When Lieutenant James Cook and the crew of HMB Endeavour stepped ashore in Botany Bay in April 1770 – during their exploration of Australia’s east coast – two men from the Gweagal people of Kamay threw rocks and spears at the strange voyagers.

Cook fired a warning shot, then two others, and the Indigenous men retreated, leaving behind relics of their strong hunter-gatherer culture and affinity with Country.

Four of the 40 or 50 Gweagal spears taken during the British voyagers’ eight-day stay have now gone on public display, 30 kilometres from that historic place of European contact.

“These spears are like time travellers,” says Michael Dagostino, director of the Chau Chak Wing Museum on the grounds of the University of Sydney. “They really talk about colonisation – the first moments of colonisation – and the direct impact and subsequent history that was to follow.”

Some seized “lances” ranged from “15 to 6 feet [4.5 to two metres] in length”, wrote botanist Joseph Banks in his journal. All, except one, had four prongs headed with sharp fish bones, and smeared with a greenish gum that Banks mistakenly thought was poison but turned out to be seaweed.

Upon Cook’s return to England, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, gifted four spears to his alma mater, Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1914, they were turned over to the university’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with other materials from Cook’s Pacific voyage.

The priceless weapons were stored in the museum’s basement until March 2023, when the museum, the Gujaga Foundation and the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council announced their permanent repatriation.

The fishing spears form the centrepiece of the museum’s new exhibition, Mungari: Fishing, Resistance, Return, running until June 29.