BANKS PENINSULA: Introduction
Map ref N36 & N37, Land information 50,000 series.
It was with considerable interest that we drove onto Banks Peninsula, named after Sir Joseph Banks, who accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage. My mother’s maiden name was Dorothy Banks, and family tradition has it that Joseph Banks and his wife Dorothy were our ancestors. My grandfather and each of the eldest being called Joseph. As Sir Joseph Banks’ biographies make only mention of one child born out of wedlock, one wonders, but my mother’s likeness was as peas in a pod, and coupled with my grandfather having an original hand-painted book of Sir Joseph Banks’s voyage with Cook, I guess we will never know.
