Towards a new vision for australian politics: seeing, not seeing, and what we can now see

April 2020 marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of British navigator Captain James Cook (1728-1799), and his ship the HMB Endeavour, on Australia’s east coast. The idea and the myth of a ‘great southern land’ held powerful sway over the European colonial imagination for many years, prompting expeditions by rival powers-including the Portuguese, Dutch, and French-that began in the sixteenth century. Commissioned by the Royal Society of London, Endeavour’s intended mission was scientific discovery. However, the Admiralty saw the potential to use the voyage to advance British territorial and trade interests. In July 1768 it issued secret instructions in two parts; the second was sealed, to be opened only by Cook. Endeavour was to sail to Tahiti to observe the Transit of Venus and ‘to proceed to the southward in order to make discovery’.1 Cook’s arrival signalled the beginning of the end of Aboriginal peoples’ unfettered and unquestioned custodianship of the land and waters of this ancient continent.