History
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Geological history[edit]
Botany Bay lies within a small tectonic depression known as the Botany Basin which in turn is situated within the larger Sydney Basin comprising modified sedimentary deposits laid down about 270 million years ago during the Permian period. The northern and southern headlands feature cliffs of Hawkesbury sandstone cliffs, which was formed during the Triassic period, between 200 and 250 million years ago.
On the Kurnell Peninsula, about 20,000 years ago at the height of the ice age, the Kurnell headland was a sandstone hill. The old dunes formed much of what is now Botany Bay and the Kurnell headland. Between 18,000 and 10,000 years ago, as the sea level rose, seagrass, salt marsh and mangroves developed and moved inland. The first evidence of Indigenous occupation of the area appears to be about 12,000 years ago. At this time the swales of the old dunes contained swamps.
By 7,400 years ago the sea level stopped rising and the cliffs and rock platforms at Kurnell were eroded by wave action to form sheer cliffs. Between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago the Kurnell isthmus began to form as the mud and sand of the Georges River built up.
The locations now known as Silver Beach and Bonna Point were subject to a buildup of sand from about 6,500 years ago. At about the same time a series of parallel dunes formed behind Bate Beach and Towra Point as the Georges River estuary shifted and sand and mud were dropped to the north of the Kurnell isthmus. The mud and sand deposit breached sea level and a dune formed on the deposit. This dune was vegetated with Kurnell dune forest, treed wetland, littoral rainforest, mangroves, sheoaks and saltmarsh.
From 4,500 years ago swamps developed in the low parts of the dunes and a series of moving dunes formed as a result of violent weather events. These new dunes covered the peninsula and the tidal flats of Botany Bay. Here again, swamps formed in these new dunes, allowing soils and dune forest to develop. As these dunes eroded, sandstone was exposed and eventually sandstone heath colonised that area. Between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago the sea level dropped to current levels.
Aboriginal people pre-contact[edit]
Most archaeological evidence relates to Indigenous occupation in the area from about 3,000 to 2,000 years ago. People living to the south of Botany Bay to Nowra spoke the Dharawal language group. The people moving through and living in the Kurnell area were the northernmost clan of the Dharawal speakers, the Gweagal. On the northern headland the people were most likely Cadigal people of the Darug language group.
The people living on the headlands and shores at the entrance to Botany Bay benefited from the many food and other resources and the mild climate of the area. On both shorelines are many midden sites providing evidence of the rich variety of sea foods enjoyed by the Indigenous people, as well as reptiles and mammals which also lived in the heath and forests. Fishing was the major source of food for the Indigenous people of the area. Fish hooks were made from turban shells, and fishing lines and nets were made from bark and native grasses. Timber from the forests at Kurnell and La Perouse provided bark for huts, canoes, and coolamons, and lomandra leaves were woven together to make bags.
Many of the local plants were edible, such as the roots of the common fern and warrigal, a spinach-like leafy plant that grew along the local fresh water streams on both northern and southern headlands. Other foods included the nectar from Banksia flowers and witchetty grubs which lived in the stems of banksia and wattle.
Because of its bountiful resources, the north and south headlands of Botany Bay were important ceremonial gathering places for the Dharawal on the south of Botany Bay and the Darug on the northern shores. At Kurnell there are several important ceremonial sites, including a bora ring used for rites and an ochre pit located near the current site of the oil refinery which provided pigment for such ceremonies.
Kurnell was possibly a semi-permanent home for the Gweagal. A marker tree distinguished by a ring-shaped hole in its trunk marks the site of a women's camp. The area also contains carved trees from which the bark for canoes and coolamons were taken and a women's birthing site, indicating the intensive use of the area by the pre-contact Gweagal community.
Aboriginal ancestral remains have been reburied in the park. These remains, taken from the Botany Bay region, were stored in various museum collections until repatriation. For Aboriginal people, the return of ancestors' remains to Country is highly significant because it then reunites ancestors with Country.
Similarly, the La Perouse section of the park contains evidence of everyday lives of Aboriginal people before European settlement, including middens and engravings that illustrate the everyday observations and preoccupations of the Indigenous people before European contact.
