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Welcome to Endeavour Online
Welcome to the first issue of our new journal, Endeavour Online. It is a publication for all Australian residents who are of British origin; and also for everyone else who is proud of Australia’s traditional culture.
This first issue is just a beginning – and we know it! We want future issues to be longer and to cover more topics. Basically, any subject that ought to be of interest to lovers of our Anglo-Australian culture is relevant and should be addressed. The extent to which we can succeed in growing this new journal will partly depend on the reaction of our readers. We will need articles on a wide variety of topics, and we hope readers will supply some of them.
Just to give you some food for thought, we are looking for articles focusing on the particularly Anglo-Australian aspects of: art and literature; little-known aspects of our unique history; socio-political analysis; film and book reviews; museum exhibition reports; scientific and technological developments with specific relevance to Anglo-Australia; demographic issues; military affairs; sport; and popular culture.[1] And that’s just for starters! Essentially, if it’s relevant to Anglo-Australia, we want to cover it.
The immediate precursor to Endeavour Online was the print journal, Endeavour, which began in March 1998. Some front covers of earlier Endeavours are reproduced here. That journal, in its turn, was an updated version of the Newsletter established in 1966 by the United Kingdom Settlers’ Association (now known as the British Australian Community). So in a sense the online journal you are reading today has its origins in the year that the Australian Top 40 was dominated by British bands like the Beatles, British-Australian migrant bands like the Bee Gees, and Australian Anglo-Dutch bands like the Easybeats. That’s not a shallow heritage for a brand-new online journal!
The title Endeavour was originally chosen because the word means “To try, to make an effort for a specified object, to attempt strenuously”. As we said at the time, back in 1998, this “evokes good, old-fashioned British virtues”. Of course, Endeavour is also the name of the vessel that carried Captain Cook to this part of the world, leading to Australia’s possession by the British Crown in 1770 – and therefore to people of British origin being the majority of Australia’s population today.
To give some idea of the spirit that we wish to embody in Endeavour Online, let’s quote from possibly Australia’s greatest poet, Kenneth Slessor. Specifically, his poem “Five Visions of Captain Cook”. At this point in Slessor’s poem Cook has entered the Coral Sea and has chosen “a passage into the dark”:
How many mariners had made that choice
Paused on the brink of mystery! “Choose now!”
The winds roared, blowing home, blowing home,
Over the Coral Sea. “Choose now!” the trades
Cried once to Tasman, throwing him for choice
Their teeth or shoulders, and the Dutchman chose
The wind’s way, turning north. “Choose, Bougainville!”
The wind cried once, and Bougainville had heard
The voice of God, calling him prudently
Out of the dead lee shore, and chose the north,
The wind’s way. So, too, Cook made choice,
Over the brink, into the devil’s mouth,
With four months’ food, and sailors wild with dreams
Of English beer, the smoking barns of home.
So Cook made choice, so Cook sailed westabout,
So men write poems in Australia.
That sums it up, really. Were it not for Captain Cook’s daring and bravery, the Australia that we know and love would never have come into existence. If we wish Australia to survive, we will have to be as resolute as Cook himself. His vessel was called Endeavour. For those of us who wish to sail in it there is a new vessel of the same name: this online magazine.
This is an example of the UKSA Newsletter before it became known as Endeavour:
This is when the UKSA newsletter became known as Endeavour:
The UKSA hosted a series of “Britfests” in public spaces:
UKSA introduced special interest groups, such as the canoeing group below, which the current BAC also promotes:
Stimulating thoughts on the change of name from the UKSA:
The full article referred to below is available at this link:
The Endeavour has always covered both sport and popular culture:
[1] Articles should be submitted electronically, as double-spaced attachments in MS Word. They will be published only at the discretion of the editors. They may be amended to make them suitable for Endeavour Online – but only with the consent of the authors.
