Nicely re-interpreted

I revisited the Kamay Botany Bay National Park at Kurnell the other day, generally known as Captain Cook's Landing Place. It's been a while.

There's much debate about tearing down statues of historical bad guy colonialists (or in this case, master navigators with secret orders). They've done a good job here of showing how it can be done properly: keep the history, but also put it into a better context.

Here's the tiny creek that provided an adequate water supply for the 1770 expeditioners. (A different story of course when the First Fleet turned up 18 years later, and were severely disappointed by the drought-stricken ditch it had become.)

There are some fine new sculptures now, created for the 250th anniversary. There's a group of whales, plus an intriguing abstract that's to do with both the ribs of the HMB Endeavour and some whale bones.

And the park is a rather lovely spot too. It's also the starting point for the little botanical bushwalks that lead you to the ocean and one of the finest spots for watching live whales.

Whitby: An abbey, a vampire, and too many Endeavours!

Further up the Yorkshire coast, north of Scarborough, is another enormously popular tourist town. I did a Saturday day trip to Whitby while in the area, as did about a million other Saturday day trippers!

It's got a few special attractions, besides the quaint and crowded streets, too many seagulls, and the odd celebrity restaurant. Firstly it's overlooked by the dramatic ruins of the Whitby Abbey, a fine old structure that's never looked the same since Henry VIII took a dislike to it.

Then there's Count Dracula. Not in Transylvania after all. It seems Bram Stoker lived for a while in Whitby, and was inspired by the Abbey ruins somehow. He did set the story in Transylvania, but never actually went there. Funny, I'd earlier been contemplating a trip to Transylvania myself, but settled on Yorkshire instead. I had no idea I'd meet Dracula and his memorabilia here though!

Whitby was also the place where good old Captain Cook got his early seamanship training, and it's full of Cook memorials and museums and things. But I was a bit startled to discover that they have Endeavour replicas there too. I'd stupidly thought our Sydney one was the Endeavour replica. And there wasn't just one of the things. I saw two of them myself! I bet they're not as good as ours. And re Cook memorials and museums, here's my visit to the ones in Far North Queensland: Cooktown 2018

It's a steep walk up to the Abbey ruins.

On Bruny again

It's quite a while since I was last on Bruny Island. There's lots to  see and do,and these days a lot more people are seeing and doing them. It was a Friday morning, outside the school holidays, and yet my car was only just able to squeeze into the last available space on the ferry. And ferries were running every half hour.








We drove down to Adventure Bay, and walked the Fluted Cape track, one I'd never embarked on before. It's a very scenic two to three hour circuit, and you get to peer down over some very high cliffs.

You pass the ruins of several old whaling stations along the coast here. Plus one of the most unsightly monuments you could hope to meet. It commemorates the visit to Adventure Bay in 1777 by Captain Cook during his second big voyage.

Fully Cooked in Cooktown

'Captain Cook, chased a chook, all around Australia. Lost his pants in the middle of France, and found them in Tasmania.' So we are told in the Cooktown Museum. Must be true, because Cooktown is all about Cook, and the time he spent here in 1770.

He'd pranged his boat near Cape Tribulation and managed to get it to the Endeavour River here, where he was able to park it at a suitable angle against the bank, and carry out repairs.










Cooktown today is a very pleasant and relaxed little town, ideal for spending an easy day at the end of a Far North Queensland bus tour. The day tripper people got only an hour here - the bus driver called them the 'half Cooked'. The two- and three-day people like us got a whole day (the 'fully Cooked').


There are nice cafes and a good Bowlo. There's an excellent Botanic Garden, plus Cook's Lookout on Grassy Hill. And that excellent museum.



The museum also tells you all about the original inhabitants of the area, and the usual quota of misunderstandings and reconciliations that took place during his stay.

Cooktown has a a souvenir shop or two as well. There's a rather nice one where you can buy an unfriendly life sized crocodile.

No tribulations here today

This is Cape Tribulation, near where Captain Cook crashed the Endeavour into a coral reef, and where his several weeks of trials and tribulations began.

This is the Cape Tribulation Beach House resort. It's a pleasant and restful place to stay. The only minor tribulation (for some) is the lack of internet or TV reception. That was a plus though, in our opinion.

Cudda been Sydney, cudda been Canberra!

We spent the weekend exploring the Port Stephens area, up the coast north of Newcastle.

Captain Cook noted the fine sheltered harbour in 1770, as he sailed up the coast after leaving his recommended settlement site, Botany Bay, which later turned out to be a dud. On the way up he'd also noted Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour), which turned out to be the 'best harbour in the world' and which became the actual 1788 settlement. But if he hadn't, then Port Stephens might have become Sydney instead. The harbour is the same size, and geographically as complicated. It's not as deep though.

We enjoyed our visit to the volunteer-staffed marine rescue centre, near the mouth of the harbour.


In the 20th century, when the newly federated Australia was looking for a site for its permanent capital, Port Stephens was one of the contenders. Walter Burley Griffin even drew up plans for a capital city, looking rather Canberra-like of course. It never got built, and one reason I heard for it not being chosen was that it could have been too easy to invade from the sea. (It's also not somewhere between arch rivals Sydney and Melbourne.)

Here's a link to a Newcastle Herald piece showing 'Pindimar City', which could have been the 'New York of Australia', overlaid on Google Maps: http://www.theherald.com.au/story/1412468/topics-pindimar-city-now-figment-of-google/

Below: the marina at Nelson Bay

A Maritime Endeavour

Sydney's National Maritime Museum is usually worth a look. It has its permanent stuff, but also special little exhibitions that can be quite interesting. Then it has its collection of floating exhibits, which I'd somehow never got round to exploring.

The special little exhibition the other day was 'East of India', about trade links between colonial India and Australia. There was a lot of it, because the early Australian colonies were six months away from Britain, but only six weeks from India. So where was the obvious place to supply them from, especially after the near starvation of the early years?

As for the floating exhibits, how could one go past The Endeavour, or more accurately the Endeavour replica. As replicas go, it's the most faithfully replicated such ship around, according to the volunteer guide. The timbers are Australian rather than British, but the size, shape, colour schemes: everything is spot on, I was told, because the original plans had still been available to work from.

You have to mind your head as you walk around the rather small vessel, the original of which had been converted from a coal carrier with a crew of 12 into a world-circling expeditioner with nearly 100 on board. They'd had to put in an extra deck between the top and bottom ones to house the extra people, and for a fairly large section you actually have to bend double to navigate it. Most of the crew in those days were probably quite short, but Captain Cook, and expedition sponsor and naturalist Joseph Banks were extremely tall men, even by today's standards. If you've seen the movie 'Being John Malkovich', you'll remember the scenes in the low-ceilinged floor 7½. It's worse than that on the Endeavour.

You get to see the whole ship, and get a fabulous feel for what it might have been like on that first three year voyage. Banks had the best living quarters, and these days, when the ship's in port anyway, it's all decked out with his botanical samples.