Arrival of Cook[edit]
Cook landing with his crew
In the days preceding 29 April 1770 Dharawal people of the southern coastal area between Nowra and Kurnell observed a large "white bird" (oral tradition of the local people) or "floating island" which was Lieutenant James Cook's Endeavour, as it passed along the coast towards the headlands of Kamay ( Botany Bay). Further south the Yuin people attributed their sightings of the Endeavour to "Gurung-gubba", the pelican of their Dreamtime stories. The Endeavour entered Botany Bay and lay anchor opposite the location of a small bark hut village on the southern shores of Kamay Botany Bay. Here James Cook and some of his crew prepared to land on the shores of Gweagal country. It is now understood that Cook's bold arrival and landing on Dharawal land was a severe breach of Indigenous etiquette and an affront to the traditional owners of the land at Kurnell.
In traditional Aboriginal culture it is customary for visitors to wait to be invited to approach the custodians of that area, so when Cook and his men landed, the local people attempted to discourage the strangers from entering the land: two warriors painted in ceremonial ochre threatened the British with spears, to which Cook ordered either one or two muskets fired. One shot found its mark and hit one of the warriors, who ran to find a shield and continued the defence of his country. As Cook and his party landed, one of the warriors threw a spear before they retreated and commenced to ignore the intruders for the entire time the British were anchored in the bay. This is consistent with the customary right of country owners to demand to meet visitors on their own terms.
During the following eight days the passengers and crew of the Endeavour explored the shores and hinterland areas around Botany Bay. The main purpose of visiting Botany Bay was to obtain fresh water for the next leg of the journey. On the second day of their stay, Cook and his men found a stream located near the bark hut village, from which they replenished the ships water supplies. The stream still flows today.
The location of the Endeavour's landfall and Cook's claim of the east coast of the continent for Britain is now commonly known as Captain Cook's Landing Place.
One of the most significant activities undertaken that week was the botanical collecting by Sir Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, noted pupil of Carolus Linnaeus. On completing his studies in Sweden, Solander travelled to England to promote the Linnaean system of classification and soon took up a position classifying collections at the British Museum. He was employed by Banks in 1768 to assist him on Cook's voyage of exploration.
Banks and Solander collected many plant and animal specimens at Botany Bay, including many which had not been collected or described previously and became the type specimens of species and genera, including the Banksia, named for Joseph Banks. Much of the collection work was carried out near the landing place and in the area now known as Towra Point and its wetlands, as well as on the northern shore of Botany Bay.
The extent and quality of the specimens collected led Cook to name the bay Botany Bay in acknowledgment of the important work undertaken by Banks and Solander. Besides being described and classified by Solander, every specimen was sketched by Sydney Parkinson. These sketches were rendered as watercolours when Banks and Solander returned to England and then engraved and later included in the publication Banks' Florilegium.
Arrival of Phillip[edit]
On 18 January 1788, eighteen years after the first visit by the British, Governor Arthur Phillip arrived at Botany Bay with the First Fleet, where they intended to establish the first British settlement in the colony. While anchored in Botany Bay a number of officers established seemingly friendly contact with the Aboriginal people, exchanging whistling tunes, confirming humanity and gender and exchanging gifts. On the southern shores they introduced a child travelling with the fleet to the Aboriginal people there.
Phillip was disappointed at the lack of water on the shores of the bay and dismayed by the large numbers of Aboriginal people inhabiting the place. By 26 January 1788, Phillip had left Botany Bay and sailed for Port Jackson, where the first settlement in Australia was made.
Arrival of Lapérouse[edit]
At the same time, Botany Bay was visited by the French expedition under the command of Jean-Francois Galaup de Lapérouse, whose frigates Boussole and Astrolabe anchored near Frenchman's Beach on 24 January 1788. Captain Hunter of the First Fleet established contact with the French in the absence of Governor Phillip.
The French ships had sailed from Samoa, where they had been involved in a battle with the Samoans. Numerous people on both sides were killed and injured. One of those injured in the event was the expedition's priest and naturalist, Père Receveur. Receveur died at La Perouse on 17 February 1788 and was the first French person to be buried on the mainland. He was interred in a headland grave marked with a common headstone. In 1829, a tomb was erected over the site of his grave.
