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The James Cook Heritage Trail

Bateman Bay

Grade 3: An attractive bay, as from many viewpoints it still retains a natural feel. It is easy from North Head, to imagine Endeavour’s billowing sails approaching from the south.

Situation: Today’s town of Batemans Bay lies at the mouth of the Clyde River on the south coast of New South Wales.

Coordinates (decimal): Bay (not town) 35.74 S 150.24 E; Tollgate Islands 35.75 S 150.27 E

Endeavour Journal, 21 April 1770:

Our Latitude at Noon was 35.49S. Cape Dromedary bore S30W, dist 12 Leagues. An open Bay wherein lay three or four small islands bore NWbW distant 5 or 6 Leagues, this Bay seem’d to be but very little shelterd from the sea winds and yet it is the only likely anchoring place I have yet seen upon the coast.

Cook’s interest in the Bay as an anchoring place reflects his concern to land and find water and wood. Three weeks after his departure from New Zealand supplies of these were running low. Cook named the bay on his chart as Bateman Bay but it is now known as Batemans Bay. It is generally considered that the Bay was named after Nathaniel Bateman, captain of HMS Northumberland, under whom Cook served as Master from 1760-62 in Canadian waters.

However, given the pattern of names Cook used on this coast, it seems possible that it was named after John Bateman who was one of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty in the mid 1750s. Cook had already named Cape Howe for an Admiralty figure and went on to name, on the New South Wales coast, Port Jackson and Port Stephens (both Secretaries to the Admiralty), then Cape Hawke, for a First Lord of the Admiralty. John Bateman was a Lord of the Admiralty only briefly from 1755 to 1756. Cook joined the Royal Navy in 1755 and was aboard Eagle at Spithead on 3 July. His journal records: ‘At 12 noon Admiral Anson with some Lords of the Admiralty viewed the fleet and then went on board the Prince.’ He may have glimpsed Bateman on that occasion.

The islands that Cook mentions are the Tollgate Islands. Good views of the Bay itself and these islands can be had from headlands south to Lilli Pilli and east to North Head. On a clear day from Burrewarra Point, about 16km south of the town, views can be had to the south to Montague Island and Mount Dromedary, and north to Pigeon House mountain.