CAPE YORK TO SOUTH CAPE – KING GEORGE III – YOUR LAND IS MY LAND
Tuesday, July 19th, 2016‘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
Cape York, Possession Island: On 22 August 1770 Lieutenant James Cook RN, at Possession Island in Australia’s far north, in the name of King George III of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, claimed ‘discovery’ of the entire eastern coast of New Holland from ‘Cape York in the most northern extremity…to South Cape’.
England – July 1771: When Lieutenant James Cook RN returned home from the Endeavour voyage (1786-1771) he reported New Holland was inhabited.
‘The natives of the country…live in Tranquility which is not disturb’d by the inequality of condition; they covet not magnificent Houses, household stuff etc. They sleep as sound in a small hovel or even in the open as the King in His Pallace on a Bed of down’. Lieutenant James Cook, The Endeavour Journal
Eighteenth century European law held; ‘only if uninhabited could one country take effective possession of another country, claim ownership for itself and share it out among its own people’.
‘Discovery gave what was termed an inchoate title which could only be developed further by actual occupation’. Reynolds. op.cit.
European law required if inhabited territory was to be invaded and conquered ‘effective[ly] occupied’ by a foreign power permission to use the land had to be sought. The rights of the conquered peoples were to be respected and treaty entered into.