I’ve been digging a bit more into this, and found this rabbit holes goes deep.

You know you are onto something – when your hypothesis starts to explain questions that you know others have, but you weren’t actively trying to find the answers for.

Why did Cook name Port Jackson (port where Sydney is) after “Mr Jackson”? Who the heck is he? People used to speculate that there must have been someone on the ship named Mr Jackson, but Mr Jackson turned out to be a secretary of the Admiralty – George Jackson.

On the other side of the Tasman sea is “Point Jackson”, which lies on the north west of Queen Charlotte Sound. “Point Jackson” in New Zealand is – I think – what Cook believed to be adjacent to a candidate for Murderer’s Bay. This is also named after George Jackson. So George Jackson seems to pop out of nowhere into this story, with places named in these particular areas that fit in with my hypothesis.

But “Jackson” is not the only name that pops up. “Stephens” is the other name – Cape Stephens is the cape that lies at the top of Admiralty Bay, and is topped off with Stephens Island. On the “Australian” side, there is Port Stephens. They are both named after Philip Stephens – First secretary of the Admiralty.

Perhaps these places were named not by Cook while on the voyage, but in the gentlemen’s smoking room back in London on Cook’s return. The narcissistic men present – drawing up the fudged map, and dividing the un-named places, and then naming them after themselves.

Who is “Mr Jackson” and why did Cook name two places after him? My thoughts – Cook didn’t name it at sea with his sextant in-hand. A group of men negotiated the names back in London with whiskey and cigars in-hand.

There are two, moveable place names – that were like labels – they needed to be placed on the correct geographical feature. They are “Cape Farewell” which is a cape lying at the same longitude of Tasman’s Murderer’s Bay (wherever it is – Cook couldn’t find it on the voyage itself), and “Botany Bay” which needed to be attached to the future site of British settlement.

“Botany Bay” chosen as a name – possibly being a hangover from Alexander Darlymple’s hypothesis of Portuguese discovery. The Dieppe Maps had a “Costa des Herbaiges” on it – a name with a “Botanic” aura to it. The Portuguese discovery hypothesis is politically convenient for the British as it would help undermine Dutch First Discovery claims. So it makes sense for the British to pretend that their Botany Bay is part of the Costa des Herbaiges.

My hypothesis is that on the return of the First Voyage, Joseph Banks used his influence and money to get hold of Tasman’s journal (a copy of which was in his library after he died). From the journal, the smoking-room-Admiralty-men figured out that Murderer’s Bay is not Ship Cove, nor any cove in Admiralty Bay – but is what Cook named “Blind Bay”.

During the voyage, Cook had made allowances and cleverly left a margin-of-error to accommodate candidate bays between Queen Charlotte Sound and Admiralty Bay as being Murderer’s Bay – but Blind Bay was way outside this margin of error. This is why Cook’s chart of New Zealand had to be greatly distorted, and why there are large problems with some coordinates – some points being off by nearly 2 degrees in longitude (keep in mind Lunar distances should put them within about 30 minutes so 120 minute errors are very suss).

Where is Botany Bay?

As for Botany Bay – remember how the current Botany Bay was originally named by Cook as Stingray Bay?

Here’s another idea I have. When Cook left Stingray Bay – it was still called Stingray Bay. Another landing site was near Circular Quay inside Sydney Harbour. So there were two “Botany Bay” settlement candidates. One is in the bay that is today called Botany Bay (where the airport runway sticks out into). The other one is the Sydney Harbour “Botany Bay” at the Royal Botanic Garden behind the Opera House. I believe the Sydney bay was the site of the farm and governor house at the initial penal colony. Both are sacred Whiteman’s land, walked upon by the hero James Cook. Whiteman never built there to this day, they left both as botanical places. These two sites actually lie at the same longitude – they are in line with each other north/south.

Also note that the penal colony itself, located inside Sydney Harbour (and not the bay where the airport is) was colloquially called “Botany Bay” for a long time. Maybe that was no colloquialism… it really is Botany Bay. So to sing of going to Botany Bay was a kind-of “in-joke”.

And what happened to La Perouse? Did the British sabotage him because he actually SAW the First Fleet moving between the two Botany Bays? Was Perouse going to go spoil of plan of playing “guess the bay” with the Dutch? I think the British were actually counting on the Dutch making a lazy contestation of the penal settlement based on Cook’s given longitude of the site, and then doing a big reveal of the real Botany Bay as laying further north. La Perouse turned up at the exactly wrong moment – and he would have blown the entire thing had he gone back to Europe and blabbed. So the British topped him – sabotaged his ship.

Queen Elizabeth II has a time capsule for the people of Sydney to be opened in 2085. Is it a 1770 chart or drawing of Port Jackson?

Why did Margaret Cameron-Ash come up with the ridiculous story of Cook walking all alone, in secret, without any of his crew noticing, overland from Stingray Bay to Port Jackson using Aboriginal paths? I think because there is – somewhere – a 1770 drawing or chart of Port Jackson – and this is an attempt to explain it away before it is revealed to the public.

Where did Joseph Banks collect his botanical samples? Is it too late to do what the Gerard Baden-Clay prosecution did – (with their botanical expert proving the crime scene location) locating the collection place of Bank’s samples? Why was Banks (and others on the Endeavour) so full of praise for the landing site when Stingray Bay is a poor site? Maybe because they were actually in Sydney Cove – a sheltered deep harbour with a water-spring.