But, the story of Captain Cook is important to the Hunter Valley as well. On May 10, 1770, Cook in the Endeavour, at noon, passed the mouth of the Hunter River and a small island off its outlet that he called after AB/midshipman Charles Clerke, Nobbys Head.

Clerke, pronounced Clark,  was nicknamed Nobby after a Captain Clark, a martinet who demanded that the Christmas goose’s webbed feet be blackened with a nob of polish and spit. The captain was notorious for it. 

Nobby Clerke went on to become a captain of Cook’s second ship on his third Pacific voyage of discovery.

In February, 1779, after Cook had been killed by irate Hawaiians – not only killed but roasted and partly eaten –  Charles “Nobby” Clerke was captain of the HMS Discovery, but then took over as captain of the big ship, HMS Resolution.

As he reports: “I prevailed upon the Hawaiians to return Cook’s body and they did, without bones. They advised the bones had been given to other chiefs as mementos. I ordered the bones back. They were returned.” 

I was cogitating these events as I showered and suddenly it struck me. The captain of a British Man O’ War prevailing? I envisaged the 16-pounder cannon being run out and a ball demolishing the Big Hut on the beach. Was that not the Royal Navy’s way of prevailing?

The Hawaiians bought back Cook’s flesh wrapped in banana leaves and the bones, and he was buried at sea. Clerke took his ships on the pre-planned tour of discovery up the Canadian coast and around Alaska until, beaten back by cold and illness, they sailed down the Russian coast to Vladivostok. There they sent the sad message of Cook’s death to London. 

Captain Clerke died of consumption as the Resolution sailed down the China Coast and so the ship went back to England for the saddest return of spectacular explorers ever. But now to the present day.

In 2010, I “prevailed” upon NASA to name a small hill on Mars beside the Endeavour crater Nobbys Head after Midshipman/Captain Charles “Nobby” Clerke and, of course, Captain Cook.

The little Mars rover, Opportunity, visited there in 2014 and photographed the area. Look it up on Google. 

In the Hunter Valley, however, there is a recommendation to call famous sites with both the Indigenous and Anglo Saxon names. The first documented reference to Nobbys Head with the Aboriginal name Whibayganba was found in a Sir Thomas Mitchell sketch in 1828. And so back to NASA to ask them to double name our little hill on Mars, Whibayganba as well as Nobbys Head. 

So a new twist to the story from when  brave men died to map the unknown. 

It was during a subsequent visit that Cook was killed. In fairness to the Hawaiians, Cook had been trying to kidnap their king on February 14, 1779, when he and his men were chased back to the beach. 

The Hawaiians respected Cook as an adversary, so after murdering him they roasted the flesh from his bones and, according to some accounts, ate it.