DEBATE continues over a London auction house's claim that it has a boomerang collected by Captain James Cook in 1770, which some say would be the world's most collectable piece of "first contact" Australiana.
But the political campaign to have the boomerang returned to Aboriginal hands goes on.
A senior Christie's manager flew to Australia from London last week to try to convince interested buyers of its provenance.
The director of Australian art, Nicholas Lambourn, would not reveal who he had met but was "not terribly interested" in the valuation of the Brisbane ethnographer and artefact dealer Arthur Palmer, who last week called it a "leap of faith" to conclude the boomerang was Cook's; he valued it at $1200.
Christie's says the boomerang, due on sale September 25, is "likely to have been collected" by Cook and estimates its value at more than $120,000, based on the opinion of the Smithsonian Institution's Cook expert, Dr Adrienne Kaeppler.
The historian Keith Vincent Smith, who has written books about the notable Aborigines Bungaree and Bennelong and curated a State Library of NSW exhibition about Sydney's Aboriginal history, sided with Mr Palmer.
He said the first European description of a returning boomerang in the Sydney area was 34 years after Cook, in 1804, when Bungaree - the Aborigine who accompanied Matthew Flinders on his circumnavigation of Australia - threw one in Farm Cove.
Page two of The Sydney Gazette on December 23, 1804, reported: "The weapon, thrown at 20 or 30 yards distance, twirled round in the air, with astonishing velocity and alighting on the right arm of one of his opponents, actually rebounded to a distance not less than 70 or 80 yards, leaving a horrible contusion behind and exciting universal admiration."
Mr Smith said the Christie's boomerang was probably collected by Isaac Smith, cousin to Cook's widow, Elizabeth.
Adding to the confusion is that this is not the first boomerang to have been described as Cook's. In 1926, a Herald article by the archaeologist J.V.S. Megaw mentioned another that had come from Cook's widow and returned to Australia. It is believed to have ended up in the Australian Museum, where Mr Lambourn said it was discounted by Dr Kaeppler.
The federal member for Cook, Scott Morrison, who is campaigning for the boomerang's return, said there would always be questions about authenticity.
"Of course we need to do our homework on the boomerang before anyone writes a cheque. This has always been an obvious and implicit part of the process we have suggested," he said.