In 1768 Captain Cook made the first of his voyages to the southern hemisphere. Among the many strange animals he and his expedition members saw, it must have been the kangaroo that struck them as the most bizarre.
They asked the local people what it was called, and got the reply gangurru. That's the name for a large black or grey kangaroo in the Guugu Yimidhirr language of New South Wales, but its Anglicized form kangaroo was soon being used for any sort of kangaroo.
Captain Cook noted in his diary for 4 August 1770 'The Animal which I have before mentioned called by the natives Kangooroo or Kanguru'.
