PM Transcripts

63/ 040
EMBARGO: t NOT TO BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST OR
TELECAST BEFORE 9 P. M. 2ND MAY.
FOR PRESS: 0
HANDING OVER BY THE PRIME MINISTER TO THE
CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL
LIBRARY OF AUSTR. ALIA OF HER MAJESTY'S GIFT
OF COOK'S VOYAGES.
During her recent visit, Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth presented to the Prime Minister as " a gift to
the Government and people of the Commonwealth of Australia"
a complete set of the original editions of Captain James
Cook's Three Voyages to the Pacific and round the world
published in London in nine volumes between 1773 and 1784~.
The set came from the Royal Library at Windsor Castle,
Tonight in the presence of members of the
Council of the National Library of Australia the Prime
Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, Landed the ift to the Chairman
of the Council, Sir Gxenfell Price, It will take its place
in the collections of the Library alongside other gifts from
Her Majesty, and other Cook material of outstanding importance.
The most recent gift also made during the Royal
Visit, was a copy~ bound in the Loyal Library, of H. B. Carter's
monograph on the Spanish Merino flock which was developed by
King George III, in association with Sir Joseph Banks and
which contributed to the establishment of the wool inaustry
in New South Wales,,
This followed a gift during the Royal Visit in
1954 of 13 watercolour sketches by 5. T. Gill and Captain
Charles Sturt relating to the Sturt and Horrocks expeditions
into Central Australia between 1842+ and 1846.
Her Majesty" Es first gift to the National Library
was one which the late King George VI intended to make in
order to commemorate the proposed visit to Australia in 1952
of their Royal Highnesses the Princess Elizabeth and the
Duke of Edinburgh-and the manuscript is so inscribed, though
the visit did not take place because of His Majesty's death,
It was transmitted in 1953 by Sir William Slim, as Governor-
General, to the Prime Minister,
The manuscript was a handsomely bound photographic
copy of the journal of the second of Cook's three voyages
to the Pacific and the Antarctic.. This supplemented the
priceloess original of the journal of the first voyage, kept
by Cook, in his owmn hand, on the ENDEAVOUR when hie charted the
East Coast of Auistralia after New Zealand, The Library
purchased this, along with other important Cook manuscripts
and pictures, in London in 1923 for about Cook
manuscripts of far less importance than those in the National
Library collections brought œ-70,000 sterling at auction in
London in 1960.
CANBERRA,
2nd Moy, 1963.