waving at him.
Photo by Kriv Stenders, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A chart of New South Wales, on the east coast of New Holland. Cook’s chart marks the point from which the Badtjala people waved in warning as ‘Indian Head’.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Sam Neill on K’gari. In 1851 ‘Indian Head’ was the site of a massacre of Badtjala men, women and children.
SAM NEILL: There are terrible things that happened all over the Pacific in the wake of Cook’s voyages. I’ve had to face up to this on my journey.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A view of the Endeavour River on the coast of New Holland, where the ship was laid on shore in order to repair the damage which she received on the rock, John Hawkesworth, 1773. After striking the coral reef, the Endeavour was repaired at a river mouth which Cook named Endeavour River – the site of present-day Cooktown. To the Guugu Yimidhirr people, the site was known as Waymbuur.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Sam Neill with Alberta Hornsby, Cooktown Re-enactment Association. ALBERTA HORNSBY: For the thirty-two tribal clan groups that make up the Guugu Yimidhirr–speaking nation, Waymbuur was a neutral zone. Cook and his crew could have been picked off at any time during their forty-eight days here, but the law dictated that no blood was to be spilt on this land . . . Cook was very fortunate that these laws – indigenous laws – protected them.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A chart of New South Wales, on the east coast of New Holland. Cook labelled the Great Barrier Reef ‘The Labyrinth’, and the point where Endeavour struck ‘On this Ledge the Ship laid 23 Hours’. ‘Endeavours’ River can also be seen.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Sam Neill at a bush burn, Cooktown. Cook and his men could not comprehend Aboriginal land-management systems: the deliberate use of fire to open up hunting grounds and to ensure that edible plants and animals were not destroyed in out-of-control bushfires, thereby establishing a circuit of hunting and harvesting grounds. BRUCE PASCOE: Aboriginal people lost their ability to grow the crops because they lost the land. The hard-hoofed animals were destroying the soil by compacting it and drinking all the water. [Aboriginal people] were constantly harassed and driven off their land.
Photo by David Alrich, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill with Bruce Pascoe. BRUCE PASCOE: We’re talking about blaming Cook, but I blame his boss. I don’t see Cook as the devil. I blame the Crown. I just see Cook as an Englishman with that mindset of the Englishmen – they believed they could possess anything the world had to offer.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A chart of New South Wales, on the east coast of New-Holland. Cook’s final act on mainland Australia was to raise the Union Jack on ‘Possession Island’ in the Torres Strait – known to the locals as Bedanug and home to the Kaurareg people. In his journal he wrote: ‘in the name of His Majesty King George the Third took possession of the whole eastern coast from the above latitude down to this place by the name of New South Wales together with all the bays, harbours rivers and islands situate [sic] upon the same said coast.’
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
Ice Islands with Ice Blink, William Hodges, c.1772–75. Sailing into the Antarctic Circle in search of the Great Southern Continent, the Resolution and the Adventure met with the inevitable. In his journal, Cook wrote that the icebergs ‘exhibited a view which for a few moments was pleasing to the eye; but when we reflected on the danger, the mind was filled with horror.’
State Library of NSW, SAFE / PXD 11, FL1006760
Sam Neill with cameraman Mark Broadbent and director Kriv Stenders at the Australian Antarctic Division base, Antarctica.
SAM NEILL: Though Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle three times, he failed to sight the continent, let alone land on it, the ice keeping him far offshore. Today it’s possible to fly there and back from Hobart in less than a day. Much less effort though.
Photo by Kriv Stenders, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
The Australian Antarctic Division’s Wilkins Runway, an ice airstrip at Preston Heath, Budd Coast, Antarctica.
SAM NEILL: It took another hundred years after Cook crossed the Antarctic Circle for the first explorers to finally walk on this continent. Not hard to see why . . . but being here . . . it’s immense. It’s overwhelming and terrifyingly beautiful.
Photo by Kriv Stenders, 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Dusky Bay, New Zealand, William Hodges, 1773. Defeated by the Southern Ocean, Cook retreated to Dusky Sound, where his ships were repaired and his sailors returned to some level of health, no doubt helped by beer brewed from the local vegetation. The artist Hodges was possibly too busy to drink. This small painting on a piece of timber provided by the ship’s carpenter is considered the first oil painting to be executed on site in Aotearoa/New Zealand.
The Fletcher Trust Collection
Filming at Dusky Sound. Left to right, director of photography Jules O’Loughlin, director Sally Aitken, Sam Neill and Sam’s assistant, Ziggy Golden. SAM NEILL: Nothing prepares you for waking up to dawn in Dusky Sound. It’s still almost as hard to get to as it was in Cook’s day, and it’s almost unchanged since the Resolution anchored here. This place is one of New Zealand’s – indeed, the world’s – great treasures.
