Cooktown, Queensland
Cooktown is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. Both the town and Mount Cook which rises up behind the town were named after James Cook.
Cooktown is one of the few large towns in the Cape York Peninsula and was founded on 25 October 1873 as a supply port for the goldfields along the Palmer River. It was called "Cook's Town" until 1 June 1874.
In the, the locality of Cooktown had a population of 2,746 people.
Geography
Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, where it enters the Coral Sea on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs in 1770. The town was named after Cook.The rugged Mount Cook was named by Phillip Parker King on 27 June 1818, after James Cook. It forms a backdrop to the town and is now part of the Mount Cook National Park.
The area around Cooktown is unusually rich in biodiversity, being close to three major ecozones. Hence, it contains a large proportion of the 3,000 plant species, and the more than 500 terrestrial vertebrates, recorded on Cape York Peninsula. The region contains many rare or unusual species that are of great interest to botanists and zoologists.
History
Aboriginal history
is an Australian Aboriginal language of Hope Vale and the Cooktown area. The language region includes the local government area of the Aboriginal Shire of Hope Vale and the Shire of Cook, particularly the localities of Cape Bedford, Battle Camp and sections of the Normanby River and Annan River.In the local Guugu Yimithirr language the name for the region is Gangaar, which means " Rock Crystals". Quartz crystals were used in various Aboriginal ceremonies across the continent and are found in the vicinity; they were traded from the Cooktown region at least as far as south.
Yalanji '' is an Australian Aboriginal language of Far North Queensland. The traditional language region is Mossman River in the south to the Annan River in the north, bordered by the Pacific Ocean in the east and extending inland to west of Mount Mulgrave. This includes the local government boundaries of the Shire of Douglas, the Shire of Cook and the Aboriginal Shire of Wujal Wujal and the towns and localities of Cooktown, Mossman, Daintree, Cape Tribulation and Wujal Wujal. It includes the head of the Palmer River, the Bloomfield River, China Camp, Maytown, and Palmerville.
Arrival of Captain Cook
The site of modern Cooktown was the meeting place of two vastly different cultures when, in June 1770, the local Aboriginal Guugu Yimithirr tribe cautiously watched the crippled sailing ship – His Majesty's Bark Endeavour – limp up the coast seeking a safe harbour after sustaining serious damage to its wooden hull on the Endeavour Reef, south of Cooktown. The Guugu Yimithirr people saw the Endeavour beach in the calm waters near the mouth of their river, which they called "Wahalumbaal".The captain of the Endeavour, Lieutenant James Cook, wrote: "... it was happy for us that a place of refuge was at hand; for we soon found that the ship would not work, and it is remarkable that in the whole course of our voyage we had seen no place that our present circumstances could have afforded us the same relief".
The Endeavour crew spent seven weeks on the site of present-day Cooktown, repairing their ship, replenishing food and water supplies, and caring for their sick.The scientist Joseph Banks and Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander, who accompanied Cook on the expedition, took advantage of the 7-week stay to collect, preserve and document over 200 new species of plants, which formed the vast majority of the collection brought back to England from Australia. The young artist Sydney Parkinson illustrated the specimens and he was the first British artist to portray Aboriginal people from direct observation. The illustrations were later published as the famous Banks' Florilegium.
After some weeks, Joseph Banks met and spoke with the local people, recording about 50 Guugu Yimithirr words, including the name of the intriguing animal the natives called gangurru. Cook recorded the local name as "Kangooroo, or Kanguru".
The first recorded sighting of kangaroos by Europeans was on Grassy Hill, which rises above the place where the ship was beached. Cook climbed this hill to work out a safe passage for the Endeavour to sail through the surrounding reefs, after it was repaired.
