tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/joseph-banks-7781/articlesJoseph Banks – The Conversation2024-01-25T20:46:32Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2206532024-01-25T20:46:32Z2024-01-25T20:46:32ZThe botanical imperialism of weeds and crops: how alien plant species on the First Fleet changed Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570269/original/file-20240119-22-lcj7rr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=34%2C22%2C7618%2C3774&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collection.sl.nsw.gov.au/record/Ydma46R9/8pg0LrwplLmxJ">Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Locally grown produce fills Australian shops, but almost all of these species were imported, as native as cane toads. Icons of Australian agriculture, like the Big Banana and Big Pineapple, proudly display the regions’ crops, but these are newcomers to the continent.</p>
<p>British ships carrying plants and seeds from around the world arrived in Botany Bay on <a href="https://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/ships/the-voyage/">January 20 1788</a>. This story is overshadowed by convict ships and Royal Navy vessels, but the cargo on board also had a lasting impact. Colonists, convicts and Indigenous Australians were all affected when new species transformed the landscape.</p>
<p>British colonists introduced plants as foreign as the people who carried them. Some of these plants, ranging from <a href="https://firstfleetfellowship.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/PLANTS-AND-SEEDS-FROM-RIO-DE-JANEIRO-pdf.pdf">bananas to wheat</a>, were food sources, promoting self-sufficiency. Others were attempts to expand the British Empire. Could the new territory be exploited as a tropical plantation? </p>
<h2>Botanical imperialism</h2>
<p>In the parliamentary debate over destinations for convict transportation, Sir Joseph Banks and James Matra, both members of James Cook’s 1770 expedition, spruiked the potential of the new colony as an extension of the empire. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Historical_Records_of_New_South_Wales_pa/ML4NAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1">Matra claimed</a> the colony was “fitted for production” of “sugar-cane, tea, coffee, silk, cotton, indigo and tobacco”. </p>
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<span class="caption">Sir Joseph Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://victoriancollections.net.au/items/64a215525a416af5117dd67e">Victorian Collections</a></span>
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<p><a href="https://australian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/recognising-invasions/plans-for-a-colony/">Banks claimed</a> Botany Bay was an “advantageous” site, with fertile soil – and virtually no inhabitants. </p>
<p>Two plants carried by the First Fleet stand out as examples of botanical imperialism: prickly pear cactus (Opuntia) and sugarcane. Banks, as head of the Royal Society of London, selected these species as experiments to compete with European trade rivals. </p>
<p>His goal was to break a Spanish monopoly in producing fabric dye and to expand British cultivation of sugar outside the West Indies.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-captain-cook-to-the-first-fleet-how-botany-bay-was-chosen-over-africa-as-a-new-british-penal-colony-128002">From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony</a>
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<h2>The secret of the colour scarlet</h2>
<p>Prickly pear cactus was imported because it is the preferred food of the cochineal insect. Dried <a href="https://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/7.html#google_vignette">cochineal</a> were crushed to make a vibrant, colourfast scarlet dye for textiles. Discovered in the New World by Spanish colonists, cochineal replaced kermes, another insect that had provided red dye since antiquity. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and White Photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=805&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570260/original/file-20240118-19-o7bfu4.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1012&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Man standing in an invasive prickly pear forest in Queensland, 1935.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au/items/ITM1143347">Queensland State Archives</a></span>
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<p>Cochineal dye was ten times stronger than kermes or vegetable dyes. From cardinals’ capes to British officers’ red coats, cochineal was a product for elite consumers signifying power, wealth and prestige.</p>
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<span class="caption">2,200,000 eggs of cactus moth, collected to combat the invasive prickly pear in 1928.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/permalink/61SLQ_INST/1dejkfd/alma99183712416402061">State Library of Queensland</a></span>
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<p>New Spain, based in Mexico, had a monopoly on cochineal. Banks wanted to break the stranglehold on the scarlet dye by establishing production in New South Wales. Plants infested with the precious insects were imported from Brazil in 1788. </p>
<p>The project soon failed when the cochineal died, but the cacti survived. Colonists used cacti as natural fences and drought-resistant animal fodder. Without insects to feed on them the plants spread, uncontrolled, to cover more than <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/prickly-pear-eradication">60 million acres</a> of eastern Australia by the 1920s. Poison, crushing and fire failed to stop the cactus.</p>
<p>In 1926, a moth species from Argentina was introduced to eradicate the plants, but Opuntia cacti remain an environmental hazard. Trade in the plants, classified as <a href="https://weeds.dpi.nsw.gov.au/WeedListPublics/CategoryResults?showImages=True&categoryId=1&pageTitle=Weeds%20of%20National%20Significance">weeds of national significance</a>, is banned in most states.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/exposing-australias-online-trade-in-pest-plants-weve-found-thousands-of-illegal-advertisements-212647">Exposing Australia's online trade in pest plants – we've found thousands of illegal advertisements</a>
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<h2>The first sugar grown in Australia</h2>
<p>Sugarcane was imported from the Cape Colony, now South Africa. Before sugar was planted in Queensland, or even Port Macquarie, in the 19th century, sugar was grown in a small garden plot in Sydney and as an experimental crop on Norfolk Island in 1788.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Illustration of a house on Sydney Harbour" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570266/original/file-20240118-15-dz0fjv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=630&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Sugarcane was first grown in garden plots in Sydney.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110316551">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales</a></span>
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<p>The Royal Navy targeted Norfolk Island as a source of flax and timber, but it also served as an agricultural laboratory, testing tropical crops like sugar and coffee for Banks.</p>
<p>Philip Gidley King, lieutenant-governor of Norfolk Island, reported in his correspondence with Banks in 1790 that his four canes had multiplied into more than 100 plants. Within a few years he sent <a href="https://transcripts.sl.nsw.gov.au/page/letter-received-banks-philip-gidley-king-8-may-1792-series-39004-no-0004">samples</a> of sugar, rum and molasses to Sydney. By 1798, the cane was declared “prolific” and Norfolk Island was in “a state of cultivation equal to the West Indies”.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black and white photo" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/570262/original/file-20240118-17-iojl9b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=472&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">South Sea Islander workers standing in a sugarcane field in Queensland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://onesearch.slq.qld.gov.au/permalink/61SLQ_INST/tqqf2h/alma99183799211402061">State Library of Queensland</a></span>
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<p>This favourable comparison with the West Indies ignores the use of convict labour in producing sugar, and foreshadows the advent of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-caribbean-to-queensland-re-examining-australias-blackbirding-past-and-its-roots-in-the-global-slave-trade-158530">blackbirding</a>”, a euphemism for the abduction or coercion of Melanesian workers. Blackbirding was introduced in Queensland canefields in <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/islander-labourers">1863</a> as penal transportation ended and cheap convict labour became unavailable. </p>
<p>Once essential to the sugar industry, in 1901 Pacific Islanders in Australia were deemed undesirable, competing unfairly with white workers. As part of the White Australia Policy, many were deported under the <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discrimination/publications/australian-south-sea-islanders-century-race">Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-the-caribbean-to-queensland-re-examining-australias-blackbirding-past-and-its-roots-in-the-global-slave-trade-158530">From the Caribbean to Queensland: re-examining Australia's 'blackbirding' past and its roots in the global slave trade</a>
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<h2>The fruits of empire</h2>
<p>Reconsidering the impact of alien plant species on Australia gives us additional insight into the process of colonisation. </p>
<p>Transplanting species from around the world to create a new environment was a major endeavour in the 18th century, and a manifestation of imperial power and control. </p>
<p>Indigenous connections with Country were disrupted when foreign botanical landscapes displaced native species. The roots of these early imperial projects are deeply embedded in Australian culture and history, with an enduring legacy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Garritt C. Van Dyk does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It wasn’t just colonists and convicts who invaded Australia in 1788 – invasive plant species arrived too.Garritt C. Van Dyk, Lecturer in History, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1581052021-04-01T18:47:35Z2021-04-01T18:47:35Z‘Godzilla vs. Kong’: Monster movies evoke adventure but also ‘dangers’ of tropics<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393182/original/file-20210401-19-kx3hwy.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C12%2C1349%2C679&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hollywood movies have historically represented the tropics as lush green coasts but lurking underneath is disease and danger.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For audiences stuck in their living rooms, the new monster film <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers an opportunity to do some armchair travelling. But before you imagine a tropical island getaway — perhaps a lounge-chair by a beach soaked in sunshine — this is a monster movie and so you must also make room for a scary lurking creature. </p>
<p>The duality of these images are with us partly because <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/hollywoods-hawaii">Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations</a> of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance and natural fertility, but also scary places full of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9493.00060">pestilence, disease and primitiveness</a> and previously “undiscovered” creatures. </p>
<p>Through stories of colonial exploration, tropical landscapes become places where the western explorer can experience the unbridled sensuality of nature as well as the thrill of danger from the unknown. In this view, the tropics become a landscape where nature towers over man, a power imbalance that monster films seek to address. </p>
<p>Though these films start with tropical locales, the threat posed by mega-creatures does not become real until they cross into the realms of the western world. For example, Godzilla’s journey begins with former colonies and ends in New York. </p>
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<span class="caption">Monster movies are about protecting western lands and people from exposure to strange lands, people and disease.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Duke Press)</span></span>
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<p>The problem in these monster movies then becomes one of protecting western lands and people from <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/bioinsecurities">exposure to strange lands</a> and the “aberrant” creatures and people contained in those lands. Non-western landscapes and people thus become endowed with the burden of embodying these threats, magnified many times over in monster films. The same trajectory is also invoked with narratives of disease transmission: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390572">from a “primitive” space to the metropolitan centre</a>. </p>
