kurnell

It is interesting that our predecessors often erected a monument and then caged it in with railings. Were they implying that the monument was too sacred for the public to approach, or that the public were not to be trusted, or both? I do not think that graffitti was a problem in the early 1900s, so it cannot have been the latter. Today the railings are no longer there, and the monument looks a lot better for it.

Hello! We'd love you to add this photo to the National Maritime Museum's group Travellers' Tails. www.flickr.com/groups/nmm_travellers/rules/ This group has been set up to collate photographic responses to the exhibition The Art and Science of Exploration: 1768-80 at the National Maritime Museum and touring to the Grant Museum of Zoology, the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, the Hunterian Museum and Horniman Museum and Gardens. The exhibition aims to explore Captain Cook’s voyages of discovery, as well as the exchange of ideas and experiences around travel and exploration and investigate key questions around the history of art, science and exploration and what this means today, drawing on George Stubbs’ Enlightenment era paintings of a kangaroo and dingo, recently acquired by the National Maritime Museum. We’d love to see your photographs - please help us build a gallery of images to enrich the group! Thanks! www.flickr.com/groups/nmm_travellers/rules/

How very, very confusing! Charles Kerry, this is not the La Perouse Monument, but the Captain Cook Monument at Kurnell. Undoubtedly at the same time (6/5/1899) as this photo -

Oh well spotted beachcomberaustralia! The La Perouse monument is quite similar though, mainly a circular column compared to the obelisk shape we see in this wikipedia page about La Perouse (the Sydney suburb): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Perouse,_New_South_Wales Also, these views:

BobMeade Yes they are similar, but in Kerry's day the La Perouse monument was dwarfed by Norfolk Island pines -

beachcomber australia Well spotted beachcomber! It's rather gobsmacking no-one ever spotted the caption error - not even Tyrrell it would appear. The Star Photo Co. wasn't confused -
Captain Cook's Monument, Kurnell (c.1900) [SLNSW: a116173]

La Perouse Monument, Botany Bay (c.1900) [SLNSW: a116174]
BobMeade Hi Bob! (psst. I'm about to post some more Terang stuff...)

Read all about it ! There is a full description of the occasion on Saturday 6 May 1899 in the SMH of 8/5/1899 p.4 - trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/14213166 . Including a fine speech from J.H. Carruthers (Minister for Lands) who was a great James Cook enthusiast.

" As the Plymouth Rock is the most sacred ground to the Americans, so may this historic place, rich in its traditions, be the one place in our island continent more consecrated than another to the great man who here first set foot upon our shores, and in his foresight secured for the empire and its people a territory unsurpassed in the whole universe. "