Captain Cook's cottage – the place he didn't ever call home | Paul Daley

We’re about to be subjected to the frenzy commemorating the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival. We should get a few facts right first

As a child I often spent Saturday mornings in Melbourne’s Fitzroy Gardens.

A highlight was always visiting a curious, somewhat magical place called “Captain Cook’s cottage”.

Related: Captain Cook's legacy is complex, but whether white Australia likes it or not he is emblematic of violence and oppression | Paul Daley

Gill constructed a Cook–Melbourne connection, using the argument that the first Australian coastline observed by Cook’s 1770 expedition, now named Point Hicks in Gippsland, was in what had become the state of Victoria. Since Victoria’s capital, Melbourne, was about to mark 100 years of settlement, Gill suggested that Melbourne should become the ‘proud guardian of the one-time home of the man who had made the centenary possible, Captain James Cook’.”

Related: When commemorating Captain Cook, we should remember the advice he ignored | Paul Daley

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