European maritime exploration of Australia
Cook's first expedition carried botanist Joseph Banks, for whom a great many Australian geographical features and the genus Banksia and a number of plant species e.g. Grevillea banksii were named. The reports of Cook and Banks in conjunction with the loss of England's penal colonies in America after they gained independence and growing concern over French activity in the Pacific, encouraged the foundation by the British of a colony at Botany Bay. The First Fleet led by Captain Arthur Phillip left England on 13 May 1787 to found a penal colony in Australia. It reached Botany Bay in mid-January 1788. Phillip had decided to move the settlement to Sydney Cove in Port Jackson, but the British ships were unable to leave Botany Bay until 26 January because of a tremendous gale.
Charles Fremantle
The appointed lieutenant governor James Stirling arrived in Cockburn Sound on 2 June aboard the hired transport barque "Parmelia" with his family and other intending settlers, numbering 69 in all, to establish a colony at the Swan River in Western Australia. On 8 June they were joined by a military detachment of some 56 officers and men who disembarked from the consort ship HMS "Sulphur". On 17 June, a proxy proclamation was read by Stirling confirming Fremantle's earlier proclamation. The landing of those immigrants marked the beginning of the history of Western Australia as a British colony, and later as a state of federal Australia.