<p>Although <a href="https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/godzillas-island-origin/">Godzilla originated out of Japanese history and culture</a>, when it crossed over into Hollywood, the setting of the films relied on tropes from colonial history. So while monster films may be entertaining, they build on structures with long imperial histories and have implications for the way <a href="http://www.siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-2624-2">Hollywood audiences perceive the tropics</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Savage wilderness’</h2>
<p>The narratives of tropics simultaneously containing possibilities for paradise and pestilence can be traced back to the beginning of colonial scientific exploration.</p>
<p>These ideas come alive in <a href="https://search.proquest.com/openview/61933b5a4492e779/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=2599">a 19th-century explorer’s account of a journey </a> to French Guiana. He writes about “virgin forests,” “tropical luxuriance,” “wild denizens” and their “gloomy recesses” and “the poetry of savage wilderness.”</p>
<p>The 19th-century British explorer, Joseph Banks, who accompanied cartographer James Cook on his voyage to the South Pacific, marvelled <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/joseph-banks-endeavour-journal">how nature had provided for the inhabitants of these lands in abundance. He even said the tropical land yielded fruit without labour</a>. These perceptions shaped the idea of tropics as a place of natural abundance, and gave rise to the trope of <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14096.html">tropical bounty</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/earth-day-colonialisms-role-in-the-overexploitation-of-natural-resources-113995">Earth Day: Colonialism's role in the overexploitation of natural resources</a>
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</p>
<hr>
<p>The “discovery” of new lands was combined with the impulse to <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/ca/academic/subjects/history/regional-history-after-1500/green-imperialism-colonial-expansion-tropical-island-edens-and-origins-environmentalism-16001860">recreate the Biblical idea of an Eden, or paradise on Earth</a>, a phenomenon which played out with colonial explorers on tropical islands. </p>
<h2>The yellow filter</h2>
<p>Hollywood’s monster films like <em>Godzilla</em> (1998, 2014) and <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> (2017) have used similar ideas. In all three films, the tropical island is an important setting, a place where the story is set in motion. All three films fall into similar patterns and use similar techniques to depict the tropics versus the west.</p>
<p>The opening sequences in the 1998 and 2014 versions of <em>Godzilla</em> rely on footage of sepia-toned palm lined beaches, Indigenous Peoples and a warmly lit mine next to a lush forest in the Philippines. </p>
<p>The sepia tone in the 1998 <em>Godzilla</em> resembles Hollywood’s common use of the <a href="https://matadornetwork.com/read/yellow-filter-american-movies/">yellow filter</a> to show tropical locations. Critics like journalist Elisabeth Sherman have pointed out the use of the yellow filter as something western movie makers do to “depict warm, tropical, dry climates.” But she says, “it makes the landscape in question look jaundiced and unhealthy.” <em>Kong: Skull Island</em> also makes use of a warm yellow tinge for the scenes that unfold in the tropical jungle that is Kong’s turf.</p>
<h2>The photographic lens</h2>
<p>Modes of representation such as the camera and photography were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html">part of the imperial apparatus</a>. As technology brought by the white explorers, photography provided a means to <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/P/bo15581095.html">capture the land, erase and arrange the people</a> being looked at through the camera.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two people, one with a gun raised and one with a camera search under dinosaur bones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/393154/original/file-20210401-15-107io6u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from ‘Kong: Skull Island.’ Brie Larson plays the photographer and Tom Hiddleston is the tracker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> features an “uncharted” island in the South Pacific. In the film, the inhabitants of the island are often shown through the photographer’s camera. The residents are mute in the film; the audience and the rest of the team in Skull Island need the westerner’s help to parse what they mean with their gestures.</p>
<h2>Depicting Indigenous Peoples as in the past</h2>
<p>In <em>Kong: Skull Island</em>, expedition leader William Randa (played by John Goodman) tries to get funding for his trip to the uncharted island by describing it as a place “where God did not finish creation” or, in other words, a place where time has stood still. </p>
<p>Indeed, the inhabitants of Skull Island are situated squarely in a <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/time-and-the-other/9780231169264">prehistoric</a> time-frame, separate from the contemporary time inhabited by the explorers.</p>
<p>Building on the colonial imagination that casts Indigenous inhabitants as being close to nature, the 2021 film features an Indigenous girl from Skull Island as the sole contact between Kong and the rest of the world. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/UCRV1bU-sKY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Official trailer of King Kong vs. Godzilla/Warner Bros. 2021.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>With its unknown creatures and lush forests, Skull Island occupies a different space-time. These sentiments of the Indigenous populations and flora and fauna were commonly expressed by colonial explorers. Ernst Haeckel, the famous naturalist and proponent of Darwinism, on his visit to Sri Lanka said the flora of the land reminded him of <a href="https://archive.org/details/visittoceylon00haecuoft">fossils from earlier geological ages</a>. </p>
<p>Reminiscent of the competition between various colonial powers to map “unknown” lands and resources, what gets Randa his funding is the assurance that Americans will “discover” the uncharted island first.</p>
<h2>Old texts still have everyday impact</h2>
<p><em>Kong: Skull Island</em> builds on the long history of colonial literature. Two characters in the film: the tracker, named Conrad (played by Tom Hiddleston), and Marlow (John C. Reilly) are a nod to the literary journey up the Congo river in the novel, <em><a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/310601/heart-of-darkness-by-joseph-conrad/">Heart of Darkness</a></em> about an explorer named Marlow and written by Joseph Conrad. The novel’s premise that the journey up the Congo river is a journey into darkness <a href="https://www.massreview.org/volume-57-issue-1">has raised many debates</a> about the racism in Conrad’s text. </p>
<p>Though the new <em>Godzilla vs. Kong</em> offers the two mega-creatures a common enemy, the film still traffics in established tropes of monster films. </p>
<p>For decades, these landscapes have been characterized as sites of abundance but also disease outbreaks. At the same time, they also become places full of resources that need extraction. In Hollywood and colonial literature imaginations, the tropics hold cures for disease, alternative medicines and other geological resources, building on the long history of collaboration between <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/science-bears-fingerprints-colonialism-180968709/">scientists and the colonial enterprise</a>. </p>
<p>Even though these tropes came into being centuries ago as a result of colonial expeditions, they still underpin how space gets imagined in contemporary pop culture, revealing the everyday impact of old literary texts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/158105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Priscilla Jolly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Hollywood movies have long leaned into colonial representations of the tropics: imagined as romantic palm-fringed coasts full of abundance, but also scary places full of pestilence and primitiveness.Priscilla Jolly, PhD student, Department of English, Concordia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1280022020-04-28T20:32:51Z2020-04-28T20:32:51ZFrom Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314391/original/file-20200210-52356-svzc68.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=54%2C243%2C1209%2C779&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">'The Founding of Australia 1788', an oil painting by Algernon Talmage</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a>, and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>After Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage in 1770, the east coast of Australia was drawn on European maps of the globe for the first time. Yet, in terms of European contact with the continent, there was an 18-year lull in between Cook’s 1770 landings and the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788. </p>
<p>The main reason for this was Britain’s preoccupation with subduing its rebellious colonists in the War of American Independence from 1776-83. </p>
<p>Britain’s defeat in that war brought forth an urgent problem that eventually led to the colonisation of Australia: what it saw as a need to dispose of convicts who were overflowing the available prisons at home. </p>
<p>Previously, many British convicts were transported to the American colonies but after independence this option was no longer available. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310759/original/file-20200119-118343-l0lw70.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cook’s chart of Botany Bay.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/a-chart-of-botany-bay-by-james-cook">British Library</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The next penal colony: let the search begin</h2>
<p>Discussions about alternative penal colonies meshed with Britain’s larger strategic and commercial goals at the time. Many hoped a new convict settlement would provide a base for extending British power in the wake of the American debacle and be “<a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">advantageous both to navigation and commerce</a>”.</p>
<p>The search began in 1779 when the House of Commons established a committee under the chairmanship of British politician Sir Charles Bunbury. Various locations were considered, in particular, Senegal and Gambia on the west African coast. </p>
<p>But a new destination soon emerged with the testimony of Joseph Banks, the botanist on board the Endeavour, who had recently been elected president of the Royal Society. Botany Bay on the Australian coast, he contended, would be the best site for a penal colony since it had a Mediterranean climate and would be fertile. <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">Banks added</a>, too, that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there would be little Probability of any Opposition from the Natives</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It was a prediction that would ultimately prove <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/pemulwuy">incorrect</a>.</p>
<h2>Why Botany Bay?</h2>
<p>The search for a penal settlement lost momentum during the war, but regained some sense of urgency with its end in 1783. </p>
<p>James Matra, an American-born seaman aboard the Endeavour, circulated a proposal among policy-makers about establishing a new settlement at Botany Bay. It was based on his own first-hand knowledge of the coast, as well as his discussions with Banks, who remained the most influential advocate for the site. </p>
<p>Matra’s most immediate concern was to provide a home for the American loyalists – those, like his own family, who had lost their property in the new United States because of their loyalty to the British crown during the war. </p>
<p>Matra’s proposal also appealed to some key strategic and commercial concerns:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>flax and timbers could be brought from New Zealand to grow in the new colony, providing the British navy with much-needed supplies;</p></li>
<li><p>the planting of spices and sugarcane would reduce Britain’s reliance on the Dutch East Indies; </p></li>
<li><p>the site could be used as a base for those engaged in the lucrative fur trade in America; and </p></li>
<li><p>the settlement could act as a strategic base to challenge the Dutch in the East Indies and the Spanish in the Philippines and even South America. </p></li>
</ul>
<h2>Another serious contender emerges</h2>
<p>After Matra submitted his proposal, another House of Commons committee was established in 1785, chaired by Lord Beauchamp. Both Matra and Banks gave evidence in favour of Botany Bay, with Banks <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/324301">arguing</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>from the fertility of the soil, the timid disposition of the inhabitants and the climate being so analogous to that of Europe I give the place the preference to all that I have seen</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The committee, however, opted for an African site. It believed Das Voltas Bay, in southwest Africa, could reduce British dependence on the Dutch Cape of Good Hope in what is now South Africa and serve as a refuge for the American loyalists. </p>
<p>Before venturing down the path of establishing a colony, however, an exploratory voyage was sent to the African coast. It concluded the site was unsuitable as it lacked an effective harbour and fertile land. </p>
<p>Botany Bay was back in serious contention.</p>
