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
1770 – Cape York, Possession Island: Lieutenant James Cook RN, without consent in the name of King George III of England, on 22nd August 1770 on Possession Island in the far north of an island continent then known in Europe as New Hollandand now Australia, claimed ‘discovery’ of the entire eastern coast from ‘Cape York in the most northern extremity…to South Cape’
1771 – England, July: ‘Discovery’ Cook on his return to England from the Endeavour voyage (1786-1771) 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’.
If inhabited territory was invaded and conquered the rights of the conquered peoples were to be respected, permission to use the land had to be sought and a treaty entered into.