On May 23, 1770, Captain James Cook and the crew of the HMS Endeavour dropped anchor off the coast of what would become the state of Queensland, coming ashore onto a small peninsula on the continent of New Holland— now present-day Australia. Cook wrote of the excursion in his journal: “In the AM I went a shore with a party of men in order to examine the Country … as yet we had seen no people but saw a great deal of smook [sic] up and on the west side of the Lagoon which was…
