Reading
Before you start reading, study the following vocabulary:
Fan
Remains
Ship
Wreck
Date
Rarely
Mention
Sailor
Destroy
WHO DISCOVERED AUSTRALIA
Captain Cook fans who believe that the English explorer is the man who formally discovered Australia are shocked.
History teacher Greg Jefferys said on Tuesday he believed he found remains of a Portuguese ship under a beach in what is now the state of Queensland and that he dated the wreck to as much as 200 years before James Cook landed in Botany Bay.
If the find is a 17th century Portuguese ship, it will change the picture of the discovering of Australia.
"History's always rewritten, isn't it," said Jefferys.
"At the moment, Australian history is very Anglo-Saxon. We don't talk about the fact that the Spanish and the Portuguese were in the Pacific a good 200 years before Cook. Everyone knows it but it's rarely mentioned in our history books."
The Portuguese were great sailors, but maps of much of what they found were probably destroyed in the Lisbon earthquake of 1755.
Questions
Are the following statements about the text correct?
1. Mr Jefferys teaches history at school.
2. "Captain Cook fans" are people who like Captain Cook.
3. "History's always rewritten, isn't it" means history is always the same.
4. Mr Jefferys found a 200-year old Portuguese ship.
5. Greg Jefferys believes that Captain Cook really discovered Australia.
6. The ship wreck was found in Queensland.
7. There are a lot of Portuguese maps of Australian continent from 1755.
8. Captain Cook is the person who officially discovered Australia.
9. History books talk a lot about Spanish and Portuguese sailors in the Pacific.
10. "Australian history is very Anglo-Saxon" means Australian history is very English.