The French spent six weeks at La Perouse, during which time they repaired damage done during the Samoan battle. An observatory was established on the northern headland for the use of Joseph Lepaute Dagelet, whose observations and scientific experiments are among the first European scientific endeavours in Australia. Dagelet undertook calculations on map positions of Botany Bay and carried out astronomical observations which he later shared with Englishman William Dawes.
The departure of Phillip and then Lapérouse from Botany Bay marked a period of time where, at least on the southern shores of the bay, Aboriginal people did not come into much contact with Europeans. The Kurnell headland was a remote spot and was not subject to a land grant until 1815. On the northern shores of the bay, the La Perouse peninsula remained relatively unsettled until the 1860s and 1880s, when a pioneering fishing community worked the waters at Botany Bay and lived in La Perouse.
While their land was not immediately settled by Europeans, white colonisation had a profound impact on the people of the area, the most significant being the spread of disease such as smallpox. There are caves at Little Bay just north of the northern section of the Botany Bay National Park and also a cave on Cape Solander in the southern section of the park in which it is believed that skeletal remains from these outbreaks were found, though this has not been confirmed.
Settlement during the 19th and 20th centuries: La Perouse[edit]
By 1830, the land which is now the northern section of Botany Bay National Park was dedicated as a Government reserve. From about 1820, a small contingent of Government troops were stationed at La Perouse headland to scout for the unexpected arrival of ships and to monitor and control smuggling activity. By 1822, these troops were housed in Macquarie's Tower, a sandstone castellated watchtower. From 1829, when the monuments to Lapérouse and Pere Receveur were erected, the watchtower was used as accommodation for a caretaker employed to look after the Lapérouse Monument and the tomb of Père Receveur. These monuments are still frequently visited by the French and are the site of events such as a memorial ceremony on Bastille Day each year, a mass to Père Receveur and Lapérouse Day.
In 1831, the watchtower was acquired by the Customs Department to house a tide waiter, or customs officer, and two boatmen who manned the La Perouse customs house outstation.
By 1869, in response to the perceived threat of armed attack by foreign forces, a program to bolster the colony's defences was in place and a military road was constructed to the La Perouse headland. By 1871 a gun battery was in place on Henry Head. In 1881 a large "mass concrete" fort was under construction on Bare Island; it was operational by 1890.
La Perouse headland was the site where the overseas underwater telegraphic cable emerged in 1876. The first makeshift facility of tents and huts was replaced in 1881 by a brick cable station sited centrally on the west of the headland overlooking Frenchman's Beach. After 1917, when it was no longer used as offices for the telegraph company, it became a nurses' home and later a home run by the Salvation Army. Most recently it is used as the La Perouse Museum.
Many Aboriginal people who had traditionally lived in the La Perouse area left after the establishment of European settlement, but by the 1870s Aboriginal people, including descendants from families associated with La Perouse and Botany Bay, along with Aboriginal people from the south coast, began to return to the area. When George Thornton, the government's Protector of Aborigines, started removing Aboriginal people from urban areas, he was successfully lobbied by a group from La Perouse, who were allowed to remain at the La Perouse camp. Thornton even constructed huts for them at the camp, justifying the decision to parliament by arguing that the camp was economically viable. By 1881 there were two camps with 35 Aboriginal people recorded to be living at La Perouse and a further 15 in Botany Bay within the boundaries of what is today Kamay Botany Bay National Park.
In 1881, there was an outbreak of smallpox in the colony. To deal with the epidemic, an isolation hospital was established at Little Bay; it became known as the Coast Hospital and then in 1934 became Prince Henry Hospital. Associated with the Coast Hospital is the Coast Cemetery, which is located south of the hospital and now is enclosed by Kamay Botany Bay National Park.
