Cook’s Magnetic discovery
A look back at significant moments in the North’s history
“THE East point I named Cape Cleveland, and the West, Magnetical Head or Island, as it had much the appearance of an Island; and the Compass did not traverse well when near it.”
With that entry on June 6, 1770 – 250 years ago today – Captain James Cook became the first European to document Magnetic Island and also landmarks that today we know as Cape Cleveland and Castle Hill.
Even an explorer as accomplished as Cook, who is today regarded as one of the greatest explorers in human history, was struck by the features of Magnetic Island and the surrounding landscape.
“And the whole appeared to have the most rugged, rocky, and barren Surface of any we have yet seen,” Cook said.
“However, it is not without inhabitants, as we saw smoke in several places in the bottom of the bay.
“The Northernmost land we had in sight at this time bore North-west; this we took to be an Island or Islands, for we could not trace the Main land farther than West by North.”
Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia on his first voyage of the Pacific, which was intended to observe and record the transit of Venus across the Sun, which would help determine the distance of the Earth from the Sun.
The mission ended in disappointment, but Cook was then instructed to open sealed orders from the British Admiralty to search for the fabled southern continent of Terra Australis.
Despite what many Australian schoolchildren once learned in history class, Cook was not the first person to discover Australia.
That claim goes to the country’s first inhabitants, who may have arrived on Australian shores 70,000 years ago or earlier, and even then it was the Dutch ship Duyfken, captained by William Janzoon, that made the first documented landing of Europeans in Australia.
But it was Cook’s “discovery” of Australia that was to shape the continent’s future forever.
On the HMS Endeavour with Cook was his patron and famed botanist Joseph Banks, who also recorded his observations of Magnetic Island and the Townsville region as the small but sturdy ship sailed past.
“Land made in Barren rocky capes; one in particular which we were abreast of in the morn appeared much like Cape Roxent,” Banks wrote.
“At noon 3 fires upon it. Many Cuttle bones, Some sea weed and 2 or 3 Sea snakes were seen.
“In the evening it fell quite calm and I went out in the small Boat and shot nectris nugax [possibly a petrel or shearwater] but saw nothing remarkable on the water; the weather most sultry hot in an open boat.”
The next day Banks recorded what appears to be a landing of one of the islands in the Palm Island group.
“At noon the Islands had mended their appearance and people were seen upon them; the Main as barren as ever with several fires upon it, one vastly large,” he wrote.
“After dinner an appearance very much like Cocoa nut trees tempted us to hoist out a boat and go ashore, where we found our supposed Coconut trees to be no more than bad Cabbage trees.
“The Country about them was very stoney and barren and it was almost dark when we got ashore.
“We made a shift however to gather 14 or 15 new plants after which we repaird to our boats, but scarce were they put off from the shore when an Indian came very near it and shouted to us very loud.
“It was so dark that we could not see him, we however turnd towards the shore by way of seeing what he wanted with us, but he I suppose ran away or hid himself immediately for we could not get a sight of him.”
The Endeavour continued on its way up the coast, and despite having a brush with death after running on to a reef near Cooktown on June 11, Cook finished his voyage and completed two more voyages of discovery before being killed by natives in Hawaii in 1779.
His sightings and recordings of Australia led to the British establishing their colony at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788, and 88 years after Cook’s sighting of Magnetic Island and Cleveland Bay, the first party of European settlers arrived in the Townsville area.