<h2>Dreams of Pacific trade</h2>
<p>Other supporters soon emerged to sing the praises of Botany Bay. </p>
<p>Sir George Young, a naval officer and former East India Company officer, argued a colony at the site could serve as a base for trade with South America and underlined its strategic importance. If war broke out with Spain in the region, Botany Bay could be a place of refuge for British naval vessels. </p>
<p>Another advocate, John Call, an engineer with the East India Company, saw the advantages of a secondary settlement on nearby Norfolk Island. Flax grew in abundance on the island, he said, and the mighty Norfolk pine tree would be ideal for the masts of ships.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These observations were based on reports from Cook’s second and third Pacific voyages. The second included a visit to Norfolk Island, while the third ventured to the northwestern coast of America and traded furs in China, further fuelling British aspirations for Pacific trade.</p>
<p>Such arguments eventually led Prime Minister William Pitt and his Cabinet to accept the proposal to establish the settlement at Botany Bay.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314398/original/file-20200210-52360-1uzg5vd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing by John Webber depicting the arrival of Cook’s ship in Nootka Sound in April 1778 on his search for the Northwest Passage.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Library</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A costly endeavour</h2>
<p>Such a settlement demanded an unprecedented degree of state planning and financing. </p>
<p>The First Fleet, for example, consisted of 11 ships (no larger than the <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime-history/ott1788/index.html">Manly ferry</a>) that carried, among other things, a supply of seeds from Banks to help establish a “new Europe” on the other side of the Earth.</p>
<p>The convicts sent to New South Wales also incurred considerable state expense compared to those sent to America. From 1788-89, the new colony accumulated expenses of over 250,000 pounds, which equated to 100 pounds per convict per annum.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cooking-the-books-how-re-enactments-of-the-endeavours-voyage-perpetuate-myths-of-australias-discovery-126751">Cooking the books: how re-enactments of the Endeavour's voyage perpetuate myths of Australia's 'discovery'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The fact it cost considerably more to transport a convict to New South Wales than to keep him or her in a British jail supported the view held by some in England that the penal colony was a subterfuge for broader strategic goals. </p>
<p>Rival nations also thought the British were trying to deceive them. Alejandro Malaspina, who captained a Spanish expedition that visited Sydney in 1793, thought the settlement could be a potential naval base for an attack on Spanish America.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=466&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/314387/original/file-20200210-52356-1ss6sak.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=585&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A list of female convicts onboard the Lady Penrhyn in the First Fleet.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A repository for convicts</h2>
<p>And yet, in the end, the settlement at New South Wales did little to advance British strategic goals.</p>
<p>The site lacked a naval base and its defences were so weak, François Péron, a naturalist aboard the French <a href="http://museum.wa.gov.au/fc/aos/dj">Baudin expedition</a> that circumnavigated much of Australia from 1801-03, thought it could be easily captured.</p>
<p>In fact, no naval expedition was mounted from New South Wales during the Napoleonic wars of 1803-15. Nor did New South Wales live up to the commercial benefits some had invested in it. Tropical fruits and spices would not grow in Sydney, and Norfolk Island proved a disappointment as a source for naval supplies. </p>
<p>The American loyalists also chose to resettle in nearby Canada instead of distant New South Wales. </p>
<p>But New South Wales proved to cater to the most immediate reason for British settlement: a repository for convicts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128002/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Gascoigne is the author of several books on James Cook and Joseph Banks. His most recent book is Encountering the Pacific in the Age of the Enlightenment. </span></em></p>Britain had an urgent problem after it lost its American colonies: where to send its convicts. It settled on NSW after rejecting other options, but the new spot didn’t exactly live up to its billing.John Gascoigne, Emeritus Professor, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1264302020-04-28T19:55:55Z2020-04-28T19:55:55Z‘They are all dead’: for Indigenous people, Cook’s voyage of ‘discovery’ was a ghostly visitation<p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>On a recent trip to Cape York, I was privileged to sit with Kaurareg/Gudang Yadhaykenu man Uncle Tommy Savage, on a beach in the town of Umagico.</p>
<p>We listened as he sang a song called Markai an Ghule (meaning “ghost ship”), composed by his ancestors when James Cook arrived at Possession Island in August 1770. </p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<p>A sad lilt permeated the song, an expression of the grief the Kaurareg people felt at having to hide their cultural system, while they determined what the arrival of this preternatural being and his big ship was all about. </p>
<p>We recorded Uncle Tommy’s song for inclusion in The Message, a film commissioned by the National Museum of Australia and opening in April to coincide with 250 years since Cook arrived.</p>
<p>While researching the film, I spent much of last year travelling Australia’s east coast interviewing historians, curators and traditional owners, piecing together stories from the ship and the shore. Here are the stories that have stuck with me.</p>
<h2>A voyage of the dead</h2>
<p>What is so often described as Cook’s “voyage of discovery” has been viewed consistently by Indigenous people as a voyage of the dead; a giant canoe carrying the reincarnation of ancestral beings.</p>
<p>At the first encounter in Botany Bay, two Gweagal warriors throw stones and spears to Cook, saying “warrawarrawa,” <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/sites/default/files/livinglanguage_mr_120719.pdf">meaning</a> “they are all dead” (not “go away”, as it is often translated).</p>
<p>Perhaps this explains why Banks and Cook write of Aboriginal people persistently declining any of the gifts they were offered. You would have to be crazy to take gifts from the dead! </p>
<p>The warnings about these ghostly visitors were quickly and accurately sent by fire, smoke and message stick up the coast, adding a deeper meaning to the many <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Endeavour-Journal">fires</a> Banks and Cook noted as they travelled north (“Saw several smooks along shore before dark and two or three times afire in the night,” Cook <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Indigenous-Response/Endeavour-Journal">writes</a>).</p>
<h2>A collision of beliefs</h2>
<p>When the Endeavour smashes into the reef in Cooktown and is forced to stay for 48 days on the river for repairs, Cook and his crew captured “<a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">eight or nine</a>” turtles (tellingly, Banks refers repeatedly to “our turtles”). </p>
<p>A contingent of local Guugu Yimithirr men board HMS Endeavour and try to take at least one turtle back, but Cook’s men soon wrest it away – refusing to share or acknowledge the possibility they’d taken too many.</p>
<p>Lamenting this environmental loss, a group of warriors light the grass fires in protest (“I had little Idea of the fury with which the grass burnt in this hot climate, nor of the dificulty of extinguishing it when once lighted”, Banks <a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">writes</a>) and Cook shoots one of the Guugu Yimithirr men.</p>
<p>The rising tension is then released by an older man who stands forward in an extraordinary act of governance and breaks the tip off a spear to signify “weapons down”. </p>
<h2>‘… in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans’</h2>
<p>The incident brought together threads still relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and cultural governance. And this collision of beliefs, it seems, was not lost on Cook. </p>
<p>As he sailed off from the tip of Cape York, Cook wrote an unusual diary <a href="http://southseas.nla.gov.au/journals/cook_remarks/092.html">entry</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>From what I have said of the Natives of New-Holland, they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon Earth, but in reality they are far more happier than we Europeans; being wholy unacquainted not only with the superfluous but the necessary conveniencies so much sought after in Europe, they are happy in not knowing the use of them. </p>
<p>They live in a Tranquillity which is not disturb’d by the Inequality of Condition: The Earth and sea of their own accord furnishes them with all things necessary for life; they covet not Magnificent Houses, Houshold-stuff […]</p>
<p>[…] they live in a warm and fine Climate and enjoy a very wholsome Air, so that they have very little need of Clothing and this they seem to be fully sencible of, for many to whome we gave Cloth to, left it carlessly upon the Sea beach and in the woods as a thing they had no manner of use for. </p>
<p>In short they seem’d to set no Value upon any thing we gave them, nor would they ever part with any thing of their own for any one article we could offer them; this, in my opinion argues that they think themselves provided with all the necessarys of Life and that they have no Superfluities —</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For a working class man from Georgian England to see and appreciate the cultural values of Indigenous people is remarkable, considering that clarity of understanding is only just dawning on the average Australian. </p>
<h2>The role of Joseph Banks</h2>
<p>After all the conversations I’ve had over the last year with historians, traditional owners and curators, I’ve come to believe that history has been unkind to Cook. He is blamed for the many wrongs inflicted on my people. </p>
<p>Joseph Banks, however, emerges as a much colder, unkinder figure. It was Banks who <a href="http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/barrallier-letter/index.html">convinced the British government</a> that Australia would be perfect for a penal colony, given it could no longer send convicts to America. </p>
<p>Banks’s view that Australia was “<a href="http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00021.pdf">thinly inhabited</a>” (and he speaks frequently of savagery and simplicity of its people) fed directly into the declaration of <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/henry-reynolds-australia-was-founded-on-a-hypocrisy-that-haunts-us-to-this-day-101679">terra nullius.</a></em> Banks never went inland, but declared with great hubris that it was almost certainly “<a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=XiuKJC5Izb0C&pg=PA16&lpg=PA16&dq=joseph+banks+%22totally+uninhabited%22&source=bl&ots=lQfFdObesz&sig=ACfU3U0LLSIqhWC8D37BSZGhFuC-fseyOA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDjYvG1YbnAhXLZSsKHQXJDrEQ6AEwBHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20%22totally%20uninhabited%22&f=false">totally uninhabited</a>”.</p>
<p>In the end, the decisions made in the 18 years between Cook leaving and the First Fleet arriving have shaped modern Australia far more than those early fleeting ethereal encounters.</p>
<p>There are so many lost chapters in the story of Australia.</p>
<p>But as a nation, we can invite Uncle Tommy and his people – and all those other excluded songs and stories – to come out of hiding. </p>
<p>Revealing our shared history is the only way to make peace with those ghostly visitors of the past. But we will only find that peace in the truth and it’s the truth of our history, which will be our new voyage of discovery. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Alison Page was commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to create the film The Message for the museum’s Endeavour 250 exhibition, opening on April 8.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alison Page of Zakpage is a descendant of the Walbanga and Wadi Wadi people of the Yuin nation. She was commissioned by the National Museum of Australia to create the film The Message. She is a councillor on the Australian National Maritime Museum, won a sculpture commission for Kamay Commemorative Installation and is on the Indigenous Reference Group of the National Museum of Australia.</span></em></p>Incidents from Cook’s first voyage highlight themes relevant in Indigenous-settler relations today: environmental care, reconciliation and governance. This collision of beliefs, it seems, wasn’t lost on Cook.Alison Page, Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1266742020-04-28T19:55:37Z2020-04-28T19:55:37ZThe stories of Tupaia and Omai and their vital role as Captain Cook’s unsung shipmates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311022/original/file-20200121-69563-14zo3wp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Portrait of Mai, also known as Omai or Omai of the Friendly Isles. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Omai">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and images of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Several recent exhibitions on James Cook have sought to include discussions of the Indigenous people who journeyed with him on his Pacific voyages. </p>
