Situated a few kilometres south of the City of Sydney within the Sydney Metropoliyan Area, Botany Bay is one of the most significant localities in the history of modern Australia. Botany Bay was the site of a landing by James Cook of HMS Endeavour in 1770. Cook's landing here marked the beginning of Britain's interest in Australia and in the eventual colonisation of this new Southern continent, an event in which Botany Bay would play a significant role. In modern times the Bay is chiefly known for being the site of Kingsford Smith International Airport, Australia's largest airport. The land around the headlands of the bay is protected as Kamay Botany Bay National Park. Also within Botany Bay is Towra Point Nature Reserve.
Memorial to Sir Joseph Banks, Kurnell
In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook landed at Botany Bay's Inscription Point on the Kurnell Peninsula headland. He and the Endeavour crew stayed in the area for eight days, the visit having a dramatic impact on Australian history. Located near Silver Beach, Cook's landing place is a popular Sydney attraction. Now heritage-listed, this reserve interprets the story of the meeting of European and Aboriginal cultures. Cook's Landing Place has memorials to Cook and his fellow travellers, naturalists Joseph Banks and Carl Solander, a marker and plaque identifying the exact spot where they came ashore.
Initially the name Stingray Bay was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition, for the stingrays they caught. That name was recorded on an Admiralty chart too. Cook's log for 6th May 1770 records "the great quantity of these sort of fish found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Stingrays Harbour". But in his journal (prepared later from his log) he changed to "The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the Name of Botany Bay".
Whilst it is a totally reasonable explanation for the naming of Botany Bay, there is evidence that Cook had an old map in his possesion that might have swayed his decision to make the name change. The map, known today as the Dauphin map, charted the coast of a land mass named Java Le Grande which had not been officially "discovered". The map was drawn by French cartographers in Dieppe, who most likely sourced its contents from Portuguese mariners.
A copy of the Dauphin map had come into the possession of King Henry VIII. The British Admiralty's hydrographer, Alexander Dalrymple, intended to use this map, or one similar to it, to assist him during his planned voyage of discovery in the Pacific, which Lieut. James Cook eventually made in his place. Dalrymple never admitted to offering or giving a copy of the map to Cook, or for that matter withholding it from him either, but in 1786, he startled the world by announcing in a postscript to a pamphlet on the Chagos Islands that despite Cook's supposedly triumphant first discovery of the eastern coast of Australia, that honour really belonged to the Portuguese.
Dauphin map of Jave-La-Grande, C. 1530
As evidence, he cited the Dauphin map. One of the coastal features marked on the east coast of Java Le Grande is called Coste des Herbiages (Coast of Vegetation). Where the map is compared to Cook's map of the east coast of Australia, its location is where Cook came ashore in April 1770. The name Cook finally settled on, in old French, translates as Baye des Herbiages. By citing the map, Dalrymple had by implication accused Cook of fraudulently accepting recognition for the discovery, which may explain Cook's undue modesty in not viewing his work about Australia as being great, and that by changing Botany Bay's name, he was recognising that the locality had already been discovered, charted and named.
The Dieppe Maps
The grave of Scottish Seaman Forbus (Forby) Sutherland
Botany Bay is the resting place the first two Europeans to have been buried in marked graves on Australian soil. Near Cook's Landing Place is the grave of Scottish Seaman Forbus (Forby) Sutherland, of James Cook's Endeavour who died of tuberculosis on 30th April, 1770, the day after the vessel was brought to anchor in Botany Bay. His body was brought ashore and buried the following day near a watering place used by Cook (the small creek still flows today) who named the nearby headland Point Sutherland in his memory. The location is marked by a cairn.
Christened 13th December 1736 in Stromness, Orkney, Scotland, it is believed that Forby was employed as a farm hand, and that he won the favour of his employer, who sent him to a school for seamen. An Able Seaman of the crew of HMS Endeavour, he was the ship's poulterer, ie, he prepared game birds for the table. Forby contracted consumption (tuberculosis) whilst the Endeavour was at the Estrecho de le Maire (Le Maire Strait), a sea passage between Isla de los Estados and the eastern extremity of the Argentine portion of Tierra del Fuego. He died age 33.
On the northern shore, at La Perouse, is another grave, that of French Franciscan friar Claude-Francois Joseph (Pere) Receveur, who came to Australia on La Boussole in January 1788 at the time of the arrival of the first fleet (see below). L'Astrolabe and La Boussole, commanded by La Compt de La Perouse, were on an expedition of discovery and exploration into the Pacific.