"The visit on the 19th of July 1770 ended in a skirmish after Cook refused to share the turtles he kept on the Endeavour with the local inhabitants. They set fire to the grass around Cook’s camp twice, burning the area and killing a suckling pig. After Cook wounded one of the men with a musket, they ran away. Cook, Banks and some others followed them and caught up with them on a rocky bar near Furneaux Street, which is now known as Reconciliation Rocks. A "little old man" appeared from the group of Indigenous Australians and they were reconciled. This was an important historic event as it is believed that this is the first recorded reconciliation between Europeans and Indigenous Australians ever".
Cook named the river the "Endeavour" after his ship, and, as they sailed north, he hoisted the flag known as the "Queen Anne Jack" and claimed possession of the whole eastern coast of Australia for Britain. He named Cape York Peninsula after the then-Duke of York and Albany.
In 1969 an American-sponsored expedition discovered six of Cook's iron cannons, as well as iron ballast from his ship using a magnetometer. These artifacts are now in various museums around the world.
Expedition of Phillip Parker King
The next recorded European expedition to the area was in 1819, when Captain Phillip Parker King on board HMS Mermaid, visited the Endeavour River during his surveying voyage around Australia. They camped for two weeks at the mouth of the river in order to construct a new dinghy, and had mostly friendly interactions with the local Aboriginal people until an argument occurred over the possession of clothes. Spears and musket-fire were exchanged but no injuries were sustained. A botanist, Allan Cunningham, accompanied King on this journey and collected numerous botanical specimens for the British Museum and Kew Gardens.King returned again to the region in 1820 as part of the same surveying expedition and this time collated a small record of the local Aboriginal language. He established that Captain Cook was incorrect in the interpretation of the word kangaroo, with King noting that menuah was the local name for the large macropod. Large outrigger canoes made by the resident Aboriginal people were also noted.
Port for the Palmer River Goldfields
In 1872, William Hann discovered gold in the Palmer River, about inland from the Endeavour River. His findings were reported to James Venture Mulligan who led an expedition to the Palmer River in 1873. Mulligan's expedition found quantities of alluvial gold and thus began the gold rush that was to bring prospectors from all over the world. The Queensland government responded quickly to Mulligan's reports, and dispatched Archibald Campbell MacMillan to lead a party in establishing a port on the Endeavour River and a road from there to the goldfields. MacMillan arrived at the river on 25 October 1873 on board the vessel Leichhardt with an entourage of around seventy other government men and prospectors. A new township was immediately established on the southern bank of the river which was later officially gazetted under the name of Cooktown. A local Aboriginal man who took a surveying flag while the area was being initially charted was shot at with a barrage of gunfire from both colonists aboard the Leichhardt and from Native Police under the command of Robert Arthur Johnstone. The man managed to survive unharmed.MacMillan soon after led an expedition of 110 diggers, police and officials to blaze a trail from Cooktown to the Palmer River Goldfields. They "shot a lot" and "hunted" Aboriginal people along the way at the Normanby River, Kennedy River, Kavanaugh Creek, St George River and at Battle Camp. At Battle Camp, a large group of Aboriginal men approached MacMillan's camp yelling a war cry, but were forced back by gunfire, some of whom fell. The expedition members then pursued them to a lagoon where many more were shot. Two Aboriginal women and three children were brought back to the camp by the diggers after one of the shootings, where they had in their possession a number of items from a digger who was supposed killed. A later government enquiry into the events found that the expedition members had acted in self defence and were justified in their actions.
The Palmer River Goldfields and its centre, Maytown grew quickly, the recorded output of gold from 1873 to 1890 was over half a million ounces. Cooktown was the port through which this gold was exported and supplies for the goldfields brought in. Word of the gold quickly spread, and Cooktown was soon thriving, as prospectors arrived from around the world. Cooktown Post Office opened on 1 January 1874.