The Coast Hospital Cemetery is an Aboriginal Place and is an important burial, repatriation, and reburial site for the La Perouse and Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land councils and Dharawal Aboriginal people. In 1881, the first part of the Coast Hospital Cemetery was opened. This section was used until 1897, when a northern burial section was established and used until 1952. The cemetery was used as a burial ground for the La Perouse Aboriginal reserve, though it served predominantly as a burial ground for patients who died of infectious diseases at Prince Henry Hospital. There are 90 marked graves in the Coast Hospital Cemetery, but it is estimated that up to 3,000 people are buried there. The area was selected as an Aboriginal repatriation and reburial site because of its long-standing significance to the local Aboriginal people. The cemetery contains the burials of several family members. Aboriginal ancestral remains were reburied within the Dharawal Resting Place (previously known as the Little Bay Cemetery Resting Place) in 2002 and 2005. Members of the La Perouse and Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land councils and other Dharawal descendants regularly visit the area, maintaining close connections to Country and ancestors.
A small Anglican Aboriginal mission was established in the area in 1885 and a church built in 1894. In 1895 the camp at Frenchmans Bay, La Perouse was gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve. The people who lived there worked as fishermen, in the Chinese Gardens, or at the timber mills and wool washes in the area, or they made boomerang and other artefacts for sale to tourists, who flocked to the area after the construction of the tramway to La Perouse at the turn of the century. Many women and children crafted shell decorations for sale.
During the Great Depression, La Perouse was the site of a shanty town known as Happy Valley, which was located within the boundaries of the Botany Bay National Park behind Congwong Beach. Those who arrived at Happy Valley simply selected a spot and erected their home from corrugated iron or whatever could be found. Reputedly there was much positive interaction between residents at Happy Valley and those on the Aboriginal reserve. While life was hard at Happy Valley, some unemployed residents valued the site for its carefree existence and beach access. In 1939, after intense lobbying by the neighbouring golf club, Randwick Council moved all the residents to more suitable accommodation and demolished the shanty town.
During the 1960s, a wave of new white residents arrived at La Perouse and lobbied for the removal of the reserve at Yarra Bay. The Aboriginal community has resisted these efforts and the La Perouse community remains one of the strongest and most established Aboriginal communities in Sydney.
Settlement in the 19th and 20th century: Kurnell[edit]
In 1815, Governor Macquarie made a grant of 700 acres of land to James Birnie at Kurnell. Here Birnie established a farm, raising vegetables and stock and constructing a homestead on the site of the current Alpha House near Captain Cooks Landing Place in the Kamay Botany Bay National Park.
In 1821, another grant was made of 1,000 acres at the nearby Quibray Bay to John Connell, a free settler who arrived in NSW in 1801 and set up a large ironmongery in Sydney. When in 1828 Birnie was declared insane, Connell bought Alpha Farm, and by 1838 he owned almost the entire Kurnell Peninsula. His grandson John inherited the estate on John senior's death in 1851. He cleared the land heavily and sold the timber to the Sydney market.
Facing financial ruin in 1860, John Connell Jr mortgaged his landholdings at Kurnell to Thomas Holt, who took ownership in 1861. Holt, a successful wool merchant and member of the Legislative Council, was a prominent and influential figure in the New South Wales.
Holt established a scientific oyster farming program at Quibray Bay, attempted to raise sheep on specially planted pastures of imported grass and dabbled in timber and even coal mining on the Kurnell Peninsula. This work was done with the assistance of many employees, including a number of Aboriginal people such as William Rowley, a Gweagal man, who was also an enterprising local fisherman born at Towra Point.
Despite Holt's efforts at Kurnell, none of the enterprises were very successful, and by 1881 he began subdividing the estate. Even this exercise was not successful, and unsold lots within the current national park were set aside as a public reserve in the 1899, along with an area similarly reserved at an earlier date. The reserve, totalling 100 hectares at the time, was managed by a trust under the auspices of the Department of Lands.
From the 1820s Captain Cook's Landing Place was a popular destination for people with an interest in European history in Australia. Many people visited various places of interest, such as the plaque at Inscription Point, which had been installed by the Philosophical Society of Australasia in the early 1820s. In 1870 Thomas Holt erected Cook's Obelisk to mark the European arrival at Botany Bay. To cope with the area's increasing visitation, Holt built the first wharf at Kurnell just adjacent to the obelisk, and a steam ferry began to operate some time around 1882.
