While Captain Cook's journal from the H.M.S. Endeavour is often on display in the Library's Treasures Gallery, it is currently not on display to allow rest and treatment for the long term preservation of the item.

For many centuries Europeans believed there must be a vast land in the southern hemisphere, variously called ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ from the Latin for ‘Unknown South Land’.

From January 1788, when the First Fleet of convicts arrived at Botany Bay, to the end of convict transportation 80 years later, over 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia.

While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606.