The Botany Bay Medallion

‘Hugh Grotius [1538-1645] remark[ed] that an act of discovery was sufficient to give clear title to sovereignty ‘only when it is accompanied by actual possession’. Cited, Henry Reynolds, Aboriginal Sovereignty, Three Nations, One Australia, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996

1770 – 22 August, Cape York: In the name of King George III of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales Lieutenant James Cook RN, without consent of its owners, claimed ‘discovery’ of the entire eastern coast of New Holland from ‘Cape York in the most northern extremity…to South Cape’.

‘Discovery gave what was termed an inchoate title which could only be developed further by actual occupation’. Reynolds. op.cit.

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During the period 1763-1793 the character of the Second British Empire was being formed…the empire of commerce in the Indian and Pacific Oceans’. Vincent T. Harlow, The Founding of the Second British Empire 1763-1793, Vol. 2 Longmans, 1963

1771 – England: In  July 1771 Lieutenant James Cook RN returned to England from the Endeavour voyage (1786-1771) and reported New Holland was inhabited.

‘The natives of the country…live in Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the inequality of condition’. James Cook, Endeavour Journal

ACTUAL OCCUPATION: ‘EXISTING IN FACT’ – OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY

‘The whole claim of sovereignty and ownership on the basis of terra nullius [with no inhabitants] was manifestly based on a misreading of Australian circumstance, not that this prevented Phillip from hoisting the Union Jack in 1788 and expropriating the owners of Sydney Cove. Stuart Mac Intyre, A Concise History of Australia, Melbourne University Press, 2004   (more…)