Captain Cooks Landing Place Reserve, a New South Wales State Heritage Register
The reserve was the responsibility of the Department of Lands up until 1967 and was managed by a trust right up until 1974. The trust employed a caretaker and field staff to maintain the reserve. It also spent considerable time and money on siting and erecting monuments to Cook and his crew. In 1918 the trust erected the Solander Obelisk and in 1947 the Banks Memorial.
A cottage was erected on the site of the first Alpha Farm House, providing accommodation for visitors as well as for the reserve caretaker, whose wife operated a kiosk from the kitchen.
In the years after the Second World War, under the management of the trust, the area became a hugely popular holiday destination for campers. Families who faithfully returned to camp there each year set up semi-permanent camps in small timber cabins and tents painted with calcimine for weatherproofing, with stoves and camp beds. Most of their food they brought with them, but fresh milk was sourced daily from the caretaker's wife, who managed a herd of cows which roamed the reserve. Holiday camping at the park continued until around 1977, when the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service discontinued this use and disposed of the semi-permanent dwellings.
Like La Perouse, the Kurnell section of Botany Bay National Park had a shanty town. This was established in the cliff overhangs and caves overlooking the Pacific Ocean at Cape Solander and Tabbagi Gap. The earliest dwelling was built in 1919, and others were constructed during the Great Depression in the 1930s. These dwellings were constructed of tin and timber, and stoves and other home wares were installed to make the place comfortable. They continued to be used during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s by recreational fishermen and local eccentrics.
The Aboriginal people of La Perouse retained a strong link with the Kurnell section of the Botany Bay National Park throughout the 20th century. Kurnell was a frequent destination for family groups who would travel over by ferry and spend the day fishing, swimming, foraging for bush foods. The banks of Cook's Stream was a source of warrigal greens, and further afield one could find five-corner berries, wombat berries and sarsaparilla.
Sonny Simms, who grew up at La Perouse in the 1930s and 1940s, recalled that the resources of the bay, its fish and shellfish, were an important supplement to the family's food resources when his father left and his mother became the sole provider for her family of nine children. The family would travel to Kurnell, where their mother taught them how to catch fish, lobster and abalone. The fish caught would be cooked in an old five-gallon drum and eaten on the spot.
Other resources found in the park and at Towra Point were the mangrove knees, which up until the late 1960s were harvested to make boomerangs for the tourist trade. The shells for the La Perouse women's shell craft work were collected from the beach at Wanda.
The huge sand dunes and their large freshwater ponds were a strong memory for Sonny Simms, who as a child regularly swam in these. The dunes survived relatively unaffected up until the 1950s, when the oil refinery was established there. It was not until the Sydney building boom in the late 1960s and 1970s that the demand for sand resulted in the dunes becoming degraded by sand mining over much of the Kurnell Peninsula.
In 1967 the reserve at Kurnell was handed over to the National Parks and Wildlife Service, which, besides its environmental charter, had custody of historic sites, of which Captain Cook's Landing Place at Kurnell was one. By 1974 National Parks and Wildlife Service was able to take on the full management of the park and the reserve trust was disbanded. The Botany Bay National Park was finally gazetted in 1988.
Under the management of National Parks and Wildlife Service much work has been done to redress the balance in articulating the Aboriginal and European historical and cultural values of the place. This is evidenced in the renaming of the longstanding Commemoration Day ceremony as the Meeting of Cultures ceremony and the structured involvement of local Aboriginal elders in the ceremony. In addition Aboriginal people have been closely involved in other important events in the park, such as the start to the Olympic Torch Relay in 2000, which was begun by one of the Aboriginal park rangers. A significant amount of work has been done to the interpret the history and connections of the site: in particular, the opening of interpretive walks and the re-opening of the freshwater stream.
Perhaps the most significant events to have been held in the park in recent years have been the repatriation burials. These events are of great importance to the local Aboriginal community as local elders received back the remains of their ancestors from public institutions where they were studied and regarded as curiosities in their own land. The La Perouse museum precinct in Botany Bay National Park is to be reinvigorated, with the NSW Government and Randwick City Council moving to lease the historic site.
