This sounds a bit like history as you'd want it to be. If Flinders could fail to see the mouth of the Murray then Cook could fail to grasp the significance of Sydney Harbour. Perhaps at Botany Bay his instinct told him something big was nearby.

Conflating Cook and Flinders is the proposed circumnavigation of Australia in the Endeavour replica. It never happened with or without a 400 hp diesel below decks. Even in the recent Jane Austen movies characters have historical authenticity by dying of minor illness. I thought Aussies were supposed to be cynics not given to fantasies.

Well, as a French colony would things be very different? Very likely and by now we'd likely be sill a colony and nuclear powered to boot. And all our naval vessels also nuclear powered. The french are seriously pragmatic! Not bootlickers although the rep for devious tongue in cheek or wherever, has proceeded them. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

Of all the colonising great powers the french seem o be the last to grant independence to former possessions,! And one could envision an Island continent as large and as well resource as Australia clung to for as long as possible!

And would never ever have allowed NZ to become independent, but would have ensured it remained as part of NSW or whatever NSW would have been labelled as part of France!

Cook seems o have been a very capable and intelligent seaman/navigator and a cunning captain loyal to the crown in every sense of that term!
Alan B.

Another excellent article by Warren Reed.

From reading "spy" fiction and non-fiction like http://www.cia.gov/library/publications#intel-history

it indeed seems intelligence is not a dry collection of immutable facts.

Intelligence is politically sensitive literature by creative writers, called "spies"

based on their questioning of the subjective minds of human sources.

Even technical intelligence (eg. "sigint") is a construct of the human mind.

Secrecy is part to avoid governmental embarrassment, to remain a few steps ahead of your country's enemies and the law.

Checkout "French Future SSN & SSBN Priorities Before Attack class" of 17 Feb 2020 at
http://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2020/02/australia-cannot-drop-french-contract.html?showComment=1581935746116#c6103353265135151187

What a pointless topic !

I'd imagine, we as a french possession? Would have been a place where you'd be guilty until proven innocent and blokes like Ned Kelly, would have lost their heads! [Boy dat smarts.]

And when France was overrun during WW11, we'd have become a German possession, for the duration. And given that outcome? Both we and our Kiwi cousins would not have continued as Great Britain's larder!

Given that outcome, starving Britains would have caved in and We'd still be speaking german or french?

As for land rights? Would our first people have received superior treatment than that meted out to the Jews!?

I think we owe quite a lot to Captain Cook and the Westminster system! Just wish it was more self-evident in today's Parliaments!

I've seen better-behaved kiddies in the Kindy sandpit! And more intelligence on display!?
Alan B.