<p>In exhibitions marking the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour’s departure from Britain in 2018, for example, both <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/tupaia">the British Library</a> and the <a href="https://www.nla.gov.au/cook-and-the-pacific/society-islands">National Library of Australia</a> focused in part on the priest Tupaia, who travelled with Cook from Tahiti to Batavia (present-day Jakarta) in 1769. </p>
<p>These exhibitions emphasised Tupaia’s navigational prowess, but didn’t provide extensive detail on the role he played in the British enterprises. </p>
<p>Likewise, little to no attention has been paid to the islander who journeyed with Cook the longest, Mai, who joined the captain’s second and third voyages. </p>
<p>Shining a light on the islanders who travelled with Cook is necessary to put his achievements in proper context. Cook was more reliant on their assistance for his empire-expanding project than is often acknowledged. And these islanders had more agency during the so-called Age of Discovery than is typically believed. </p>
<p>The stories of Tupaia and Mai highlight the central role Indigenous people played during this period, which for too long has been described as one of only European exploration. And they also question the way Cook has been portrayed throughout history – as a lone genius, connecting the world more closely through his unique abilities. </p>
<p>It turns out many different people contributed to globalisation in the 18th century.</p>
<h2>Tupaia’s motivations for joining the Endeavour</h2>
<p>Mai, or Omai as he was mostly known by the British, shared many characteristics with Tupaia. Both were motivated to journey with Cook because of intense dramas playing out on their home island of Ra‘iatea in what is now French Polynesia. And both became useful to the British voyagers by brokering introductions with other islanders in the Pacific. </p>
<p>But in other ways, the two men differed. They were from separate social ranks and they experienced very different fates.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311030/original/file-20200121-144962-46g7u6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tupaia’s chart of the islands surrounding Tahiti.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tupaia%27s_map,_c._1769.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tupaia was of the exalted ari’i rank, a leading priest of the ‘Oro sect that ruled most of the Tahitian archipelago during this era. </p>
<p>Because of his high status, he was directly involved in a tumultuous war between Ra‘iatea and neighboring Bora Bora in the 1760s, which eventually ended in defeat for the Ra‘iateans. After the war, he became a refugee in Tahiti, where he came into contact with the Endeavour and befriended the naturalist, Joseph Banks. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-failure-to-say-hello-how-captain-cook-blundered-his-first-impression-with-indigenous-people-126673">A failure to say hello: how Captain Cook blundered his first impression with Indigenous people</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For Tupaia, the motivation to join the Endeavour voyage was complex and political. He saw in the British tallships an opportunity to gain arms, knowledge and possibly even men for a restorative offensive against the Bora Borans at Ra‘iatea.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/401251/tupaia-s-descendants-shed-new-light-on-cook-s-navigator">Some descendants today also suggest</a> he joined the crew as a way of continuing a long-established practice of voyaging – returning to islands he had previously visited in his own waka (canoe) and by his own navigational techniques.</p>
<p>And Banks saw in Tupaia’s adventurousness a chance to fulfill a dream to study man in a so-called “state of nature” back home in Britain. </p>
<h2>Tupaia’s assistance during the voyage</h2>
<p>Tupaia joined the Endeavour in July 1769. Cook, until now skeptical of including islanders in his crew, acquiesced partly because he saw it appeased Banks and partly because <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mIk8x6lsusQC&pg=PA262&lpg=PA262&dq=Shrewd,+Sensible,+and+Ingenious+Man+cook&source=bl&ots=wUlNNr2oOE&sig=ACfU3U34HfHEEHFnMjehTdif2BOlHFJW_Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr3bbTjqrnAhWu7HMBHawMC1YQ6AEwAXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false">he judged Tupaia</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a Shrewd, Sensible, and Ingenious Man. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The captain learned a great deal from Tupaia. Not only did Cook listen to and attempt to document all of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00223344.2018.1512369">Tupaia’s recitations on the scores of islands around Tahiti</a>, he also gained rare insight into Pacific voyaging. </p>
<p>Most of all, he had Tupaia’s help when he met wary islanders in other archipelagos. With Tupaia mediating, these encounters went smoothly.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311015/original/file-20200121-69582-n7mmcv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A drawing by Tupaia depicting trade between a Maori man and Joseph Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupaia_(navigator)#/media/File:A_Maori_man_and_Joseph_Banks_exchanging_a_crayfish_for_a_piece_of_cloth,_c._1769.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Tupaia was ill through much of the Endeavour’s stay at Botany Bay. Unfortunately, his health only worsened and he died during the ship’s layover in Batavia, thwarting Banks’ long-term aim of bringing him to Britain. </p>
<p>Perhaps, though, Tupaia fulfilled at least part of his own dream to travel the Pacific once more.</p>
<h2>Mai’s fierce determination to join Cook</h2>
<p>Banks was not on Cook’s second voyage, but the captain carried with him the memory of the naturalist’s hopes to study a Pacific islander. </p>
<p>As I recount in my latest book, <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300243062/warrior-voyager-and-artist">The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire</a>, Cook found that man when he encountered Mai in 1773. </p>
<p>Like Tupaia, Mai was also displaced by the Bora Boran invasion of Ra‘iatea. A generation younger than Tupaia, Mai had been a child at the time and also lost his father in the conflict. In Tahiti, his lower social rank meant he had fewer concessions as a refugee. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/my-ancestors-met-cook-in-aotearoa-250-years-ago-for-us-its-time-to-reinterpret-a-painful-history-128771">My ancestors met Cook in Aotearoa 250 years ago. For us, it's time to reinterpret a painful history</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Arguably these conditions made Mai even more determined to join Cook’s expedition when the chance came. </p>
<p>Mai travelled to Britain on Cook’s second ship, captained by Tobias Furneaux. The Englishman admired Mai and remarked several times on his maritime and culinary skills. Mai also helped translate and mediate with other islanders they encountered. This wasn’t because he sympathised with the British; rather, he was eager to speed up their return to Britain. </p>
<h2>Mai’s mission in London and return home</h2>
<p>Arriving in London in 1774, Mai met with Banks, who assumed responsibility for his accommodation. Due to his high-profile patron, Mai <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/feb/25/joshua-reynolds-portrait-omai-tate-john-magnier-amsterdam--row">encountered and bedazzled much of the glamorous set</a> in London, including King George III.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/315886/original/file-20200218-11044-6anhvt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Omai, 1777 engraved by James Caldwall after William Hodges.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.portrait.gov.au/portraits/2010.111/omai">Collection: National Portrait Gallery, Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Mai seemed to enjoy himself well enough, but his mind was always focused on his larger mission. Everyone who met him recorded that his aim in Britain was not to impress or assimilate but to gain support for his mission of retaking his home island of Ra‘iatea from the Bora Borans.</p>
<p>Mai found himself aboard Cook’s third voyage to the Pacific in mid-1776, with promises from Banks and the Admiralty to take him home and provide him with British goods to help him achieve his goals. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Once again, he provided critical assistance to the captain during negotiations with other Pacific islanders, as well as with Indigenous people in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania). Only when the expedition neared the Tahitian archipelago did Mai start to doubt Cook’s good faith. </p>
<p>He saw Cook give away much of the livestock that had been promised to him and watched as he held long meetings with assorted elders. Mai realised Cook planned to dump him on another island rather than fulfill the Admiralty pledges to land him on Ra‘iatea. </p>
<p>Mai was devastated. After four long years away, his life project had collapsed.</p>
<h2>Grand ambitions only partly realised</h2>
<p>Historians like to recount the emotional farewell between Cook and Mai in late 1777, noting Mai’s desperate wailing and Cook’s misty eyes. It’s usually depicted as a touching example of how Mai had grown to love the British and, equally, of how Cook had a softer heart than most believed.</p>
<p>From Mai’s perspective, though, the moment likely had a far different meaning.</p>
<p>Neither Tupaia nor Mai had achieved their ultimate goals in joining the Cook voyages, but this does not discount the grandness of their ambitions. </p>
<p>Both undertook epic feats of exploration. And their missions were just as political as Cook’s had been. Instead of imperial expansion, however, these men had sought a continuation of their Indigenous ways of life.</p>
<p>And it’s worth pointing out that Cook failed in his ultimate goal in the third voyage, too. He had been tasked with finding a northwest passage for imperial trade and to deliver Mai home according to his wishes. Instead, he <a href="https://www.history.co.uk/this-day-in-history/14-february/captain-cook-killed-in-hawaii">ended up assassinated in Hawai'i</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=465&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311016/original/file-20200121-69535-1odmu3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=584&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cleveley, James, active 1776-1780. Cleveley, James fl 1776-1780 :[View of Huaheine, one of the Society Islands in the South Seas. Drawn on the spot by James Cleveley, painted by John Cleveley, London, F. Jukes aquatt. London, Thomas Martyn, 1787]. Ref: C-036-020. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22325887.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://natlib.govt.nz/records/22325887">National Library of New Zealand</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/126674/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Fullagar receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>Both islanders played a central role in Cook’s three voyages across the Pacific, but their contributions have largely been overshadowed in what is generally thought of as era of European exploration.Kate Fullagar, Associate Professor in Modern History, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284692020-04-28T19:55:09Z2020-04-28T19:55:09ZBotany and the colonisation of Australia in 1770<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315880/original/file-20200218-10985-kndbtu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C5%2C3494%2C1267&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Botanist Joseph Banks recommended Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/collection-items/botany-bay-new-south-wales-ca-1789-watercolour-charles-gore">Charles Gore (1788) / State Library of NSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>James Cook and his companions aboard the Endeavour landed at a harbour on Australia’s southeast coast in April of 1770. Cook named the place Botany Bay for
“the great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place”.</p>
<p>Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander were aboard the Endeavour as gentleman botanists, collecting specimens and applying names in Latin to plants Europeans had not previously seen. The place name hints at the importance of plants to Britain’s Empire, and to botany’s pivotal place in Europe’s Enlightenment and Australia’s early colonisation.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>‘Nothing like people’</h2>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=682&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310790/original/file-20200120-118347-vgurex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=857&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Joseph Banks became one of Britain’s most influential scientists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nla.gov.au/digital-classroom/senior/Cook/Science/Science">National Library of Australia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Cook has always loomed large in Australia’s colonial history. White Australians have long commemorated and celebrated him as the symbolic link to the “civilisation” of Enlightenment and Empire. The two botanists have been less well remembered, yet Banks in particular was an influential figure in Australia’s early colonisation. </p>