Photo by Eamon Dimmitt, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
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br /> A View of the Monuments of Easter Island, William Hodges, c.1776. Cook was not well enough to tour Easter Island, but his men explored the landscape and its statuary. The expedition’s botanist, J.R. Forster, noted: ‘The images represent men to their waist, the ears are large and they are about 18 foot high and 5 foot wide; they are ill-shaped and have a large solid bonnet on their heads.’
Bridgeman Images, PFH1172238
Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Sālote Tupou III and the Duke of Edinburgh at the Tongan Royal Palace in 1953, inspecting Tu'i Malila, a Madagascar radiated tortoise of exceptional age, reputedly presented to the Tongan Royal family by Cook. Conditioned by the stratification of the Royal Navy and British Society, Cook felt comfortable in feudal Tonga.
Getty Images, 105220167
A Fakapangai ceremony at Pangai Royal Ceremonial Grounds, Tonga. This is an ancient ritual, the counting of tributes gifted to the ruler. Cook insisted on attending one and was obliged by the Tongans to go bare chested and unwigged, to the horror of his fellow officers, who felt he had let the side down.
Photo by Johanna Gibson, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill attends the Free Church of Tonga.
SAM NEILL: Tonga prides itself on never being colonised by the West. However, it enthusiastically adopted one of its instruments – Christianity. So much so that it is enshrined in the constitution. On Sundays it’s illegal to work, shop, do chores, play sport and even swim. So what to do? Go to church.
Photo by Johanna Gibson, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
The landing at Erramanga [Eromanga], William Hodges, c.1776.
Cook met with varied responses in what he dubbed the ‘New Hebrides’ – Vanuatu – which artist Hodges later represented in a series of paintings. The peoples of the Vanuatu Archipelago understandably viewed strangers as enemies. Cook was no exception and was repulsed on trying to land at Eromanga. His muskets killed at least four of his attackers, with only minor injuries to his crew.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
The Landing at Tanna, William Hodges, c.1776. The response at Tanna was more positive; despite initial uncertainties, Cook and his men exchanged gifts with the coastal people who considered them to be spirits – and warned them against exploring the volcano, home to a cannibal tribe. The erupting Mount Yasur can be seen in the background.
Bridgeman Images, DGA502826
Sam Neill at Mount Yasur – the volcano Cook called ‘the lighthouse of the Pacific’. Cook and his men may have been warned away from the volcano, but in the twenty-first century it’s a tourist site.
Photo by Kriv Stenders, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
TV crew and tourists at the summit of Mount Yasur.
Photo by Johanna Gibson, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Sam Neill at the Captain Cook Monument, Duncombe Bay, Norfolk Island. SAM NEILL: Cook was only here for a day, but the consequences still reverberate, and by a quirk of fate they’ve rattled my own family history.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Norfolk Island Gaol. It was the tiny island’s tall pine trees and abundant flax that Cook noted when claiming it for the Crown. However, on the establishment of New South Wales as a penal colony, the island was put to a less benign use – a dumping ground for the worst convicts. Sam Neill’s ancestor Captain Foster Fyans, posted here as captain of the guard, put down a rebellion – earning the sobriquet ‘Flogger Fyans’ in Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore.
SAM NEILL: For Hughes, Fyans was on the wrong side of history. Of course I disagree, and in the field of history there’s often no middle ground.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
Portrait of Omai, Sir Joshua Reynolds, c.1776. Omai (or Mai) was a Ra’iatean man who boarded the Adventure – the companion ship on Cook’s second voyage – and travelled to England. Taken under Joseph Banks’ wing, he was a hit with the royal court and society, to the extent of becoming the subject of this glamorous ‘celebrity’ portrait by Reynolds. A goal of Cook’s third Pacific voyage was to return him to his home.
Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum
Bewoners van Tasmanië [Residents of Tasmania], Ludwig Gottlieb Portman, after Jacques Kuyper, 1803. In January 1777 Cook anchored in Adventure Bay, Bruny Island, for water, food, wood and animal feed. His interactions with the Nuenonne people were quite different from his encounters with Aboriginal people on the first voyage. Some of the men were so intrigued by the crew’s crosscut saw – cutting firewood – they ventured to operate it from one end.
Rijksmuseum RP-P-1906-3958
Royce Everett and Sam Neill on Bruny Island.
