Peter Bacos: Georg Forster - Around the World with Captain Cook

Sir Joseph Banks wanted to take on board two French horn players for his entertainment on Cook’s second voyage of discovery. The Admiralty declined this absurd request and instead offered the post as naturalist to the German polymath (Johann) Reinhold Forster who accepted on condition that his 17 year old son (Johann ) Georg accompany him. 

Dame Patsy Reddy, in her retiring address as governor – general said that one of the highlights of her period in office was Tuia 250 which commemorated the amazing voyages across the Pacific of the Polynesian navigators. 

No mention was made of Cook and certainly not the savant father and son who accompanied him. Our history is now being re-written by propagandists and every effort is made to downgrade the discovery of New Zealand by Europeans. 

Peter Bacos: The Maori Language

I have become so sick and tired of the saturation of Maori on tv and radio that I’ve decided to make an effort to learn the language or the rudiments of it anyway. Instead of reacting with fury every time I hear a Maori word which makes the phrase unintelligible to me I’ve decided to teach myself. 

It’s remarkably simple; when you’re saturated by a language it’s very easy to learn it as you’re exposed to it all the time. I can see now how people become bi-lingual in countries which promote two languages. 

Did you know Te Papa was bi – lingual, or rather I should say it is Maori with English translation? On my walks along the waterfront I pop into it now and then and promise myself to learn 20 new words on each visit.

Peter Bacos: Marion Dufresne at the Bay of Islands 25 March – 12 June 1772

Marc-Joseph Marion Dufresne was baptised at St Malo, Brittany, 24 May 1724. He belonged to the upper bourgeoisie, and although he did not belong to the nobility by birth, by being appointed a Chevalier of the Order of St Louis later in life he acceded to it by military title. He added a territorial designation to his name, from the village in Brittany where his ancestors came from, Le Fresne, but this is not his surname which is Marion, and we will refer to him as such throughout this essay. 

He joined the merchant navy and went to see in 1741. In effect he was a corsair during the War of the Austrian Succession which put France at loggerheads with England. Ships lay in wait around the coast of Brittany and especially the narrow inlets of the Channel Islands to pounce on British ships returning from the West Indies or West Africa laden with precious metals, white wine, oranges, lemons, corn, and rye. Many of these hauls supplied all of France in foodstuffs and were lucrative for the mariners involved.

Peter Bacos: James Cook and the Discovery of New Zealand

In the 250th anniversary celebrations of Cook’s landing in New Zealand last year the government tried to bracket this with the Maori arrival nearly 800 years before. This is typical of the way the European discovery of NZ is downgraded now by the state and put on a par with the Maori discovery centuries before; it is all part of a state orchestrated campaign to vilify and disparage European culture in this country. 

 There is no comparison between the two, the sophistication of the latter being far greater than the former. The doctoring of history continues by the Maori activists and their Pakeha partisans and the dispute last year about replacing the statue of James Cook on Mt Titirangi at Gisborne was another example of it. Barney Tupara, a representative of Ngati Oenone says that the first meeting between Maori and Pakeha was violent and 9 Maoris were killed. This is another example of the rewriting of history that Maoris are engaged in where their own role is sanitised and that of the European is vilified.