Visit of HMS Endeavour to Botany Bay, 1770
Cape Solander is undoubtedly one of Sydney's best whale watching spots - June/July is the best time to see humpback whales as they migrate to warmer waters. If you're lucky you won't even need to look far - whales have been known to swim as close as 200m from the coast. Named after botanist Daniel Solander, Cape Solander features a lookout with a viewing platform - the perfect vantage point - along with information on whales seen in Sydney waters. Friendly volunteers are there to provide information throughout the season.
Banks-Solander Track is an easy walk in Kamay Botany Bay National Park. Many of Australia's plants were first collected and described in the area by Cook's botanists, Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, in 1770. The track features informative panels showcasing numerous plant types that fascinated Banks and Solander more than 240 years ago. The cape is named after botanist Daniel Solander, a Swedish naturalists who visited Botany Bay on HMS Endeavour. Solander was the first university-educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.
The small island just inside the heads was described by Captain James Cook as 'a small bare island'. It was never given a name, and so the notation on Cook's charts stayed as the means of identifaction of this small island at the head of Botany Bay.
Bare Island was part of the traditional land of the Gweagal and Kameygal Aboriginal tribes. The island was fortified in 1885, according to a design by colonial architect, James Barnet (1827 -1904), and fitted with heavy guns. In 1912 Bare Island became a retirement home for war veterans, which continued to operate until 1963 when it was handed over to the New South Wales Parks and Wildlife Service for use as a museum and tourist attraction. Bare Island is connected by a footbridge to the suburb of La Perouse. The historic military fort and tunnels can only be visited by guided tour. The waters around the island are popular with scuba divers.
About Bare Island
In 1788, Captain Arthur Phillip led the First Fleet into Botany Bay on 19th January 1788 to found a British penal colony there. Finding that the sandy infertile soil of the site rendered it most unsuitable for settlement, Phillip decided to look for a better site for a settlement. It was quite different to what Joseph Banks had described Botany Bay as being. Phillip found few trees, the meadows Banks had waxed lyrical about were in fact marshlands, the vegetation of which was dry and had turned brown under the hot summer sun. The river to the north of the bay (Cooks River) was swampy and uninviting, and it was Phillip's view that an alternate site had to be found.
He decided to disregard his instructions and send a party north in search of a more suitable site at either Broken Bay or Port Jackson, which Cook had not entered, but had marked on his map as being a safe harbour. On 24th January 1788, just six days after Captain Arthur Phillip (1738–1814) had anchored just west of Bare Island in HMS Supply, two French ships were seen off the coast. Somewhat panicked, possibly suspecting they had orders to claim Terra Australis for France, Captain Phillip quickly put an expedition together, sailing that afternoon straight to Port Jackson as a matter of urgency. On the following day, he followed its southern shore, settling on Sydney Cove as a suitable site.
The two ships Phillip had seen were the Astrolabe and Boussole, French vessels of the exploratory expedition of Jean-Francois de La Perouse. They entered Botany Bay on 26 January 1788 as Captain John Hunter was moving the First Fleet around to Port Jackson. The French had expected to find a thriving colony where they could repair ships and restock supplies, not a newly arrived fleet of convict transports that had still to be unloaded.
Phillip ordered the captains of his naval vessels, HMS Sirius and Supply, to meet the French; Phillip and La Perouse never met personally, giving rise to a popular belief that La Perouse had orders to establish a French presence there, which is not correct. Phillip's men received La Perouse courteously, and offered him any assistance he might need. The French were far better provisioned than the British were, and extended the same courtesy but apparently neither offer was accepted. Their meeting was cordial and followed normal protocols. La Perouse requested that his journals and letters be sent to Europe with the next available ship, which they did, on the Sirius. There is no record of the French and British parties having any further offical contact with each other during the French expedition's six week stay.
Despite the move to Sydney Cove, for many years afterward, the penal colony of New South Wales would be referred to as "Botany Bay" in England - and in convict ballads such as Ireland's "The Fields of Athenry". The good supply of fresh water in the area led to the expansion of its population in the 19th century. The land around Botany Bay became part of the Sydney metropolitan area with suburban expension in the early part of the 20th century. Port Botany was built in 1930 and is now a container terminal.