SAM NEILL: Someone said to me, you don’t know what loss is until you’ve had a whole continent taken from you. ROYCE EVERETT: How true, how true. Still a long way to go . . . Of course we’ve been given a lot back. But, by golly . . . still a long way to go.
Photo by Johanna Gibson, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
The Inside of a Hippah, in New Zealand, John Webber, 1782. Several independent groups occupied Queen Charlotte Sound, with frequent seasonal incursions by others to harvest fish. The political fluctuations were constant and tempestuous. On Cook’s visits to the various villages he had to avoid taking sides when exhorted to attack other settlements.
SLNSW, PXD 59/Vol.01/p.F.67
Human Sacrifice at the Great Morai at Attahouroo, John Webber, 1777. Cook was interested in observing religious and spiritual rituals. On Mo’orea, he witnessed a human sacrifice, writing in his journal, ‘They now took the bundles of feathers and the sacrifice to the great Morai . . . at the foot of them the latter was placed round which the priests seated themselves and began again their prayers, while some of their attendants dug a hole at the foot of the Morai in which they buried the victim . . . During the ceremony we were silent but as soon as it was over . . . of course [we] condemned it.’ Tahitians used slaves as human sacrifice, clubbing the unaware victims over the head while gardening so they were well and truly dead by the time the marae ceremony began.
Bridgeman Images, BL3283520
Otoo King of O-Taheite, John Hall after William Hodges, 1777. Tu, the high chief of Tahiti-nui (the big island), became Cook’s taio – ceremonial friend. A vain man, jealous of Cook’s friendships with other chiefs, he impressed Cook with a vast maritime display of war canoes and invited him to a ceremony with a human sacrifice. Cook formed a sentimental attachment to Tu but nevertheless refused to aid him in his ambitions to conquer the rest of the archipelago.
David Rumsey Map Collection, David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford Libraries
View of Huaheine, One of the Society Islands, attributed to John Cleveley, c.1786. Omai was returned to Huahine, rather than Ra’aitea, which was in the hands of his enemies. Before that, when the ship first arrived in Tahiti, Omai, determined to impress his countrymen, donned a suit of armour and rode a horse along the beach – only to be unceremoniously bucked off. The locals’ disdain at this and his return was a portent of his unhappy future.
SLNSW DGD 27, FL 3245461
A View of the Habitations in Nootka Sound, John Webber, c.1782. Sailing north-east, Cook met with colder climes – and entirely different cultures – on the western coast of North America. The Mowachaht people of Nootka Sound made him welcome, at a price. Their concept of property and ownership tallied with British beliefs, and Cook paid dearly for the much-needed supplies. He ruefully commented that every patch of grass had its owner.
SLNSW DL PXX 2/vol. 4, FL3445534
The Inside of a House in Nootka Sound, John Webber, c.1782. The Mowachahts’ huge houses, the largest permanent homes in the Pacific, dotted Nootka Sound. But here as elsewhere, the encroachment of traders and colonists – Spanish, Russian, British and American – had a gradual but catastrophic effect on the indigenous population. One hundred and thirty years after Cook’s
visit, the Mowachaht population had declined by ninety per cent.
SLNSW DL PXX 2, FL3445535
Sam Neill, Nootka Sound.
SAM NEILL: It always puts a shiver up my spine when I’m in the exact spot Cook was. Particularly in a place like Nootka Sound where almost nothing has changed at all . . . One thing that’s certainly very different today is that there must have been a cacophony of noise . . . The place was full of people. But today, it’s just me, and it’s almost entirely silent.
Photo by Kirrilly Brentnall, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
A Man of Oonalashka, John Webber, c.1784–86. The Unangans, who were supremely adapted to their harsh environment, had thrived for some 9,000 years before the British turned up.
SLNSW DL PXX 2, FL3445540
A Woman of Oonalashka, John Webber, c.1784–86. Cook noted that Unangan women warmed themselves by placing blubber-oil lamps between their legs and under their clothing.
SLNSW DL PXX 2, FL3445541
Sam Neill and Dr Rick Knecht, archaeologist, survey the remains of an Unangan Village in Nateekin Bay, Unalaska. The bulk of the houses were sensibly underground, with domed roofs above, leaving these mounds that puncture the hill top.
Photo by Eamon Dimmitt, © 2018 Essential Media & Entertainment
The Resolution Beating through the Ice, John Webber, 1792. In their search for the North-West Passage, Cook’s men endured three months’ worth of ice, gales, fog and sub-zero conditions – as well as Cook’s insistence that they eat walrus meat, which the captain described as ‘sweet as marrow’. The crew took the opposite opinion and briefly went on hunger strike until Cook restored normal rations.
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