The Australian National Maritime Museum will mark Reconciliation Week 2025 with an installation highlighting what is now considered one of the first acts of reconciliation between Europeans and First Nations people.
Reconciliation Week 2025 running from May 27 to June 3, fosters understanding and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, marking key milestones like the 1967 referendum and the Mabo decision. Its theme emphasises unity and collaboration for reconciliation.
The Museum will have a special installation on the Endeavour of turtle shells hand painted by Torres Strait artist Gail Mabo.
The Guugu Yimithirr people encounter Lt Cook in 1770
On June 11th, 1770, Lieutenant James Cook's ship, the Endeavour, ran aground on a coral reef in Far North Queensland. This happened in a part of the Sea Country that the Guugu Yimithirr people have ancestral kinship responsibility to oversee. The reef is also a part of the traditional Sea Country of several Eastern Yalanji Aboriginal clans, including the Wyamburr, Yuki Baja-Muliku, Kuku Bididji, Kuku Yalanji, and Kuku Nyungkul.
After a few weeks of tentative approaches, some members of the Wyamburr clan of the Guugu Yimithirr people who had been invited onboard the HM Bark Endeavour saw that the crew had brought many turtles onto the ship's deck to eat. These turtles had been taken from a sacred breeding ground without the Guugu Yimithirr's permission, a punishable offence according to local law.
On a separate occasion, after the transgression of taking the turtles, Cooktown Historian and Deputy Chair of the UMI Arts centre, Aunty Alberta Hornsby has spoken of how the Guugu Yimithirr set fire to the grasslands surrounding the crew's campsite (a regular cultural maintenance practice to increase food for kangaroo, and also a practice to cleanse the sacred land), Lt. Cook misread the situation and overreacted by firing his musket, wounding one of the Guugu Yimithirr. This was a further violation, as shedding blood on this ground was considered sacrilegious.
Several Guugu Yimithirr men visited Cook and his crew to try to make peace. Cook's journals record a community elder known as Yabaarrigu, who symbolically held out a spear with a broken tip as a symbol of peace. Despite the language barrier, the gesture was understood and welcomed by Cook and his crew.
The site where this occurred in present day Cooktown is known as Reconciliation Rocks.
This encounter between the crew of the Endeavour and the Guugu Yimithirr can be seen from a modern perspective to have been one of the first acts of reconciliation on Australian soil. It was one of the earliest recorded examples of successful communication and mutual respect and diplomacy between First Nations people and European explorers.
Reconciliation Rocks in Cooktown is today still maintained by local community a symbol of cross-cultural dialogue, reflection, and a step towards truth-telling and healing in Australia's colonial history.
Cook and his crew eventually managed to refloat Endeavour. After spending six weeks carrying out repairs at Waalumbaal Birri (Endeavour River), they continued their voyage to Batavia (present-day Jakarta).
Shells on the deck of the Endeavour
The 12-turtle shells placed around the Endeavour's deck were made by artist Gail Mabo, Piadram language group and clan of Mer (Murray Island), the easternmost island of the Torres Strait Archipelago. They are made from fibreglass, as actual turtles these sizes are a protected species.
Gail is the daughter of land rights activist Eddie Mabo, in 2020 and this work was commissioned as part of a national truth telling project by the Australian National Maritime Museum to mark the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the Endeavour voyage across the east coast of Australia.
'The shells and interpretation of these events in 1770 will be on the Endeavour for the week providing an opportunity for reflection and discussion about reconciliation,' said Matt Poll the Manager of Indigenous Programs at the museum.
'It provides an opportunity to delve deeper into this important maritime First Contact story including the cultural importance of turtles to Indigenous communities.'