The First Fleet, 1788
The La Perouse peninsula is the northern headland of Botany Bay. A large area of La Perouse is open space, where one can find the old military outpost at Bare Island and the northern section of Botany Bay National Park. Congwong Bay Beach, Little Congwong Beach, and the beach at Frenchmans Bay provide protected swimming areas in Botany Bay.
A stone obelisk with a globe on top which commemorates the visit to Botany Bay in January 1788 of a French expedtion to the Pacific commissioned by Louis XVI of France and commanded by La Compt de La Perouse with two ships, L'Astrolabe and La Boussole. The French stayed at Botany Bay for six weeks and built a stockade, observatory and a garden for fresh produce on what is now known as the La Perouse peninsula. After completing the building of a longboat (to replace one lost in the attack in the Navigator Islands) and obtaining wood and water, the French departed for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, and the Louisiades.
La Perouse wrote in his journals that he expected to be back in France by December 1788, but his expedition was never to be seen again. Some of the mystery was solved in 1826 when items associated with the French ships were found on an island in the Santa Cruz group, with wreckage discovered on reefs at Vantikoro off the Solomon Islands in 1964. In May 2005, the wreck was formally identified as that of the Boussole. The remains of L'Astrolabe has yet to be positively identified.
The monument at La Perouse was designed by Colonial Architect George Cockney to the instructions of the Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, and officially commemorated by Captain B.H. Bougainville. Erected in 1825, it is believed to be the oldest monument in Sydney and perhaps the whole of Australia. Several plaques have since been added which commemorate other French citizens in Australia.
Visit of La Perouse to Botany Bay, 1788
Grave of Claude-Francois Joseph (Pere) Receveur
On the shores of Frenchmans Bay is the grave of French Franciscan friar Claude-Francois Joseph (Pére) Receveur, who came to Australia as a scientist and chaplain on La Boussole in January 1788 at the time of the arrival of the first fleet. Earlier on the expedition, they had landed on 6th December 1787 at Maouna, in the Navigator Islands in the Samoan Group, where an exploring party was attacked by natives, 12 being killed and others wounded. Among the latter was Receveur, who was a chaplain, botanist and shoemaker. He succumbed to his wounds after landing on Australian shores.
The tomb we see today was erected by Baron de Bougainville in 1825 near the grave site. The Baron commissioned and paid for the present tombstone and the monument to Laperouse, after consultation with Governor Thomas Brisbane. Both were designed and costed by the Government Architect George Cookney. The epitaph appears to have been based on the texts recorded by the First Fleet officers in early 1788, but with some change in the Latin grammar. Although commemorative Catholic Masses at the gravesite were reported as early as 1879, in 1933, 5,000 people attended the first mass 'pilgrimage' to Pére Receveur's grave.
Receveur's burial, on 17th February 1788 on the La Perouse headland, was the third recorded death and burial of an European on Australian soil. Forby Sutherland, a member of James Cook's expedition, died a few kilometres to the south of La Perouse in April 1770; William Dampier's cook, John Goodman, died in August 1699 whilst in Shark Bay; a Dutch sailor of the Duyfken is known to have died and been buried near Cape Keerweer on the Gulf of Carpentaria in March 1606, though his name was not recorded.
Receveur's grave was originally marked with a painted epitaph fixed to a tree trunk. Laperouse departed Botany Bay on 10 March 1788. Soon after, the grave marker was found to have been torn down. Governor Phillip ordered a replacement to be engraved on copper. Several officers in the First Fleet recorded the epitaph with varying degrees of consistency. When Louis Isidore Duperrey's expedition arrived in New South Wales on the Coquille in 1824, a number of the officers went in search of Laperouse's campsite and Receveur's grave on Botany Bay. One of them, Ensign Victor-Charles Lottin, recorded that after they found it.
They carved the trunk of an enormous eucalyptus which shaded the site, with the words: Prés de cet arbre reposent les cendres du pére Receveur, visité en mars 1824 [Near this tree lie the remains of Father Receveur, visited in March 1824]. The tree was later used as a windbreak for a fire, but the carved inscription was saved thanks to the efforts of Simeon Pearce, later the first mayor of Randwick. It was then exhibited at the Exposition Universelle, in Paris in 1854. Soon after, it became part of the collection of the Louvre and thence the nascent Musée de la Marine in Paris.
