COOK’S TOUR TRUTH
IT was a voyage that changed our nation, the arrival 250 years ago of Captain James Cook — and now the Australian National Maritime Museum has launched an initiative that it hopes will change the nation again.
The program is aimed at commemorating Cook’s voyage to Australia as well as marking the impact on Australia’s indigenous peoples.
Through a series of exhibitions around the country, educational projects and outreach events, the program, Encounter 2020, will mark the anniversary of Cook’s arrival in Botany Bay before he went on to chart the east coast of Australia.
Central to it will be the lasting impact it had on Australia’s First Peoples.
Cook, however, remains highly contentious in parts of the indigenous community.
Speaking at the Maritime Museum yesterday Minister for Indigenous People Ken Wyatt, said: “Cook’s visit in 1770 is not viewed by all Australians in the same way.
“For some, it represents a unique and important scientific journey of discovery and, for some, the legacy of the voyage symbolises loss of country, language and culture.
“It is important that messages reflect both perspectives — the view from the ship and the view from the shore.
“Both are not a contested history — tory.
“Truth telling to me is not a contest. It is an acceptance that there can be shared stories.
“Healing that results from acts of truth-telling cannot be quantified … and can lead to significant moments of reconciliation,” he said.
As part of the initiative, the Sydney-based replica of HMS Endeavour will undertake a circumnavigation of Australia.
It will be accompanied by a travelling exhibition, which will set up in each of the 26 ports the ship visits. It will be in Townsville from June 20-25 next year.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher passed on the it is a shared hisapologies of the Prime Minister, who had been due to launch the program. Mr Fletcher said the PM was committed to the project and was “determined to bring Australians together including through a shared recognition of important milestones in our history, including, of course, a shared reflection on the meaning of those milestones for both indigenous Australians and those more recently arrived”.
“We’ve long recognised and given up the idea that Cook discovered Australia, that it is a flawed idea. He did not. Our country has a 60,000 year human history.”
Filmmaker Alison Page told the audience she was “thrilled” by the program
“As part of the indigenous community at Botany Bay I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of what I believe could be one of the most important and challenging moments in Australia’s history, because it’s going to be the first time that we all come together as a whole nation to learn our true history.
“Until now we have primarily looked at Cook’s voyage from one point of view and now, for the first time, we are adding the stories of Australia’s first people to that narrative.”
“With this 250th commemoration we’ve got the chance to address that and find a genuine narrative balance between the ship and the shore,” she said.