<p>When Banks and his friend Solander went ashore on April 29, 1770 to collect plants for naming and classification, the Englishman recollected they saw “nothing like people”. Banks knew that the land on which he and Solander sought plants was inhabited (and in fact, as we now know, had been so for at least 65,000 years). Yet the two botanists were engaged in an activity that implied the land was blank and unknown. </p>
<p>They were both botanical adventurers. Solander was among the first and most favoured of the students of Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist and colonial traveller who devised the method still used today for naming species. Both Solander and Banks were advocates for the Linnaean method of taxonomy: a systematic classification of newly named plants and animals. </p>
<p>When they stepped ashore at “Botany Bay” in 1770, the pair saw themselves as pioneers in a double sense: as Linnaean botanists in a new land, its places and plants unnamed by any other; as if they were in a veritable <em>terra nullius</em>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310792/original/file-20200120-118319-i3m170.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The plant specimens Joseph Banks collected were taken back to England, where they remain today in the Natural History Museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/joseph-banks-scientist-explorer-botanist.html">Natural History Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Botany in ‘nobody’s land’</h2>
<p><em>Terra nullius</em>, meaning “nobody’s land”, refers to a legal doctrine derived from European traditions stretching back to the ancient Romans. The idea was that land could be declared “empty” and “unowned” if there were no signs of occupation such as cultivation of the soil, towns, cities, or sacred temples. </p>
<p>As a legal doctrine it was not applied in Australia until the late 1880s, and there is dispute about its effects in law until its final elimination by the High Court in <em>Mabo v Queensland (No. II)</em> in 1992. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/terra-nullius-interruptus-captain-james-cook-and-absent-presence-in-first-nations-art-129688">Terra nullius interruptus: Captain James Cook and absent presence in First Nations art</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Cook never used this formulation, nor did Banks or Solander. Yet each in their way acted as if it were true. That the land, its plants, and animals, and even its peoples, were theirs to name and classify according to their own standards of “scientific” knowledge.</p>
<p>In the late eighteenth century, no form of scientific knowledge was more useful to empire than botany. It was the science <em>par excellence</em> of colonisation and empire. Botany promised a way to transform the “waste” of nature into economic productivity on a global scale. </p>
<h2>Plant power</h2>
<p>Wealth and power in Britain’s eighteenth century empire came from harnessing economically useful crops: tobacco, sugar, tea, coffee, rice, potatoes, flax. Hence Banks and Solander’s avid botanical activity was not merely a manifestation of Enlightenment “science”. It was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=953&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/311301/original/file-20200122-117962-7d0ad5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1197&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"><em>Banksia ericifolia</em> was one of the many species given a new name by Banks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Natural History Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the Endeavour’s voyage, Banks, Solander, and their assistants collected more than 30,000 plant specimens, naming more than 1,400 species. </p>
<p>By doing so, they were claiming new ground for European knowledge, just as Cook meticulously charted the coastlines of territories he claimed for His Majesty, King George III. Together they extended a new dispensation, inscribed in new names for places and for plants written over the ones that were already there. </p>
<p>Long after the Endeavour returned to Britain, Banks testified before two House of Commons committees in 1779 and 1785 that “Botany Bay” would be an “advantageous” site for a new penal colony. Among his reasons for this conclusion were not only its botanical qualities – fertile soils, abundant trees and grasses – but its virtual emptiness. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-captain-cook-to-the-first-fleet-how-botany-bay-was-chosen-over-africa-as-a-new-british-penal-colony-128002">From Captain Cook to the First Fleet: how Botany Bay was chosen over Africa as a new British penal colony</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Turning emptiness to empire</h2>
<p>When Banks described in his own Endeavour journal the land Cook had named “New South Wales”, he recalled: “This immense tract of Land … is thinly inhabited even to admiration …”. It was the science of botany that connected emptiness and empire to the Enlightened pursuit of knowledge. </p>
<p>One of Banks’s correspondents was the Scottish botanist and professor of natural history, John Walker. Botany, Walker wrote, was one of the “few Sciences” that “can promise any discovery or improvement”. Botany was the scientific means to master the global emporium of commodities on which empire grew. </p>
<p>Botany was also the reason why it had not been necessary for Banks or Solander to affirm the land on which they trod was empty. For in a very real sense, their science presupposed it. The land, its plants and its people were theirs to name and thereby claim by “discovery”. </p>
<p>When Walker reflected on his own botanical expeditions in the Scottish Highlands, he described them as akin to voyages of discovery to lands as “inanimate & unfrequented as any in the Terra australis”. </p>
<p>As we reflect on the 250-year commemoration of Cook’s landing in Australia, we ought also to consider his companions Banks and Solander, and their science of turning supposed emptiness to empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Buchan receives research funding from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and from the Swedish Research Council, for two projects with Dr Linda Andersson Burnett: ‘The Borders of Humanity: Linnaean Natural Historians and the Colonial Legacies of Enlightenment’ (P15-0423:1) 2016-19, and 'Collecting Mankind: Prehistory, Race and Instructions for ‘Scientific Travelers’, circa 1750-1850' (2019-03358) 2020-24.</span></em></p>Botany was an integral feature of Britain’s colonial and imperial ambitions.Bruce Buchan, Associate Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1306182020-04-27T20:06:21Z2020-04-27T20:06:21ZJoseph Banks: traveller, botanist and agent of the British Empire<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/311991/original/file-20200127-81352-nq14ya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C1%2C624%2C773&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joseph Banks portrait by Joshua Reynolds (circa 1771-1773).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Portrait Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Captain James Cook arrived in the Pacific 250 years ago, triggering British colonisation of the region. We’re asking researchers to reflect on what happened and how it shapes us today. You can see other stories in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/cook250-78244">here</a> and an interactive <a href="https://cook250.netlify.app/">here</a>.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Sir Joseph Banks is justly celebrated as a “naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences.” His role as an expedition scientist on Captain Cook’s first voyage set a benchmark for rigour, and helped to lift him to election as president of the Royal Society in 1778. From that position, he directed and encouraged multinational scientific endeavours for more than four decades. Less well-known is how he used that science to pursue imperial power.</p>
<p>The role of science in the “<a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/enlightenment/">Age of Enlightenment</a>” has sometimes been imagined as a bubble of purity, where the hunt for new knowledge outweighed all other considerations. It is certainly true that warring European powers granted safe passage for elite scientific correspondence, and sometimes for individual scholars, or whole expeditions. But the context for this was a consensus on the value of scientific discovery for the pursuit of imperial aggrandisement.</p>
<p>Banks was a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/joseph-banks">hereditary member of the English establishment</a>. Born in 1743, his father and grandfather had been members of parliament and he inherited extensive Lincolnshire estates at an early age. He blended formal education with self-funded studies, and by his mid-20s, was already a member of the Royal Society, undertaking an expedition to the north-eastern shores of Canada, where he <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UcIXkyf55fMC&pg=PA168&lpg=PA168&dq=joseph+banks+auk&source=bl&ots=3SsEWirQDR&sig=ACfU3U2d8mZUVKGn-dqvqKj_JHZyyIcNvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjPm66O5KPnAhUOiFwKHf3TA_wQ6AEwD3oECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=joseph%20banks%20auk&f=false">identified the Great Auk</a> for science.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/cook250-78244"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/328303/original/file-20200416-192709-qmy2nf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=113&fit=crop&dpr=2" alt="A new series from The Conversation." width="100%"></a></p>
<h2>Great Southern Continent</h2>
<p>Cook’s <a href="https://www.bl.uk/the-voyages-of-captain-james-cook/articles/the-first-voyage-of-james-cook">first voyage</a> was ostensibly to observe the “<a href="https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/28may_cook">transit of Venus</a>” across the face of the sun in 1769: thus forming part of a multinational scientific effort to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2012/may/29/transit-venus-measuring-heavens">map the size of the solar system</a>. But a deeper goal had already been voiced. </p>
<p>The first person the Royal Society suggested to command the voyage was <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/20633371">Alexander Dalrymple</a>, an eminent Scottish geographer and vocal proponent of the theory that a “Great Southern Continent” awaited discovery. He saw this as an opportunity equivalent to the discovery of the Americas, so great, as he wrote in his 1770/71 volume <a href="https://www.rct.uk/collection/1142150/an-historical-collection-of-the-several-voyages-and-discoveries-in-the-south">An Historical collection of the several voyages and discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean</a>, that even: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Dalrymple, however, demanded a full naval captain’s commission, which the Admiralty would not grant to a man who was not a professional seaman. James Cook had the necessary background, and was content with lieutenant’s rank. Cook’s voyage, of course, disproved the theory of a great Terra Australis, while at the same time mapping the outlines of New Zealand and eastern Australia. Banks (who had paid out of his own pocket for eight other scientists and servants to accompany him) both diligently completed his core botanical duties, and returned with clear views on how British imperial power could be enhanced through Cook’s discoveries.</p>
<p>Banks firmly advocated the strategic use of colonisation, vigorously promoting the use of “Botany Bay” as a penal colony. He sought to have interloping American trading vessels excluded from New South Wales “with severity”, but was not averse to other nations setting up settlements elsewhere in Australia, because there was a “moral certainty” that such territories would fall “into our hands in time of war”.</p>
<h2>The Bounty</h2>
<p>Banks was also the guiding light behind the most notorious episode of attempted ecological imperialism in the 1780s: the voyage of the Bounty, which set sail from the south coast of England in 1787, bound for what its crew saw as the very furthest reaches of the world. Banks had personally overseen its refitting, including the transformation of its captain’s cabin into a greenhouse, where hundreds of breadfruit seedlings were to be nurtured.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=795&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313529/original/file-20200204-41503-iikp7i.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=999&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The much-maligned William Bligh.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alexander Huey (1814), National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The ship’s captain, William Bligh – who was only 35, not the grizzled veteran sometimes depicted – had been sailing-master on Cook’s fatal third voyage, and had come under Banks’ subsequent patronage. His mission failed dramatically, not least because of the huge pressure its goals put him under, and the Bounty was lost to Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers in April 1789. Bligh redeemed his naval reputation with a voyage of more than 3,600 nautical miles to safety in an open boat. Only two years later, he led a second voyage of two ships, which did bring breadfruit from Tahiti all the way to the Caribbean. The Royal Society <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41376303?seq=1">awarded him a gold medal</a>.</p>
