As much flak as Captain Cook

Some nice people come from Captain Cook’s home town of Middlesbrough although you wouldn’t know it, judging by the recent protests against his arrival in Australia.

One is Kim Campbell, who has stopped mentioning Cook when people ask her where she’s from.

Kim was in Fitzroy Gardens on Australia Day and saw Cook’s cottage under tight security.

“They were slagging him,” she said. “I felt sad the way they were thinking. They attacked statues in St Kilda.”

Middlesbrough is in North Yorkshire and the people have the reputation of the being the friendliest in England.

Kim grew up about 10 minutes’ drive from Cook’s cottage. She said there weren’t any similar cottages left in the town. Her grandfather was a seafarer like Cook and there’s a museum dedicated to the explorer.

But it’s fair to say that Cook did not feature heavily in the young Kim’s life, except perhaps as a model for moving around.

She moved into her heritage apartment in East Melbourne six months ago during the lockdown and spends so much time in the gardens “I may as well pay rent,” she said.

She walks through every day on her way to the Crown Casino where she works as a croupier on the black jack and baccarat tables. Her shift finishes at 4am.

“I’m a night owl,” she said, tracing her love of night life back to working in luxury hotels and on cruises where her nickname was “Kimmy Crowbar” and beer was just 50 cents, and cocktails $1.

She was arranging to catch up with her cruise mates in Mexico when the pandemic hit.

Everywhere she goes she finds a laugh. At the casino croupiers have to wear masks but some dealers are using this as an excuse not to call the game. “You have to,” she said.

She loves the buzz of the tables and manages to cruise through hot spots – Cook’s cottage on Australia Day, the casino when it’s under investigation. “I get an email from a new CEO every day,” she joked.

Days are for sleeping, walking the dog and bird watching while nights are … she loves the pub.

“My family is coming out of lockdown back home. On April 12, the pubs can open. In England you can have six people in a park. Who wants a picnic in this weather?”

She misses roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, good lager and cider. The fish and chips she recently had in Mornington “was a waste of money”.

Kim left school at 16. “I left on a Friday and had a job on a Monday. It was a massive supermarket. I ended up with the boss for three years. He wanted to get married. I didn’t,” she said.

She was more interested in swish hotels than dating and ended up working in a five-star hotel on the English Channel island of Jersey.

“I’ve travelled a lot,” she admitted, but she’s staying put here in Melbourne and was supportive of the way the pandemic had been handled.

“I think Dan has done well even though he gets as much flak as Captain Cook.” •