2020 marked the 250 th anniversary of Captain Cook’s first Endeavour voyage and Australia
Post wanted to create a stamp issue with a series of 10 stamps commemorating the event.
Previous collections marking Cook’s voyages focused overly heavily on Cook and the idea
he ‘discovered’ Australia, while under-representing Indigenous peoples, cultures and stories.
We engaged one Indigenous and one non-Indigenous creative to tackle the design
from two perspectives. They explored how knowledge First Nations peoples possessed for
millennia interplayed with how European explorers viewed Australia and its inhabitants for
the very first time.
A continuous scene of vertical stamp pairs was created, with themes of ‘navigation’,
‘voyages’, ‘land’, ‘science/botany’ and ‘the journey continues’. A central device, the
‘Continuing Culture Line’, was devised to weave through the stamps, connecting
both storylines.
The collection’s name was chosen to feel accessible to every Australian, no matter how long
they’ve lived here.
