Four spears stolen by British naval lieutenant James Cook and his crew on their first contact with Australia have been returned to their community after more than 250 years. The weapons, known as the Gweagal spears, were taken in 1770 when HMB Endeavour arrived at Botany Bay in the first meeting between the British and the Indigenous Gweagal people of Kamay.
At Trinity College on Tuesday, Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology formally relinquished the artefacts, comprising one hunting spear and three fishing spears, into the care of the La Perouse Aboriginal Community. Ray Ingrey, a Dharawal man who chairs the Gujaga Foundation said the objects are “pretty much the first point of European contact, particularly British contact with Aboriginal Australia”.
“I think for us it’s a momentous occasion that where Australia’s history began, in 1770 on the shores of Botany Bay at Kurnell, the spears that were undoubtedly taken without permission are returned to the rightful people,” an emotional Ingrey said. “Ultimately, they’ll be put on permanent display for everyone to go see; at the very spot they were taken from 250 years ago.”
The four spears are all that remain of the 40 spears that Cook recorded from the Indigenous community. He wrote in his journal that upon landing in the bay on April 29, 1770, two Aboriginal men threw rocks and spears at his crew, and he in turn fired a warning shot. Botanist Joseph Banks recorded that some of the spears ranged from “15 to 6 feet in length”, (five to two metre) with those all, except one, had having four prongs headed with “very sharp fish bones, which were smeared with a greenish coloured gum that at first gave me some suspicions of poison”.
“Upon examining the lances we had taken from them we found that most of them had been used in striking fish, at least we concluded so from seaweed,” Banks wrote.
Lord Sandwich of the British Admiralty presented the spears to Trinity soon after Cook returned to England, and they have been part of the collection since 1771. Since 1914 the four spears have been cared for by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, along with other materials from Cook’s voyage across the Pacific. The museum is among several British institutions which have come under increased pressure to re-evaluate and return the many “colonial prizes” in their collections.
Dame Sally Davies, the Master of Trinity College, said it was the “right decision” to hand the objects back, adding the college was committed to reviewing the “complex legacies of the British Empire”.
Ray Ingrey, who chairs the Gujaga Foundation, leads members of the La Perouse Aboriginal Community during the ceremony at Trinty College.
Six members of the La Perouse Aboriginal Community who travelled to Britain for the formal handover are all direct descendants of the men who confronted the landing party. “My old people lived in Sydney,” Ingrey said. “I have an ancient and unbroken connection to Sydney… I heard from my elders, particularly my great aunty who told us of the arrival of the Endeavour. She would talk about the conflict and also some of the artefacts and materials that were taken.”
The spears are being permanently repatriated with support from the federal government’s Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies-led Return of Cultural Heritage Program, and the National Museum of Australia. In 2015 and again in 2020, some of the spears were returned temporarily to Australia for the first time since they were taken, and displayed by the National Museum of Australia in Canberra as part of two exhibitions exploring frontier encounters.
The spears will be displayed at a new visitor centre which is to be built at Kurnell, Kamay. Before then, at the request of the La Perouse community, they will be held at the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney.
Professor Nicholas Thomas, the director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, said the spears were “exceptionally significant”.
“They are the first artefacts collected by any European from any part of Australia, that remain extant and documented,” he said. “They reflect the beginnings of a history of misunderstanding and conflict. Their significance will be powerfully enhanced through return to the country.”
Noeleen Timbery, from the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council, first visited the spears in 2017. She has been determined to secure their return ever since. “They are an important connection to our past, our traditions, and cultural practices, and to our ancestors,” she says while acknowledging the role Cambridge has played over two centuries in preserving her history.
“A big part of you wants the fact that they were never taken away, but had they not been taken away and had they not been really carefully preserved and cared for by Trinity College and the museum here, we wouldn’t be able to connect to them today,” she said. “We’re really looking forward to sharing these with all Australians.”
