Flashback … the Endeavour in the Bass Strait. It is expected to reach Hobart in about two weeks. Photo: Steve Schmidt/ANMM
Tasmania’s Wooden Boat Festival will be graced by a sight out of Australia’s colonial past – the Endeavour replica set sail from its Sydney base today (Wednesday) en-route to Hobart.
Museum Director and CEO Daryl Karp says they are excited to be taking part in this year’s Australian Wooden Boat Festival.
“The festival provides a platform for the museum to talk about the dual perspectives of our nation’s history – the view from the ship and the view from the shore,” she says.
“It also enables the museum to showcase the extraordinary workmanship of the Fremantle-built replica to the wooden boat community as well as provide an opportunity for tall ship enthusiasts to sail.”
The ship is normally based at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney’s Darling Harbour.
The replica is designed to operate as a travelling exhibition that acknowledges the role played by explorer-navigator James Cook in mapping the east coast of Australia, New Zealand and many parts of the Pacific.
The Endeavour will join 10 other tall ships at the Pacifica-themed wooden boats festival in Hobart which runs from February 7-10.
A crew drawn from around the world are sailing the Endeavour to Hobart on a trip likely to take two weeks at most, a museum spokeswoman says.
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The crew is expected to use the ship’s visit to talk about Pacific collections in Australian cultural institutions, Indigenous watercraft, the exploration of the Pacific by Europeans in the late 18th and 19th centuries, and the role played by such vessels in expanding European scientific knowledge.
Visitors to the festival will be able to walk the top deck of the Endeavour and learn more about the replica and the original HM Bark Endeavour.
After the festival, the Endeavour will sail up the east coast of Tasmania from February 12-24 as it returns to Sydney.