Township of Cooktown
Population estimates vary widely, but there were probably around 7,000 people in the area and about 4,000 permanent residents in the town by 1880. At that time, Cooktown boasted a large number of hotels and guest houses. There were 47 licensed pubs within the town boundaries in 1874 although this number had dropped to 27 by the beginning of 1880. There were also a number of illegal grog shops and several brothels. There were bakeries, a brewery and a soft drinks factory, dressmakers and milliners, a brickworks, a cabinetmaker, and two newspapers.The port of Cooktown served the nearby goldfields and, during the goldrush of the 1870s, a Chinese community many thousands strong grew up in the goldfields and in the town itself. The Chinese played an important role in the early days of Cooktown. They came originally as prospectors, but many established market gardens, supplying the town and the goldfields with fruit, vegetables and rice, while others opened shops.
However, largely through cultural misunderstandings, conflict broke out between the Aboriginal people and the new settlers, and the diggers. The Cooktown Herald, 8 December 1875, reported: "The natives wholly ignorant of the terrible firepower of fire-arms, and confiding in their numbers, showed a ferocity and daring wholly unexpected and unsurpassed. Grasping the very muzzles of the rifles they attempted to wrest them from the hands of the whites, standing to be shot down, rather than yield an inch...." It was an unequal struggle. Whole tribes were wiped out as European settlement spread over Cape York Peninsula.
In 1887, a Chinese Investigation Commission to South-East Asia arrived in Cooktown from Canton to investigate the social conditions of Chinese living in the colonies and to establish consulates in them. The visit went well, General Wong Yung Ho was pleased with what they had found, and cheers were exchanged between the Commission members and local residents as they left on 7 August 1887.
Transport was an ongoing problem for the new settlers. Getting supplies and people to the goldfields often took three weeks. After every wet season the tracks and bridges had to be remade. A railway line from Cooktown to Maytown, was planned, but it took five years to get the to Laura – and that is where it stopped. By that time the gold was petering out, so the Queensland Government refused further funding for the venture.
In spite of this, the train proved to be a lifeline for the Peninsula people connecting the hinterland to Cooktown, from where one could catch a boat to Cairns and other southern ports. The line was closed in 1961 after the Peninsula Development Road was built connecting Cooktown and other Peninsula communities with Cairns and the Atherton Tableland to the south.
The Cooktown Parish of the Roman Catholic Church was established in 1874 with the Cooktown becoming the seat of the Vicariate Apostolic of Cooktown in 1877.
Cooktown State School opened on 25 January 1875. On 19 January 1885, it was split into Cooktown Boys State School and Cooktown Girls and Infants State School. In January 1921, the two schools were amalgamated to become Cooktown State School again.
Cooktown's magnificent Botanic Garden of was established near the town in 1878. Much work was done in the early stages – with wells sunk, water reticulated, garden beds enclosed, stone-lined paths, stone-pitched pools and footbridges made, and lawns, trees and shrubs planted. Although the gardens fell into disrepair, in recent years they have been expanded and are a popular destination for botanists and nature lovers. Most of the early stonework has been restored, and beautiful walking tracks lead the visitor through the Botanic Garden to the magnificent beaches at Finch Bay and Cherry Tree Bay.
In 1881, a bridge over the Endeavour River was completed, which opened up the richer pastoral lands of the Endeavour and McIvor River valleys. Tin was found in the Annan River area, south of Cooktown, in 1884.
In 1886, Lutheran missionaries came to Cooktown to establish a secure place for the Aboriginal people who were living in abominable conditions on the edge of the town. Missions were established at Elim on the beach, and Wujal Wujal, near the mouth of the Bloomfield River. Also in 1888, five Irish nuns from the Sisters of Mercy Order arrived in Cooktown and established a Catholic convent school. The original building is now used as the Cooktown Museum.
In 1893 the town was described as follows:
With the gold rush over, the number of people living in the area started dwindling. Two major fires struck Cooktown – in 1875 and, again, in 1919 when whole blocks of buildings in the main street were burned to the ground. A major cyclone in 1907 added to the destruction.
In February 1908, a new St Mary's Catholic Church was opened and dedicated by Bishop Murray to replace the one destroyed in the cyclone.