#captain cook

Cook Landing, Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga || rtwparenting

One of the volcanic islands comprising the Cook Islands, Rarotonga is the most populous of the Cook Islands and home to Avarua, the capital city.  In the early days of being a territory of New Zealand, some of the individual islands had their own postage stamps (see: Aitutaki), although in Rarotonga’s case, for a while the early Cook Islands stamps were printed as Rarotonga (1919-1932).  These days the stamps are largely printed for collectors to collect (and occasionally for Rarotongans to send mail within Rarotonga).

Stamp details:
Top left:
Issued in: 1920
From: Avarua, Rarotonga
MC #16

Top right:
Issued on: October 15, 1927
From: Avarua, Rarotonga
MC #25

Stamps on bottom:
Issued on: December 20, 2018
From: Avarua, Rarotonga
Colnect #2018-13

Recognized as a sovereign state by the UN: No
Claimed by: Cook Islands (which, in turn, is in Free Association with New Zealand)
Member of the Universal Postal Union: No

Staithes, North Yorkshire.
January 2014.

My photograph.

“Except those little tufts of shrubbery, the whole country was a barren Tack doomed by Nature to everlasting sterility”.

Cook wasn’t impressed.

ISLE OF GEORGIA Charts, and views of headlands, from Captain Cook’s Second Voyage, 1772-1774

 collection British Library

“The inner parts of the country were not less savage and horrible. The wild rocks raised their lofty summits, till they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay covered with everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen, nor a shrub even big enough to make a toothpick.”

- Captain James Cook

Description  of South Georgia Island landing

17th January 1775