I have gone from knowing nothing at all about AVD or even being aware of her existence to feeling positive about everything I know about her.
The 200th anniversary of Cook's visit was of course when I was 5, I and my cohort might have been encouraged (I had just started primary school) to engage with the legend but I don't remember that, though I do remember the ephemera of the 1970 visit hanging around for a while, most significantly when we moved to Hawthorn in 1973 there was a translucent Captain Cook sticker on a back window. I also remember the following piece of folklore, which by the way in my child's mind I always imagined happening in Captain Cook's Cottage:
Captain Cook done some poop
Behind the kitchen door
He told his mum to lick his bum
Then he done some more.
So much to unpack, but of course although the immediate assumption of the listener might be that his mum (Grace, 1702-1765) did lick her son's bum, although in fact the story does not make a firm statement on that one way or the other. It might have been a kind of 'kiss my ass' kind of pronouncement. 'Lick my bum, mother, I'm going to sea. I have one more thing to attend to first.'
Since writing the above I have found out something absolutely perfect about Cook's mother, who of course I had no knowledge of whatsoever until I looked him up on wikipedia and still don't really have any knowledge of, of course, but I now know, and so shall you at the end of this sentence, that her maiden name was Pace. Grace Pace. Fucking hell, you could make a hell of a feminist (or otherwise) epic of the obvious pun from that name. I love that so much.
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'Captain Cook, chased a chook, all around Australia. lost his pants in the middle of France, and found them in Tasmania' This is the Mundingburra State School 1971 version. Less vulgar and more nonsensical I guess - how did he lose his pants in France chasing around Australia? I have only now paused to wonder how...
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