Kangaroo
The word kangaroo is an Australian Aboriginal word from the Guugu Yimidhirr people of north Queensland. The word was recorded by Captain James Cook in August 1770. It was the name for the grey kangaroo, Macropus robustus. Cook's ship, the HMS Endeavour, had been damaged on coral on the Great Barrier Reef. It took seven weeks for the ship to be repaired on the banks of a river, now the Endeavour River, at the site of the town of Cooktown. This gave Cook, Joseph Banks and other crew members time to explore the area and the plants and animals. The skin and skull of a kangaroo was taken back to England to be put on show. In James Boswell's book "Life of Johnson" he describes Dr. Samuel Johnson in 1793 hopping around the room to explain to people how a kangaroo moved. When Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet arrived in Sydney in 1788, they were surprised that the Aborigines did not know the word "kangaroo." It took them a while to realize that Aborigines at Sydney spoke a different language to those from Cooktown.