(gentle music)
— This show is so significant because it’s the first time
that Australians have had an opportunity to hear
I guess the two sides of this story.
In a way the view from the ship coming out of Cook’s journal
and Banks’s journal and the view from the shore,
from the descendants of those people,
who were on the coast in 1770.
We knew that visitors probably had a sense
that they already knew the story,
so we had to find a way that we could introduce
something new into the story, and present it in a way
that they might not have expected,
but also in a way that they can still understand
and so the device that we came up with,
was to literally create the east coast of Australia.
When you enter the exhibition,
the first thing that will strike you,
are these recreation of three water spouts
which the voyagers on the ‘Endeavour’ experienced
soon after they saw land at Point Hicks.
For people at Point Hicks they were a warning
of things to come.
Then as you progress through the space,
you’ll literally follow, the coast line of eastern Australia
and dotted along on that coastline,
are stories from nine communities we’ve worked with.
All the way from Point Hicks through Kamay (Botany Bay),
through 1770, through Waalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River)
and finally up to Possession Island at the tip of Cape York.
In this the 250th year of Cook’s voyage
up the coast of Australia, it was an extraordinary moment
in the history of this landscape.
We thought what a great opportunity to tell
one of the big stories in Australia’s history.
But clearly it’s a story where we need to work
with Indigenous communities about getting
their perspectives on that story
and this is really the first time,
that Australians have had the opportunity to hear
many of those stories.
And in each of the nine locations that we worked,
there’s a slightly different story about what happened
in 1770, but also the kind of later history
that people connect back to that moment in our past.
The Wujal Wujal driftwood pieces we’ve got in the show
I think are one of the real highlights.
My curatorial colleague, Shona Coyne,
had the opportunity to work with the artists
at Wujal Wujal.
— What’s on display here is a beautiful
collection of artworks that artists from the
Wujal Wujal community created.
Wujal Wujal community are connected
to the ‘Endeavour’ story because as we know,
the ‘Endeavour’ voyage sailed up the east coast
of Australia in 1770 and part of that journey,
the ship collided with the Great Barrier Reef in one point
and this reef is actually probably about
10 kilometres off the shore of Weary Bay
which is right opposite Wujal Wujal.
As you can see here, there’s a whole range of topics.
Everything from shield designs that we have over here,
we’ve got scenes from where the ship
were throwing over barrels of grog,
and also this beautiful piece over here,
which is actually one of my favourite pieces
where it’s a coral branch that would have broken off
from the reef at the time.
We are just so delighted that we got a chance
to work with the Bana Yirriji Art Centre
and the artists that are there.
Through the workshop we’ve manage to acquire
48 of their artworks
and it’s such a significant body of work.
Not only does it reflect their perspectives
on the ‘Endeavour’ voyage,
but it’s also a great record of the amazing cultural
and botanical knowledge that this community holds.
— All of the objects in the show have great stories.
One in particular for me holds both the Indigenous
and the non-Indigenous side of that story.
The shield made by an unknown Indigenous maker
at Kamay (Botany Bay) in the 1930s is a terrific object.
It features the landing of Cook.
It also features the opening of the Harbour Bridge
in the 1930s and it also features
some of the plants and animals that are distinctive
to the Botany Bay region,
and in representing all three of those sides of the story,
it gives us something very special.
There are so many objects in the exhibition
that take us back to those moments in 1770
and link us to the people who are on that ship.
My colleague Michelle Hetherington
has picked out a few to tell you about.
— I’m standing next to one of six
quarter-pounder cannon that were thrown overboard
from HMB ‘Endeavour’ on the evening of June the 11th 1770.
The six cannon were those that were on deck
when the ship ground on the Great Barrier Reef.
It was a terrible, terrible moment
for people on board the ship
but the cannon are like time capsules.
They went overboard, they were covered
with over a metre of coral
by the time they were rediscovered
one year short of 200 years from the event.
This is Captain Cook’s handwritten journal
of his voyage in the ‘Endeavour’ from 1768 to 1771.
This is again another one of those objects
that connect you to Australian histories so beautifully.
Over 250 years old,
when it was first started to be written in,
it bears the impress of the hand
of the person who wrote it, who’s long dead,
but who lives still in the words that remain on the page.
— In 2020 it being the 250th anniversary
of that moment in 1770, Australians are more open
to reconsidering how we understand what went on in 1770
and its implications today.
So I think the exhibition we’ve done here,
there’s an opportunity for it
to influence Australians’ understanding
of their past going forward.
So in that sense I think it is
a really significant show
and perhaps one of the most important ones
we’ve done in our short history.
I feel really humble about the stories that
communities have shared with us,
individuals and communities have shared with us,
but I also feel proud that I think we’ve done
justice to those stories and that we’ve told
their stories in keeping with the way
they would of wanted them told,
and I feel really good that the culmination
of all those stories really affects our visitors
and it can change the way people think about
what Australia is, and what it can be.