‘To Try to Form Some Connections with the Natives’: Encounters between Captain Cook and Indigenous People at Botany Bay in 1770

This article examines Captain Cook's encounters with indigenous people at Botany Bay in 1770. It argues that a cross-cultural interpretation of the evidence in the voyage journals of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks exposes the fictions that have structured Australian settler narratives about Cook's first landfall on the continent. It is proposed that an approach that considers carefully the nature of encounters between the mariners and the local people during Cook's time on the Australian east coast can make a substantial contribution to the ongoing critique of Captain Cook's foundational meanings and mythical status.