The Endeavour River on Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula

Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...

 in Far North Queensland

Far North Queensland

Far North Queensland, or FNQ, is the northernmost part of the Australian state of Queensland. The region, which contains a large section of the Tropical North Queensland area, stretches from the city of Cairns north to the Torres Strait...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, was named in 1770 by Lt. James Cook

James Cook

Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...

, R.N., after he was forced to beach his ship, HM Bark Endeavour

HM Bark Endeavour

HMS Endeavour, also known as HM Bark Endeavour, was a British Royal Navy research vessel commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery, to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771....

, for repairs in the river mouth, after damaging it on Endeavour Reef

Endeavour Reef

Endeavour Reef is a coral reef within the Great Barrier Reef. The reef is about long and runs in an east-west direction. The center of the reef is located at . It is about south-east of the Hope Islands in the Hope Islands National Park and off the mainland.It was encountered by Lieutenant...

. Joseph Banks named it the Endeavours River but the form Cook used, Endeavour River, has stuck.

Cook and his crew remained for almost seven weeks and made contact with the local Guugu Yimithirr

Guugu Yimithirr people

The Guugu Yimithirr are an Australian Aboriginal tribe of Far North Queensland, many of whom today live at Hopevale , which is the administrative centre of Hopevale Shire. It is about 46 km from Cooktown by road. It is also the name of their language...

 Aborigines

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

, while the naturalists Joseph Banks

Joseph Banks

Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...

 and Daniel Solander

Daniel Solander

Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.-Biography:...

 made extensive collections of native flora, while Sydney Parkinson

Sydney Parkinson

Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish Quaker, botanical illustrator and natural history artist.Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on James Cook's first voyage to the Pacific in 1768. Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel...

 illustrated much of the flora and fauna of the region. Botanical specimens were also collected by Alan Cunningham after he arrived on the Mermaid, captained by Philip Parker King

Philip Parker King

Admiral Phillip Parker King, FRS, RN was an early explorer of the Australian coast.-Early life and education:...

 on 28 June 1819.
Modern Cooktown which has a population of about 2,000, is located at the mouth of the Endeavour River. It is the northernmost town on the East Coast of Australia and was founded in 1873, around the site of Cook's landing, as a port to service the newly discovered Palmer River

Palmer River

The Palmer River is a river southwest of Cooktown in northeastern Australia. It was the site of a gold rush in the late 19th century which started in 1872. The Palmer River flows west across Cape York to the Gulf of Carpentaria, via the Mitchell River...

 Goldfields. Some of the relatively undisturbed natural features near the mouth of the river have been reserved as a Queensland National Park, the Endeavour River National Park

Endeavour River National Park

Endeavour River National Park is a national park in Queensland, Australia, gazetted to protect and preserve some of the natural and cultural resources in and around the mouth of the Endeavour River, immediately north of the small town of Cooktown...

.

In recent years, tilapia

Tilapia

Tilapia , is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the tilapiine cichlid tribe. Tilapia inhabit a variety of fresh water habitats, including shallow streams, ponds, rivers and lakes. Historically, they have been of major importance in artisan fishing in Africa and the...

 fish, which are considered a "noxious species" in Australia, have infested the river, causing concern that the stocks of native fish will suffer.

The river basin remains largely unmodified and the water quality it rated as good.