Invisible ships

Banks wrote that the natives did not appear surprised or concerned from a distance, but unlike the myth, once the ships approached land they were confronted by armed men.

[5] The invisible ships myth is likely based on the diary of botanist Joseph Banks, who traveled with Captain Cook on the HMS Endeavour and documented his account of the natives when entering Botany Bay in Australia in April 1770:[1][3] These people seemd to be totaly engag'd in what they were about: the ship passed within a quarter of a mile of them and yet they scarce lifted their eyes from their employment; I was almost inclind to think that attentive to their business and deafnd by the noise of the surf they neither saw nor heard her go past them.

Soon after this she lighted a fire and the four Canoes came in from fishing; the people landed, hauld up their boats and began to dress their dinner to all appearance totaly unmovd at us, tho we were within a little more than 1/2 a mile of them.

[2] Hobbs of ABC Science likens the natives' likely experience to the inattentional blindness and selective attention demonstrated by the Invisible Gorilla Test produced by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.

[8] Similarly, David Hambling wrote in Fortean Times that Europeans were "used to being the star attraction wherever they go", that it should not be surprising that they were perceived as hostile and so not warmly greeted, and that perhaps "the aborigines did not think that this outsize canoe was quite so 'remarkable' as Banks himself did".

[7] According to an interviewee in a National Museum of Australia oral history project, the natives Banks wrote about may have ignored the explorers because "in Dharawal culture, contact with strangers or spirits from the afterlife caused spiritual consequences and was mostly avoided by the general community.