In spite of its close proximity to local industry, the airport and Port Botany shipping facilities, Frenchmans Bay is today a pleasant 60-metre strip of beach, ideal for families, on the north-east shore of Botany Bay. Its name recalls French explorer Francois de Galaup, Comte de La Perouse and his crew who rested here in January/February 1788. It is also near the burial place of Pere Louis Receveur. Although commemorative Catholic Masses at the gravesite were reported as early as 1879, in 1933, 5,000 people attended the first mass 'pilgrimage' to Pére Receveur's grave.
A carving of a large sea creature, possibly a whale, and its calf, was once clearly visible on the rocks at the southern end of Frenchmans Bay (above). Identified as being 120 metres south west of the La Perouse monument, the whale is 10 metres long and the calf half that length. Little of the carving is visible today, thanks to wind, water and foot erosion, being located at a spot which has been frequented by fishermen and visitors for over a hundred years. A carving of a shark and two unidentified objects, possibly weapons or tools such as an axe, are known to have existed 180 metres away. On a boulder like rock 30 metres north east of the fish were two carvings of boomerangs, one with a reverse curve. The carvings were created by the Kameygal Clan, the Aboriginal occupants of the north shore of Botany Bay.
Molineaux Point was named by Lieut. James Cook during his visit to Botany Bay in April 1770 after Robert Molyneux, master of HMS Endeavour. Molineaux Point is not the only name to be found on the northern shores to recall the early days of European exploration and settlement. The road to the point - Phillip Bay, now known as Yarra Bay, honours the first Governor of New South Wales, Arthur Phillip who brought the first fleet safely to Botany Bay in 1788. Ironically he rejected the bay and locality now named in his honour as the site for the convict settlement of New South Wales he was commissioned to establish, preferring Sydney Cove on Port Jackson, to the north.
Master Robert Molineux was not the most temperate of individuals. Early in the voyage, an entry in the ship's log documenting occasional outbursts of rowdiness and drunken behaviour identified Molineux as the worst offender. 'His drunkenness is reprehensible. I must constantly put him to task to keep him off the bottle. Even so, I know he slips drinks in during work’, wrote Cook. He was also reported as saying rats made good eating. Molineux was the most senior of the warrant officers. His main duty was to navigate the ship, under the direction of the captain. He also acted as surveyor taking soundings and produced several very important charts of previously unknown coasts. He was responsible for ‘trimming’ the ship – distributing its load so that it sat correctly in the water. He had to ensure the safe anchorage of the Endeavour and oversaw the day to day running of the ship.
When he signed up for Endeavour, Molyneux, a native of Hale, Lancashire, near Liverpool, had just returned to England after serving as Master's mate on HMS Dolphin under Captain Samuel Wallis. The Dolphin had circumnavigated the globe and returned to England in May 1768 after two years at sea.
Cruwee Cove, to the east of La Perouse on the shores of Little Bay towards Cape Banks, was named after an Aboriginal who, during early colonial times, claimed to have sighted James Cook's arrival at Botany Bay in 1770. He is reported to have lived to the mid 1850s. Legend has it that he watched from the bay as HM barque Endeavour enter Botany Bay when he was a young boy.
Prince Of Wales Drive recalls one of the ships of the First Fleet. It arrived in Botany Bay on 19th January 1788 carrying a cargo of convicts. Penrhyn Estuary recalls another First Fleet convict transport vessel, the Lady Penrhyn, her journey to Botany Bay being her maiden voyage. Lady Penrhyn sailed with 101 female convicts. The crew strength is believed to have been 32. Also on board were around 11 marines, officials, some horses and either a stowaway or free settler named James Smith.
Port Botany is a major commercial area and deepwater seaport located on the northern shores of Botany Bay. The port is dominated by trade in containerised manufactured products, and to a lesser extent, bulk liquid imports including petroleum and natural gas. It is Australia's second-largest container port, and is administered by NSW Ports.
Prior to 1960 Sydney's international shipping facilities were exclusively located in Port Jackson, with bulk and break bulk docks at Darling Harbour and Walsh Bay. and bulk and ro-ro docks at Glebe Island and White Bay. With the advent of containerization in the late 1950s it became clear that Sydney would require additional port facilities to cater for new cargo types. In the 1960s the government agency responsible for ports, the NSW Maritime Services Board, recommended that a new port complex be developed in the northern part of Botany Bay adjacent to Sydney Airport.
port Botany Website
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