Leaving for Port Jackson; the First Fleet's abandonment of Botany Bay

Abstract

On the morning of 28 April 1770, James Cook and his crew sailed into Botany Bay in the bark Endeavour, becoming the first Europeans to set foot on the east coast of Australia (Cook, 1955, 304-312). The event itself had negligible impact on the environment or on the peoples that occupied the territory. Its broader consequences, however, were massive. Perhaps the most significant of these was that the area was recommended as the site of the colony that Britain hoped to establish, inter alia, to house its overflowing gaol population 2, making Botany Bay the focus of the great colonial experiment that led to the transformation of New Holland into the modern continent-state of Australia.