“COOK’S COTTAGE”

Evening Star, Issue 21725, 21 May 1934, Page 10

“COOK’S COTTAGE”

ns shipment souti; COMMONPLACE BUILDING DEVOID OF CHARM If the publicity attendant upon the arrival in • Melbourne of the cottage which for a time housed Captain James Cook does nothing else, it should remove the impression that he discovered Australia, says a writer in the ‘ Manchestcr Guardian.’ That popular error was echoed, by the way, by one of the speakers at the lunch which was given recently on board the Port Dunedin to mark the loading of the cottage in boxed sections and barrelled fragments for its journey to the Commonwealth, complete with the plaster of Paris mould of a sandstone block engraved “ J. and C. Cook, 1755.” One speculates as to how that cottage will look when re-erected in the attractive Ifitzroy Gardens, its future home. It is a commonplace little building, completely devoid of architectural charm; and it is to be hoped that the symbolism of its presence will be compensation for .any other shortcomings. When he was a boy the great circumnavigator whose parents occupied it spent’ much of his time’scaring crows from the crops, and the modesty of that occupation fits very well with the unobtrusiveness of the cottage. It is the kind of dwelling (except that pantiles, not thatch, furnished .the material of its roof) which Gray allotted to' “ the rude forefathers of the hamlet ” in his Elegy before he laid them .in their narrow cells for ever; and it is, after all, an inspiring thought that from such humble surroundings came the, man who charted the St. Lawrence for Wolfe before he took Quebec, and did more to map th(T Pacific and to make Australia known to the contemporary world than did any other Englishman. He did not discover Australia. but, he took possession’ of it for the British Crown, in spite of the fact that his name does not appear in the index of the Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia; and to him is due, more than to anyone else, the incorporation of .Australia and New Zealand in the King’s dominions. . ANNEXING A CONTINENT. James Cook, the sou of a field labourer, was born iu a mud hut (not the building which is being shipped to Australia to embellish the proceedings in ehuueotion with the Melbourne centenary) iit Alarton, in Yorkshire, in 1728. This lint’ was- pulled down 140 years ago. Having served ’>.as apprentice in a coal boat, Cook joined the Navy as an able seaman at 27 years of age. In 1768 he was commissioned as a lieutenant to command 'the Endeavour,, in which he observed the transit of Venus at Tahiti. In 1769 he took possession of the North island 'of. New Zealand, and in. 1770-of the South Island, haying circumnavigated the coasts of both. “ North-west of Us;” said the Alaoris, is Ulimaroa.” That was Australia, whose codst Cook sighted at Cape Everard, near Cape. Howe, the point at which- the border line between New South Wales and Victoria now begins, on April 4 ,1770. He landed at Botany Bay rather more than three weeks later. • An obelisk at Kurnell, New South Wales, now marks the spot. Here he buried' a seaman—the first Briton whose remains rest iu Australian soil; Sailing north and exploring as he went the coasts of New South Wales and Queensland, he stranded his barque, the Endeavour, at what is now Cooktown, but floated off after jettisoning stores and some of his guns. Having established the fact that Australia and New. Guinea were-separate islands, Cook, bin August 23, 1770, took possession- of the eastern coast of the continent in . the name ’of George 111. This ceremony was confirmed, and extended to include Tasmania, by.. Governor Phillip when lie landed on the shores of Port Jackson in 1788. Noble bronze plaques on the outer wall of the Church of St. Mildred, Bread street, Xondon, E.C., were recently installed to commemorate this event. It was in- Bread street that Phillip was born. HIS LAST VOYAGE, After a. further expedition to New Zealand and a circumnavigation of the other extremity of the globe Cook made his last voyage.in 1776, visiting North America and again Hawaii. Here the natives, who had at first accorded him divine honours, stabbed him with an iron knife made by himself in the image of their wooden ones, and handed by - him. to his murderer as a present. The cottage taken aboard the Port Dunedin was bought for £BOO as the result of the enterprise of Mr Richard Linton, .the Agent-General for Victoria, from its owners, Mr and Mrs Dixon, of Great Ayton. Here it had been erected by Captain Cook’s father- in 1755. Bids had been made for: it in the United States, but Mr and Mrs Dixon patriotically stipulated that it should not: be taken outside the British Empire. The land on which it stood was transferred to the Middlesborough Council, as a people’s park, and hero will be erected by the Victorian Government- a replica of the obelisk of native granite now conimemoratively standing on Cape Everard. The material for the Great Ayton monument was quarried in the.virgin bush, and lowered down a vast cliff to, a naval barge tossing on the waters below. After the cottage had been carefuliv demolished for removal its component parts were encased in a thousand stout wooden boxes and barrels, weighing in all 150 , tons, each being marked “ Cook’s Cottage, Australia.” These were taken by goods train to Hull docks on February 20, and on February 23 were slung aboard the Commonwealth and Dominion liner Port Dunedin, which sailed for Australia via London.