Twelve Turtles and a Broken Spear
A group of women in Far North Queensland are re-examining Australia’s first recorded act of reconciliation, and taking control of the narrative.
By Sean Davey
Photographs by Kenton/Davey (Oculi)
As the sun sets over Walambaal Birri (known as the Endeavour River) and moves slowly towards the distant mountainous horizon, a large crowd looks west into its glare. Most are locals from far north Queensland who have gathered to watch the annual Cooktown reenactment of the first recorded act of reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and Captain Cook 251 years ago.
The only face not looking west is that of Cook himself, whose life-sized sculpture faces north across the river to the Indigenous community of Hope Vale on Guugu Yimithirr country. Children climb the sculpture to get a better vantage point, seemingly unaware of its significance and perhaps too the gravitas of the story being told in front of them.
Sha-lane Gibson and her grandmother Erica Deeral are direct descendants of a Guugu Yimithirr man who is celebrated as the first person to have made peace with Cook and his crew in 1770.
‘We call him “the little old man” but in fact he was a warrior. He had stature and he had a title in our clan’, says Gibson with a strong voice.
After the HMS Endeavour ran aground near Cape Tribulation in June 1770, the ship limped north, eventually finding safety in the mouth of the Walambaal birri. Members of the Gamaay and Waymburr clans (communities on the north and south sides of the river) made six successful attempts to engage the British, who had set up camp on Waymburr, the site of modern day Cooktown. These encounters were peaceful as recorded by Cook and his botanist, 27 year old Joseph Banks.
Cook and his crew were fortunate to have set ashore on Waymburr, a revered place for surrounding Indigenous clans. The area held special significance for reconciling tribal differences and was considered a sacred place where pregnant women came to give birth.
Gibson suggests a different outcome would have awaited Cook if he had stepped ashore elsewhere, a fate that would eventually bestow the Englishman in Hawaii nine years later.
‘(Waymburr) was a meeting place and a mutual place for surrounding clans. The lore of this land was that no blood was to be shed here. So when Captain Cook’s men came in, that’s what the (local people) stuck by. If he was to have landed over at Gamaay, it would have been a completely different story. He would have got speared instantly.’
Things did turn violent however when two aboriginal men were invited onto the Endeavour as it was undergoing repairs. Onboard they saw twelve large turtles, each weighing around 100 kilograms, caught for food on the next leg of the ship’s northbound voyage. Unaware of the area’s cultural significance and that it was mating season, Cook had inadvertently broken cultural lore by capturing more turtles than was deemed necessary. Despite protests, he refused to release them.
‘Cook thought the local men were being selfish and wanted the turtles for themselves’, says Gibson.
‘It wasn’t that at all. They were trying to release them back into the ocean.’
A scuffle broke out between the groups leading to an Indigenous man being shot in the leg. For the first time, blood had been spilled in anger on the sacred ground of Waymburr, ensuing a stalemate that threatened relations between the locals and the British. That is, until the “little old man” appeared from the mangroves, the tip of his spear broken as a sign of peace towards the foreigners.
Erica Deeral is a Gamaay elder and traditional land owner of Waymbuurr and Gamaay countries north of the river. As dusk envelopes the sky around us, she stands proudly between her niece Rebecca Powell and granddaughter Sha-lane. This is the exact site of where peace was first offered to white man. Today it is called Reconciliation Rocks and was, this year in May, placed on the Queensland State Heritage Register.
Deeral is named on a 1997 Native Title Determination for this region in the High Court of Australia, and has long advocated for Indigenous rights in Cape York. Her father (the late) Eric Deeral, was Queensland’s first Indigenous State MP, and her lifelong inspiration.
‘My father was the first one who approached the Cooktown Re-enactment Society and told them that this is the (real) story.
‘This story is not about Captain Cook. It’s about the little old man being strong in his values and having the strength within him to protect his people with reconciliation.’
Deeral continues her father’s legacy, maintaining the story be told from an Indigenous perspective in the annual Cooktown re-enactment, which she herself participates in.
Another voice driving Indigenous ownership of Cooktown’s reconciliation story is local historian Alberta Hornsby. It is Hornsby’s voice on the PA system narrating the re-enactment.
‘The process of reconciliation had been practiced here on this country for for thousands of years (before Cook’s arrival). This was (always) a site of reconciliation between Indigenous people, and it wasn’t the only place that this happened in Guugu Yimithirr country. We know of several places that had the same laws.
‘Places where people from surrounding clans were able to come and reconcile, settle their disputes, practice their ceremonies and initiations, where women came to give birth. And were no blood was to be spilled.’
Focusing on James Cook’s journals was a hard place for Hornsby to start looking at her own history, but that is in fact where she found the origins of her peoples’ story.
’I wasn’t too sure about (telling) the Cook story because it was such a controversial subject. My grandfather had told us that we were half-caste because Captain Cook and his men raped all our women up here, but I found out that was not true. With my cousins Harold Ludwick and Russell Gibson, we decided that without being traitors to our mob, it was the Cook journals in which we could find our legacy.
‘By reading the journals, we were able to understand and rebuild our story as part of that history, which we didn’t know about, and which most of Australia didn’t know about.
‘I love what I do because this is my home. My grandfather’s estate is next door to Waymburr.’
In more recent times, Indigenous Australians have continued to build relationships with people from other cultures who settled on their land, even when they were mistreated.
‘My father and my grandparents built relationships with the old pioneers here’, says Hornsby.
‘My father often spoke about their little fights for equality when they were segregated on stations.
‘As stockmen, they always got the leftovers and my father was always asking why he couldn’t have sauce with his corned beef (like the white men received). It was was frowned on by his brothers and by the older people, but he was standing up for himself. There’s lots of little stories like that.’
It is only over the past eight years or so that the emphasis of this story has been on the Indigenous people who welcomed the British. For Hornsby, it is important that younger generations of Australians are told the story from an Indigenous viewpoint.
‘We have the responsibility of telling that story. We have to make sure that we have the full story and that we’re all working collectively and not in isolation. I’m getting on in years and just going around giving talks doesn’t work.’
Studying Cook’s journals and tracing the history of early Indigenous cultural practices has also given Hornsby a greater sense of her own identity.
‘We were sent away to be assimilated into white society and I was part of that. We had to work out who we were and where we fit in. I’m 66 years old and I’ve only gained that confidence recently.
‘When I read (the journals) it was such a fantastic part of this history. The story is so important to the to the narrative of the full story of Australia as it exists today.’
Sha-lane Gibson agrees that this story is important to modern day Australia.
‘When we talk about reconciliation and trying to merge two cultures, Indigenous and non Indigenous, that first record of active reconciliation was initiated by an Indigenous man. And I see that we, Indigenous Australians, will keep initiating it.
‘When is someone going to pick up the baton and meet us halfway? We were initiating (reconciliation) 251 years ago, and we’re still doing it. We want to be able to make our own decisions. We want to be empowered and to own businesses, we want our people to be financially stable and grow.
‘When is it going to be reconciled?’
Both Alberta Hornsby and Erica Deeral recently travelled to the National Museum in Canberra for the opening of the exhibition ‘Endeavour 250’. Art and culture, says Hornsby, play a central role in reconciliation on both a local and national scale.
‘The Hope Vale Art Centre contributed to the turtle design and it was just so joyous. This is what (is special) about the Yimithirr Guugu people and our people — Aboriginal people in general all over, we are joyous people.’