<p>Breadfruit never became a self-sustaining food crop for Britain’s brutalised plantation slaves, which had been the grim objective at the heart of these voyages. But this was just one small part of Banks’ vision of imperial botany. He took <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/dcd33da0-0e69-11e4-a1ae-00144feabdc0">a leading role</a> in establishing the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as a centre for the systematic study of the world’s plants. He helped promote a network of such centres, from Calcutta to St Vincent in the Caribbean, and the exchange of species between them.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to Bligh’s departure, Banks had expounded in a <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Qfa3CgAAQBAJ&pg=PA88&lpg=PA88&dq=joseph+banks+letter+to+Sir+George+Yonge+Mangosteens,+Jacks,+Durians&source=bl&ots=TV13znCp2t&sig=ACfU3U0EAXu116tnGjbEqy-Rt4e2mv2ADg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-zYnlhrnnAhWF8XMBHczVBn0Q6AEwAHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=cajir&f=false">letter</a> on the benefits of transplantation. From his own previous voyages, he noted the potential value of New Zealand flax for rope-making, and the “Mangosteens, Jacks, Durians” that might be brought westwards from Malaya (now Malaysia). One letter listed more than 30 products of both hemispheres that might be profitably transplanted, from the “lichee” to Basmati rice, “Naugharbussee bamboo” – superior, he noted, to Philippine bamboos already brought to the Caribbean by the Spanish – and what he called the “<a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=_-5rQMHKLi8C&pg=PA92&lpg=PA92&dq=Cajir+Gautch&source=bl&ots=STojOEHP1V&sig=ACfU3U3iYCyB9c-NieLokciw6uWympgIRg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6gNOM3KPnAhUIT8AKHX1wB38Q6AEwAHoECDAQAQ#v=onepage&q=Cajir%20Gautch&f=false">Cajir Gautch</a>”, a palm whose sap made an alcoholic drink.</p>
<p>Banks closed this letter by noting how happy and eager he was to take forward such plans “so highly fraught with disinterested benevolence” as they were. His correspondent, however, was His Majesty’s secretary for war <a href="https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-30223">Sir George Yonge</a>. Sir Joseph Banks, like so many leading lights of his generation, drew no distinction between the advancement of humanity and the interests of the British Empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Andress does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>For celebrated botanist Joseph Banks, his voyage with James Cook was more about extending imperial power than simply discovery.David Andress, Professor of Modern History, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1205802019-08-19T20:01:11Z2019-08-19T20:01:11ZHow clay helped shape colonial Sydney<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287822/original/file-20190813-9431-1nm17pg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A large bowl or pan thought to have been made in Sydney by the potter Thomas Ball between 1801 and 1823.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Casey & Lowe, photo by Russell Workman</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In April 2020, Australia will mark 250 years since James Cook sailed into Kamay (later known as Botany Bay) on the Endeavour, kicking off a series of events that resulted in the British arriving and staying uninvited first at Warrane (Sydney Cove) in 1788, and later at numerous locations across the continent.</p>
<p>Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded, and as a nation we are still grappling with the consequences of these actions of 221 years ago. Although we often focus on the large-scale impact of British settlers – the diseases my ancestors brought, the violence they committed – we are less good at seeing the small and unwitting ways that settlers participated in British colonialism. One such story emerges when we track the history of an unlikely cultural object – clay from Sydney.</p>
<p>In April 1770, Joseph Banks – the gentleman botanist on James Cook’s first voyage – recorded in <a href="http://adc.library.usyd.edu.au/view?docId=ozlit/xml-main-texts/p00021.xml;chunk.id=d1207e10874;toc.depth=1;toc.id=d1207e10644;database=;collection=;brand=default">his journal</a> how the traditional owners of Botany Bay painted their bodies with broad strokes of white ochre, which he compared to the cross-belt of British soldiers. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-captain-cook-became-a-contested-national-symbol-96344">How Captain Cook became a contested national symbol</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Eighteen years later, Arthur Phillip, Governor of New South Wales, sent Banks <a href="https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/banks/section-07/series-37/37-08-letter-received-by-banks-from-arthur">a box full of this white ochre</a> – he’d read the published journal and suspected Banks would be interested. The ochre was a fine white clay and Phillip wondered whether it would be useful for manufacturing pottery.</p>
<p>Once in Britain, this sample of clay took on a life of its own, passed between scientists across Europe. Josiah Wedgwood – Banks’ go-to expert on all things clay-related – tested a sample and described it as <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/106842">“an excellent material for pottery”</a>. He had his team of skilled craftspeople make a limited number of small medallions using this Sydney clay.</p>
<p>These medallions depict an allegory according to the classical fashion of the time. A standing figure represents “Hope” (shown with an anchor) instructing three bowing figures – “Peace” (holding an olive branch), “Art” (with an artist’s palette) and “Labour” (with a sledgehammer).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=619&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285070/original/file-20190722-134153-15dyda4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=778&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sydney Cove medallion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A cornucopia lies at their feet, representing the abundance that these qualities could produce in a society, while in the background a ship, town and fort suggest a flourishing urban settlement supported by trade. </p>
<p>This little ceramic disc made out of Sydney clay represented tangible evidence of how the new colony could flourish with “industry” – the right combination of knowledge, skills and effort. Yet notably absent from this vision of the new colony was any representation of Aboriginal people.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285069/original/file-20190722-134095-ew1raw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=764&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The back of the Sydney Cove medallion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For something only a little larger than a 50 cent piece, this medallion had a long legacy in colonial NSW. It was reproduced on the front page of <a href="https://archive.org/details/voyageofgovernor00phil_0">The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay</a> – one of the first accounts of the fledgling colony. Later it was adapted for the <a href="https://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/Heritage/research/heraldry/firstseal.htm">Great Seal of New South Wales</a> – attached to convict pardons and land grants.</p>
<p>Later still, a version formed the first masthead of the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/5653">Sydney Gazette</a> – the first newspaper in the colony. The ideas behind the medallion gained even wider circulation in the colony. As historian of science <a href="https://doi.org/10.1071/HR15018">Lindy Orthia has argued</a>, the Sydney Gazette was a place where various schemes for improving manufacturing and farming were regularly discussed.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=777&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285067/original/file-20190722-134076-17kw302.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The first Great Seal of New South Wales as used on a land title deed.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">State Library of NSW</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We can see the impact of these ideas by looking at what colonists themselves did with the clay. Although the first examples of Sydney-made pottery were unglazed and fragile, by the first decades of the 19th century, the quality had improved.</p>
<p>Over the last 30 years, archaeologists have found examples of Sydney-made pottery across Sydney and Parramatta on sites dating from the 1800s to 1820s.</p>
<p>Commonly called “lead-glazed pottery”, this material ranges from larger basins and pans, to more refined, decorated items, including chamber pots, bowls, plates, cups and saucers. Although basic, it clearly was based on British forms. The discovery of the former site of a <a href="http://www.caseyandlowe.com.au/site710.htm">potter’s workshop</a> in 2008 confirmed this material was made locally.</p>
<p>It has been found on sites ranging from the Governor’s residence on the corner of Bridge and Phillip Street, Sydney, to former convict huts in Parramatta, alongside imported British earthenware and Chinese export porcelain. Visitors to the fledgling colony commented on this pottery as evidence of its growth and development.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=322&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/285071/original/file-20190722-134101-taeqst.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Examples of Sydney-made pottery found at an archaeological site at 15 Macquarie Street, Parramatta.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Casey & Lowe, photo by Russell Workman</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sydney-made pottery helped colonists maintain different aspects of “civilised” behaviour. When imported tableware was expensive, local pottery allowed convicts living outside of barracks and other poorer settlers to use ceramic plates and cups, rather than cheaper wooden items.</p>
<p>Locally-made pots were also used to cook stews over a fire. Stews not only continued the established food practices of their British and Irish homes, but also conformed to contemporary ideas of a good, nourishing diet.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-archaeology-is-so-much-more-than-just-digging-108679">Why archaeology is so much more than just digging</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These practices around food would have distinguished colonists from the local Aboriginal people. In the coastal area around Sydney, locals tended to roast meat and vegetables, and to eat some fish and smaller birds or animals after only burning off their scales, feathers and fur. </p>
<p>George Thompson, a visiting ship’s gunner who had a low opinion of most things in the colony, thought that eating half-roasted fish was evidence of <a href="https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_xsNbAAAAcAAJ/page/n62">“a lazy indolent people”</a>.</p>
<p>As historian <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/version/49028602">Penny Russell has discussed</a>, eating “half-cooked” food became a well-worn trope in the 19th century, frequently repeated as evidence of the supposed lack of civilisation by Aboriginal people. By contrast, as the historian and curator <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2012.11668429">Blake Singley has suggested</a>, European cooking methods frequently became a way that native plants and animals could be “civilised” and incorporated into settler diets.</p>
<p>The colonists’ use of Sydney clay helped to distinguish their notion of civilisation from Aboriginal culture, and so implicitly helped to justify the dispossession of Aboriginal people. The story of this clay demonstrates how quickly colonists’ focus could shift away from Aboriginal people: although Aboriginal use of white ochre continued to be recorded by colonists and visitors, Sydney clay primary became seen as the material of a skilled European craft.</p>
<p>Through the use of local pottery, ordinary settlers could participate in this civilising program, replicating the culture of their homeland. These small, everyday actions helped create a vision of Sydney that excluded Aboriginal people – despite the fact that they have continued to live in and around Sydney since 1788.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Pitt is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
While working for Casey & Lowe, Archaeology and Heritage, Nicholas was paid to undertake archaeological analysis of lead-glazed pottery from the sites 710–722 George Street, Sydney (client Inmark Pty Ltd) and 15 Macquarie Street, Parramatta (client Integral Energy).</span></em></p>Though the Indigenous inhabitants were using white clay long before them, Sydney-made pottery helped colonists maintain different aspects of ‘civilised’ behaviour.Nick Pitt, PhD candidate, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1126962019-03-02T08:08:07Z2019-03-02T08:08:07ZThe firewood banksia is bursting with beauty<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261584/original/file-20190301-22871-1dxrm0x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:B_menziesii_gnangarra_19.jpg">Gnangarra via Wikipedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/9AE707FA51C4AC1B">part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.</a></em></p>
