A boomerang said to have been collected by Captain Cook on his first trip to Australia has been withdrawn on the eve of its auction at Christie’s in London after doubts emerged about its authenticity.

The auction house’s legal department demanded the last-minute withdrawal of Lot 33 – “A boomerang of New Holland Captain James Cook 1728-1779” – from an auction due to take place yesterday, after continuing speculation about the origins of the Aboriginal artefact.

The boomerang's provenance has been the source of controversy in the art world for over a month, since Christie's first advertised its sale, along with two clubs with a similar provenance, as the leading item in an auction of exploration and travel. The boomerang, supposedly collected by the English explorer on his first voyage to Australia, was expected to fetch up to £60,000 and the clubs up to £30,000 as they were thought to be the world’s most collectable pieces of “first contact” with Australia.

In its catalogue Christie’s describes the artefacts as coming from “the first contact between Europeans and the aboriginal (sic) population of south eastern New Holland”.

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Australian ethnographers and Aboriginal historians, however, argue that the boomerang is not old enough to have been owned by Captain Cook. Arthur Palmer, an Australian ethnographer who independently appraised the boomerang, described it is an “unsaleable bent stick” which hails from about the 1820s – 40 years after the explorer's death. Although still a valuable piece of Australian history, he said, it was worth just £550.

A Christie’s spokesman, Matthew Paton, told Times Online today that the boomerang “was withdrawn from this auction so that it could be subject to further research”. He said the sudden withdrawal was “not the result of fresh information”. Mr Paton would not divulge which experts were being consulted for the new verification of the items and refused to clarify whether any Australian experts would be involved.

Asked if the items, which have been returned to the vendor, would be put up for auction at a later date, he said: “Possibly. That is a decision of the current owner.”

A description of the items on Christie's website, which has now been taken down, said the boomerang and clubs “were previously in the possession of Captain Cook’s widow, Elizabeth, and have descended from her executor and residuary beneficiary John Leach Bennett to the present owner.”

The auction house’s claim that Captain Cook picked up the boomerang on his first trip to Australia was based on the opinion of the Smithsonian Institute’s Cook expert Dr Adrienne Kaeppler and attributed to notes made by Joseph Banks in his Endeavour journal describing an encounter with Aborigines at Botany Bay in 1770: “each of these held in his hand a wooden weapon about 2 ½ feet long, in shape much resembling a scymeter.”

However Mr Palmer claims it is an “uncritical leap of faith” to link the boomerang with the explorers: “There is not the slightest evidence Cook was ever connected with this boomerang”.

He estimated the age of the boomerang and clubs as being post-European contact, circa 1820s.

It is a claim backed by the National Museum of Australia (NMA).

Elizabeth Cook survived her explorer husband by 56 years and maintained good relationships with his friends and Royal Navy colleagues, which means she could easily have come into possession of such a boomerang and set of clubs, but at a much later date than Christie’s were claiming.

“The National Museum of Australia identified a number of concerns about the way the objects were described in the auction catalogue – particularly Christie’s description that they were likely to have been collected by James Cook in 1770,” said the NMA’s spokesman Dennis Grant.

“The museum’s research shows that a direct link to Captain James Cook is unlikely. At best, the boomerang could possibly be traced to Elizabeth Cook.”

Mr Grant said the museum, which is collating an exhibition of “Cookabilia” actually placed a lower bid for the items based on their conclusion it was linked through Elizabeth Cook, but was rejected by the vendor.

Mr Palmer emailed Christie’s head office in Paris a month ago with his findings, and was told they were sent on to the auction house’s head of Australian art, Nick Lambourn, who was overseeing the sale and visited Australia earlier this month ahead of the auction.

Mr Palmer said Christie’s had misled the public and called for Mr Lambourn’s resignation if it was concluded that the boomerang was in fact not Captain Cook’s.

“You can’t claim to have the Holy Grail and turn up with a tea cup,” he said.

The auction gained attention internationally because of the supposed historical significance of the items, which were subject to a campaign by a federal member of the Australian parliament, Scott Morrison, who petitioned for the British government to return the artefacts to their original home.

Mr Morrison, whose constituency surrounds Botany Bay in Sydney where Captain Cook first landed, said Christie’s “would need to explain what’s been going on” if it was found the boomerang did not belong to the explorer.

“But if it was verified that it was even part of Elizabeth Cook’s collection, it’s still a relevant connection so we would just not have to pay as much for it.”

The items are believed to remain the property of John Leach Bennett’s descendents in Britain.

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