Sir Joseph Banks, F. R. S. and the naming of the Kangaroo

Abstract

JAMES COOK in H.M.B. Endeavour struck a reef off the coast of what is now North Queensland and managed to make a perilous way to the estuary of a river which he named the Endeavour River, the site of present-day Cooktown. Here the ship was careened, emptied and repaired, her complement of eighty-seven persons establishing a transient settlement for 48 days (18 June to 5 August 1770) ashore. Repairs took 14 days but it was 24 days later before the prevailing south-easterly winds and gales of the monsoonal season allowed the square-rigged bark to beat out to sea and proceed. During those 48 days of enforced leisure Joseph (later Sir Joseph) Banks and the other scientists associated with him, explored all aspects of the flora and fauna of this new land and wrote up their journals so that their descriptions of ‘New Holland’ are, in fact, largely descriptions of Queensland. (Of Cook’s eleven landings in Australia only one at Botany Bay was in the southern half of the Continent; the other ten were all in what are now Queensland or Queensland waters.)