<hr>
<p>Firewood banksia is rugged and yet stunning. Short, stout and gnarled, it is often ignored by tree lovers. Indeed, it was commonly cut down and <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/8ed3311d-55c1-45a8-b240-63a5663c2fea/files/banksia-woodlands-scp-guide.pdf">used as firewood</a> in the early days of the Swan River Colony in modern-day Western Australia. </p>
<p>However, the flower spikes are stunning – showy and vibrant, dark pink-red in colour that becomes mixed with yellow as they open – and set against a backdrop of elegant twisted grey-green leaves. Each spike is composed of up to 6,000 individual flowers, and yet only a few become filled with seeds. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bunya-pines-are-ancient-delicious-and-possibly-deadly-96003">Bunya pines are ancient, delicious and possibly deadly</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The “cones” (these are not true cones like pine cones) are magnificent too – velvety chocolate brown, impressive in their woodiness, and expressive as the mouth-like follicles open to release their seeds. Symmetrical by turn and then messy by another turn, no other banksia species looks quite like it.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261588/original/file-20190301-22857-1dkqij2.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Conversation</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>We admire firewood banksia for functional reasons too. Life on Western Australia’s sandplains is tough, especially in the heat of the summer. One of us (Lauren) knows this all too well, having spent hours on her hands and knees counting banksia seedlings for her PhD research. </p>
<p>Large seeds provide the seedlings with resources to grow exceptionally long roots to reach water deep in the sandy, nutrient-poor soils. It’s an adventure race for survival because roots need to tap the ground water before the arrival of the long, hot Perth summer. </p>
<p>Seedlings of a neighbouring banksia species, the slender banksia, can grow roots at a rate of up to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00468-015-1161-z">3.5cm per day</a>!</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261589/original/file-20190301-22857-1ssjijy.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The flower spikes begin as a dark pink-red and become red-yellow as they mature.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Lauren Svejcar</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Uniquely Aussie</h2>
<p>Banksia is a plant genus unique to Australia, named after the great botanical explorer Sir Joseph Banks. Banks travelled on the HMS Endeavour with James Cook on his first great voyage to the “unknown southern land”. The specimens Banks and his team collected formed the first scientific collections of Australian flora, now held at the Natural History Museum in London and the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney.</p>
<p>According to fossil records of pollen, leaves and cones, banksia species have grown in Australia for at least <a href="https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rstb.2004.1528">60 million years</a> making their lineage one of the oldest in Australia. Banksia have persisted through major climate shifts from wet to dry climates that occurred about 25 million years ago. Even the first banksia species were able to <a href="https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03663.x">survive recurrent wildfire</a>, owing to what botanist Alex George refers to as the “ruggedness” of their <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8512480?selectedversion=NBD3334106">features</a>. Banksia epitomise what it means to be Australian.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261585/original/file-20190301-22840-tfr0zi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A woody ‘cone’ (infructescence) with seeds maturing inside swollen follicles. It is cheap for plants to produce wood in Australia because there’s plenty of sunlight, so why not offer your seeds total protection?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo Lauren Svejcar.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some 20 years after Cook’s first voyage of the east coast came the discovery of the rich banksia flora on the south-west coast of Australia. Banksia grow in non-arid regions all over Australia, but most species grow only in Western Australia. </p>
<p>Surgeon-naturalist Archibald Menzies was the first explorer to see and sample the diversity of banksia species growing in the <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8512480?selectedversion=NBD3334106">south-west near Albany</a>. Our favourite banksia, the firewood banksia is named in his honour: <em>Banksia menziesii</em>.</p>
<h2>Facing danger</h2>
<p>While their experience of historic climate change and ruggedness may protect firewood banksia from Perth’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/drought-proofing-perth-the-long-view-of-western-australian-water-36349">drying climate</a>, ongoing habitat clearing makes them vulnerable to decline and has contributed to the banksia woodlands of the Swan Coastal Plain being listed as an <a href="http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi-bin/sprat/public/publicshowcommunity.pl?id=131&status=Endangered">endangered ecological community</a>.</p>
<p>One of us (Rachel) played in banksia woodlands as a child, climbing the gnarly trucks of firewood banksia and collecting spent cones. Long before that, the Whadjuk Noongar collected flower spikes to make <a href="https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2017/02/noongar-aboriginal-bush-medicine/">bush medicine</a>. Having nature nearby is so important for people and for conservation. It is overwhelmingly sad that future generations of Perth may not be afforded this unique opportunity. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-mysterious-pilostyles-is-a-plant-within-a-plant-98767">The mysterious Pilostyles is a plant within a plant</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Birds and insects love firewood banksia too. Birds are the primary pollinators of firewood banksia, no doubt attracted to the beautiful pollen-rich flowers. Interestingly, insects visit flowers more often than birds, but they are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00379609">less effective pollinators</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261581/original/file-20190301-22840-uewltc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Carnaby’s cockatoos feeding on firewood banksia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Lauren Svejcar</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The seeds are an important food source for the critically endangered Carnaby’s cockatoo. Hungry cockatoos often visit the firewood banksias that grow on our university campus in Perth’s southern suburbs. We count our lucky stars we get to watch while they squawk and feast, leaving when their tummies are so full that take-off is comical and there’s a mess of woody litter under the trees. It’s a blissful moment before the snarl of commuting traffic or the pull of work, connecting us to nature and to things bigger than ourselves. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=199&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/238283/original/file-20180927-48650-1veiqyi.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><em>Sign up to Beating Around the Bush, a series that profiles native plants: <a href="https://confirmsubscription.com/h/r/9AE707FA51C4AC1B">part gardening column, part dispatches from country, entirely Australian.</a></em>. Read previous instalments <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/beating-around-the-bush-54029">here</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Standish receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Main Roads Western Australia. Rachel is a member of the Ecosystem Science Council and the Rehabilitating Roe 8 Advisory Committee.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lauren Svejcar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Firewood banksia don’t just survive in Western Australia’s sandy plains, they thrive, showing off with vibrant, pink-red flower spikes.Rachel Standish, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, Murdoch UniversityLauren Svejcar, PhD Candidate, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/673782016-12-01T07:29:13Z2016-12-01T07:29:13ZMuseums are returning indigenous human remains but progress on repatriating objects is slow<p>It’s not difficult to imagine how someone might be prevented from paying respects to their ancestors and ensuring proper observances because they’re buried overseas. Thousands of families who’ve lost relatives during the battles of far-off wars know only too well the distress of loved ones resting on foreign soil. </p>
<p>But for countless Australian Aboriginal families, it’s not voluntary service or even conscription that led to their ancestors’ remains ending up overseas. Rather, it’s <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUIndigLawRw/2007/7.html">grave robbing</a>, and the practice of stealing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ bodies to be placed in museums, anatomy collections and cabinets of curiosity. </p>
<p>In some particularly grisly cases, known individuals, such as William Lanne <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2011/02/15/3139548.htm">described as the last full-blooded Tasmanian Aboriginal man</a>, and Yagan, a Noongar man from the western coast of Australia, were mutilated and <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/first_australians/resistance/yagan">rendered anthropological specimens</a>.</p>
<p>It’s hardly surprising then, that over the last half century, there have been growing calls for lost souls like these to be brought back home. The recent repatriation of human remains from museums and university collections in the United Kingdom has resulted in <a href="http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2016/10/15/aboriginal-remains-to-return-from-uk.html">some high-profile events</a>. These include the repatriation of ancestral remains of Ngarrindjeri and other people of South Australia, in a moving <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/indigenous/remains-of-13-aboriginals-will-be-returned-to-australia/news-story/f099cb9d25ca56caaea792f8a8fbeaa5">ceremony</a> conducted by Aboriginal Elder Major Sumner. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-16/new-encounters-conference-at-national-museum-of-australia/7250096">calls by Aboriginal activists</a> and descendants to return objects collected or stolen by colonisers, explorers and others have been <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/repatriation-of-indigenous-artefacts-a-hot-topic-for-museums/news-story/69b375d1357e828c6bb4666e73141c34">met with much less enthusiasm</a>. For the most part, museums have been slow to engage with issues surrounding the return of artefacts, even as they’ve been proactive about returning human remains. </p>
<h2>The Gweagal Shield</h2>
<p>The case of the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/25/the-gweagal-shield-and-the-fight-to-change-the-british-museums-attitude-to-seized-artefacts">Gweagal Shield</a>” and the current quest for its return to Australia by Rodney Kelly, a descendant of the warrior Cooman whose shield it was, highlights some of the issues at play. </p>
<p>The shield is <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-02/rodney-kelly-demands-british-museum-returns-shield/7986862">generally accepted as having been “collected”</a> when the HMS Endeavour visited Botany Bay in 1770, by either Captain James Cook or the naturalist Joseph Banks. It was subsequently given to the British Museum, where it is still held. Its story is much like that of the <a href="http://www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/encounters/encounters_films/videos/bark_etchings">Dja Dja Wrung barks</a>, which were “<a href="https://theconversation.com/dja-dja-wurrung-barks-are-australian-art-the-british-museum-should-return-them-54640">collected</a>” by the settler John Hunter Kerr. </p>
<p>Contemporary Aboriginal activists say they regard the shield, like the bark etchings, as representing an unbroken connection with their ancestors of the 18th and 19th centuries. Their claim for the object’s return is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/10/battle-for-bark-art-indigenous-leaders-hail-breakthrough-in-talks-with-british-museum">based on this connection</a>.</p>
<p>Repatriation of objects is difficult because museums are nothing without their collections. And sending back human remains, many of which are rarely shown, is an easier option. </p>
<p>In the United States, for instance, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act <a href="https://www.nps.gov/nagpra/">(NAGPRA)</a>, which became law over 15 years ago, ensures the return of cultural items to lineal descendants and culturally affiliated Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organisations. According to the Act, cultural items can include human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. </p>
<p>But even under NAGPRA, the repatriation of “collected” cultural materials continues to be <a href="http://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1386&context=ripl">a contested, murky area</a>. </p>
<p>The paths that indigenous objects travelled as they entered into the collections of Britain, Europe and North America are varied. Some of the material in collections were simply stolen, others traded, some were offered for sale, and some were taken in the aftermath of violence, even massacres.</p>
