page_title: First voyage of James Cook
section_title: Port Jackson
hierarchical_section_title: First voyage of James Cook / Australian coast / Port Jackson
caption_attribution_description: English: This kangaroo was seen at Endeavour River on 23 June 1770. Sydney Parkinson worked for Joseph Banks before embarking with him on the "Endeavour" in 1768. Français&#160;: Ce kangourou a été vu et dessiné près de la rivière Endeavour le 23 Juin 1770. Sydney Parkinson travaillait pour Joseph Banks avant de se lancer avec lui sur l'«&#160;Endeavour» en 1768.
context_page_description: The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which James Cook was the commander. The aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or "undiscovered southern land".
  The voyage was commissioned by King George III and commanded by Lieutenant Cook, a junior naval officer with good skills in cartography and mathematics. Departing from Plymouth Dockyard in August 1768, the expedition crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit of Venus. Cook then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Borabora and Raiatea to claim them for Great Britain, and unsuccessfully attempting to land at Rurutu. In September 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, being the second Europeans to visit there, following the first European discovery by Abel Tasman 127 years earlier.
context_section_description: On 6 May 1770, the Endeavour left Botany Bay and sailed north past an inlet "wherein there appeared to be safe anchorage". Cook named it Port Jackson, today generally known as Sydney Harbour. No-one on the ship recorded seeing any of the Harbour's many islands, because their line of sight was blocked by the high promontories of South Head and Bradleys Head that shape its dog-leg entrance. However, these islands were possibly known to Captain Arthur Phillip, the First Fleet commander, before he departed England in 1787.
caption: This kangaroo was seen at Endeavour River on 23 June 1770, painted by Sydney Parkinson
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