by Lucy Yates, Travellers’ Tails project manager
On 15 July 1770 Joseph Banks wrote, ‘The Beast which was killd yesterday was today Dressd for our dinners and provd excellent meat.’ But which beast is he referring to? Of course it’s the Kangaroo. Cook’s crew did the fieldwork which essentially led to Stubbs being able to preserve the image of the Kangaroo in Western art, not an entirely bloodless process. But when did Cook’s crew encounter this novel animal?
Ever since I started doing a bit of research as Project Manager for Travellers’ Tails I’d been intrigued by the actions of Cook’s crew when they were shipwrecked on the Great Barrier Reef. They ran aground on 10th June 1770. Sydney Parkinson, a brewer’s son from Edinburgh, wrote of their plight, ‘We were, at this period, many thousand leagues from our native land, (which we had left upwards of two years,) and on a barbarous coast, where, if the ship had been wrecked, and we had escaped the perils of the sea, we should have fallen into the rapacious hands of savages.’ The image below is thought to show the Endeavour after she struck rocks off the coast of New Holland.
They eventually managed to re-float the ship after casting overboard all heavy cargo and patching the holes using an ingenuous bung made of hair, oakum and canvas and had to put into land near modern day Cooktown to repair the ship. During this extended spell on land on 14 July 1770 the Endeavour Journals of Joseph Banks recorded, ‘Our second lieutenant who was a shooting today had the good fortune to kill the animal that had so long been the subject of our speculations. To compare it to any European animal would be impossible as it has not the least resemblance of any one I have seen. Its fore legs are extremely short & of no use to it in walking, its hind again as disproportionately long; with these it hops 7 or 8 feet at each hop in the same manner as the Gerbua, to which animal indeed it bears much resemblance except in Size, this being in weight 38 lb & the Gerbua no larger than a common rat.’
As Cook returned with two kangaroo skins and two kangaroo skulls, it is perhaps not entirely fanciful to speculate that the animal from which Stubbs painted his painting was also one who might have been eaten by the crew.
As part of our Travellers’ Tails programme, I wanted to create a family event which replicated the choice between consuming the kangaroo and saving the kangaroo (although this is perhaps an oversimplification of the decision facing the stranded crew of the Endeavour on the wild shores of eastern Australia in 1770). With this aim in mind, I met with Paul Rubenstein, https://paulrubinstein.wordpress.com/, an early years facilitator of musical story-telling sessions. He came up with a musical story-telling session which led families through the story of Captain Cook’s first voyage.
We decided it would end with the children being asked to choose between saving the kangaroo (they got a postcard to keep)
and eating the kangaroo (a kangaroo burger each).
I’d like to thank all the team in Catering: our indefatigable Events Manager, Lorraine, along with Mark, Erica and Sunil, who made sure the meat was ethically sourced and delivered 180 kangaroo burgers for six sessions spread over two days.
For the sessions Paul came up with an activity sheet to allow the children to record their journey around the museum.
We were lucky enough to collect some super responses.
And images of some very strange new creatures were captured…
A number of participants agreed that the event had surpassed their expectations and many singled out the music and experience of following Captain Cook’s voyage on The Great Map as elements they’d enjoyed the most.
So, what was the final verdict? Those who did choose to eat the kangaroo – it was about 50:50- were generally enthusiastic. It apparently tasted like ‘beef burger’ or ‘a bit gamey’ in the words of their elders.
As for the factors behind the participants’ decision making, this seemed to depend entirely on how close to lunchtime the sessions ran and this too felt fitting in a way as it corresponded with the original imperatives of Cook and his crew.
Although no one was quite as enthusiastic about kangaroo meat as Sydney Parkinson who wrote, ‘the flesh of it tasted like a hares, but has a more agreeable flavour’, we were happy to have found a way to bring this exciting story to a younger audience…