<p>The direct descendants of the Cooman people from whom the Gweagal Shield was stolen <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/sep/25/the-gweagal-shield-and-the-fight-to-change-the-british-museums-attitude-to-seized-artefacts">have said</a>, they do not recognise the British Museum as having title or rights of ownership. </p>
<h2>Object of study</h2>
<p>Australian Aboriginal cultural materials, and indeed Aboriginal people, have traditionally been the objects of study in museums. Most of the great museum collections of Aboriginal artefacts were amassed over a 40-year period from the end of the 19th to the second decade of the 20th century. </p>
<p>During this time, Aboriginal artefacts were collected as curiosities and as sources of information about an exotic other. As a result, museums — particularly museums with ethnographic and anthropological collections — have become the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/09/indigenous-australians-enduring-civilisation-british-museum-repatriation">focus of discontent and action</a> by a range of indigenous communities and individuals.</p>
<p>In response, many Australian museums have employed Indigenous people as expert-advisors or in <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-02/sa-museum-first-aboriginal-curator/7811030">curatorial positions</a>. Unsurprisingly, this has not always improved relations as the problems are structural rather than personal. </p>
<p><a href="http://vuir.vu.edu.au/27473/1/How%20Indigenous%20people%20have%20altered%20the%20function%20of%20the%20Melbourne%20Museum%20Nov%202002.pdf">The source of tension</a> has been – and remains – the manner in which museums are perceived as experts and authorities on indigenous cultures. The collection of cultural materials from all over the world are the spoils of conquests in which indigenous peoples were dehumanised and oppressed; the museum was part of a rationalised, operationalised dispossession. </p>
<p>The British, on arrival in what was to become Australia, understood the world they entered as a place that was completely alien. Everything they encountered, they saw as a new discovery. They were fascinated by Aboriginal people and collected their material culture; often as <a href="https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/6081/releases/MOMA_1984_0017_17.pdf?2010">exemplars of “primitivism”</a> – and even as <a href="http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/management/human_remains.aspx">examples of ancestral humans</a>. </p>
<h2>Resistance and the future</h2>
<p>Some of the arguments against – and resistance to – the return of objects reflect the anxieties museum staff expressed during the debate around the repatriation of the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1883142_1883129_1883001,00.html">Elgin Marbles</a>, after the Greek government formally requested their return from the British Museum in 1983. </p>
<p>The Elgin Marbles are a collection of Classical Greek sculptures that were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon at the Acropolis of Athens. In 1801, Thomas Bruce, seventh Earl of Elgin removed them from the Parthenon and sent them to Britain. They have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/elgin-marbles-parthenon-sculptures-athens-greece-mps-bill-return-reunification-british-museum-a7129801.html">been contested ever since</a>. </p>
<p>Museums as repositories of objects and collections feared that their repatriation would <a href="http://www1.american.edu/TED/greekmarbles.htm">open the floodgates</a> – and their very existence would be threatened. </p>
<p>Still, thanks to technology, change may be in the air. </p>
<p>The recent emergence of online exhibitions and virtual collections has meant that museums have become more accessible. And the ways that the public and communities interact with their collections is significantly different. Museum collections are no longer only accessible to those who can physically visit them. </p>
<p>Many museums are attempting to decolonise. By changing their processes, they are supporting the aspirations of Indigenous people and communities, and hiring Indigenous staff to develop policies and actively repair the damage of the past; as well as working with <a href="https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/christianthompson.html">contemporary artists and artisans</a>.</p>
<p>Another exciting possibility is the emergence of new virtual reality technology and <a href="https://3dprint.com/104091/first-nations-repatriation/">3D printing</a>. Using the latest innovative technologies, we predict museums will have the opportunity to either offer virtual repatriations, or to hold on to the virtual object and repatriate the original. </p>
<p>These are exciting possibilities, but they will not satisfy everyone. </p>
<p>Repatriation of objects differs from returning human remains. Bringing home ancestors and family can be imagined as a human right; the right to decide the fate of our relatives. But the question of repatriating objects is clearly more complex. It needs more debate, and more creative interventions to move beyond the current impasse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/67378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Myles Russell Cook is employed by Museum Victoria.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lynette Russell receives funding from Australian Research Council, and sits on the research committee of the Museum of Victoria. </span></em></p>The question of repatriating objects is clearly more complex than returning human remains. It needs more debate, and more creative interventions to move beyond the current impasse.Myles Russell Cook, Lecturer, Design Anthropology and Indigenous Studies, The University of MelbourneLynette Russell, Professor, Indigenous Studies and History, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199212013-11-07T06:11:28Z2013-11-07T06:11:28ZIt’s Australia v England, in battle over Stubbs masterpieces<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34560/original/fxydh9mj-1383761112.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Early prototype of Skippy</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kangaroo Private Collection Courtesy of Nevill Keating Pictures Ltd</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Not for the first time Britain and Australia are at loggerheads over cultural heritage. At issue this time are two images of genuine historical significance to both countries: Kongouro from New Holland and Portrait of a Large Dog were painted by George Stubbs, one of Britain’s foremost painters of animals, on instruction from Captain Cook’s legendary botanist Joseph Banks. They were painted in England, exhibited in London in 1773 and have never left the country.</p>
<p>The paintings are the first examples of two iconic Australian animals in western art – so obviously Australia has been very keen to acquire them – to “bring them home”.</p>
<p>The pair were in private hands until last year when they were put up for sale and the National Gallery of Australia had agreed to buy them. But the UK government placed an export bar on them to allow the National Maritime Museum time to bid for them – and this week a £1.5m donation from shipping magnate Eyal Ofer enabled the museum to complete the purchase, <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/australia-loses-out-as-george-stubbs-painting-of-kangaroo-stays-in-uk/story-fnii5v71-1226754330676">leading to genuine disappointment from Australia</a>.</p>
<p>This marks the end of a campaign which has seen very different stories told in the two countries, debating which nation’s heritage has the greatest claim. James Cook’s landing in Australia in 1770 changed the political, social and natural world. For the latter, the animals the expedition discovered, described and exported have had profound effects on people’s experience and understanding of zoology.</p>
<h2>Cook’s tour</h2>
<p>While I believe that <a href="http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2012/03/13/kangaroos-cooked-up-by-cook-strange-creatures/">Cook’s descriptions</a> of his party’s early encounters with kangaroos were so constrained by comparisons with European animals as to be ridiculous, it was these encounters that began Europe’s relationship with Australasian wildlife.</p>
<p>A few marsupials in the Americas (opossums) were already known by this point, but a whole continent with entire ecosystems based around them including 6ft kangaroos questions the very nature of mammals. What else was there we didn’t know about? American opossums, with their pouches, would have been interesting discoveries to scientific communities of the day, but they must have been nothing compared to the sensation of the kangaroo in the eyes of the public.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34558/original/85t8qwtv-1383758646.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=649&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Here boy… stay!</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dingo Private Collection Courtesy of Nevill Keating Pictures Ltd</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It was Joseph Banks – the legendary naturalist aboard Cook’s <em>Endeavour</em>, whose name dots the map of Australia and who, the <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/banks-sir-joseph-1737">Australian Dictionary of Biography, notes</a> “has been called ‘the Father of Australia’” who commissioned Stubbs to paint the two creatures on the basis of his descriptions and specimens and sketches by the crew. </p>
<p>When considering the impact of the painting on the European psyche, it was Stubb’s kangaroo that became Europe’s first idea of a kangaroo – what author John Simons described as the <a href="http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/2013/04/19/book-worm-kangaroo-by-john-simons-a-review/">archetype of kangarooness</a>. It would come to be the key influence on representations of kangaroos for decades. The paintings are also emblematic of the age of exploration and the historical threshold of the European occupation of Australia. Nothing was ever the same again. </p>
<p>So both sides had right on their sides when arguing about who should provide a permanent public home for the painting. In Britain, it was felt that they were too important to the country’s heritage to be allowed to leave. While in Australia <a href="http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/australia-loses-out-as-george-stubbs-painting-of-kangaroo-stays-in-uk/story-fnii5v71-1226754330676">it was felt that</a> “the two Stubbs works represent the beginning of Australia’s rich visual culture and the gallery believes they have much greater relevance to the development of Australian imagery and art than to Britain’s maritime history”.</p>
<p>The response by Australian press has at times been <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/looks-like-its-hooroo-to-our-kangaroo-and-dingo-20130402-2h55u.html">peppered with vitriolic language</a>, with a suspicion of accusations of colonialism.</p>
<h2>Coat of arms</h2>
<p>In truth, it’s very difficult to say of the first days of European exploration of Australia what is Australian history and what is British history. That these paintings are part of Australia’s heritage is essentially fleshed out in the National Gallery of Australia’s collections. They hold many subsequent drawings of kangaroos that hark back to Stubbs’ depictions. Indeed it was one of them that inspired Australia’s coat of arms. Is that enough to make Australia the natural home of these paintings?</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34561/original/m4ykpshr-1383761318.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">They love a sunburnt country.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Personally, I can’t think of any artworks more important to the history of British exploration. This is not just in the way they introduced the animals to Europe, but their positioning in time as emblems of discovery. That’s why I think it’s so important that the National Maritime Museum campaign was successful. </p>
<p>This is not, thankfully, a normal issue of restitution or spoilation. There is no controversy about who has owned the paintings and where they were sourced from. The two countries’ claims over how significant the works are to their national heritage are impossible to pick between. There is no doubt that they are key to both. </p>
<p>Why the National Maritime Museum’s acquisition shouldn’t be seen as imperial Britain seizing Australia’s history, as some have suggested, is in the story of the paintings themselves. This is wholly British. But whether Australia or Britain can claim the greater stake in their national heritage is less clear.</p>
<p>In the end I am pleased that the National Maritime Museum has been successful in keeping it in its national collection. But I hope that this is not the end of the conversation between the two countries over how the paintings’ stories can be made accessible to people in both.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19921/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack Ashby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Not for the first time Britain and Australia are at loggerheads over cultural heritage. At issue this time are two images of genuine historical significance to both countries: Kongouro from New Holland…Jack Ashby, Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology, UCL, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.