The Kamay Botany Bay National Park is a heritage-listed protected national park that is located in the eastern part of Botany Bay in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The national park is situated approximately south-east of the Sydney central business district, on the northern and southern headlands of Botany Bay. The northern headland is at La Perouse and the southern headland is at Kurnell.
The visitor attraction, natural conservation and heritage conservation area at Cape Solander Drive is also known as Kamay Botany Bay National Park (North and South) and Towra Point Nature Reserve, La Perouse Monument, Tomb of Père (Fr.) Receveur, Macquarie Watchtower and Cable Station. The property is owned by NSW Office of Environment and Heritage and managed by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service, both agencies of the Government of New South Wales. Kamay Botany Bay was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 29 November 2013, and was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 10 September 2017. It is also included in a UNESCO World Heritage serial nomination 'The Rise of Systemic Biology'.
The area is recognised for its outstanding cultural and historic heritage values to Australia. It is a place where botanist Sir Joseph Banks and naturalist Dr Daniel Solander collected plant specimens in 1770 as part of the first landing of the Endeavour in Australia. Banks and Solander collected many iconic Australian plant species, including some type specimens; these have important scientific and research value.
History
Geological history
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.
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
thumb|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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
Description
The total area of the proposed listing is . of the listing comprises Kamay Botany Bay National Park, situated on the north and south sandstone headlands of Botany Bay. The headlands create the dramatic entrance to Botany Bay, which is located about 14 km south of the centre of Sydney. The listing boundary also includes the Towra Point Nature Reserve, an area of of wetlands located to the west of Kurnell village in Botany Bay.
The sandy soils are covered with diverse vegetation comprising over 350 species once common in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, including rare species and communities. The most common vegetation cover is heath Banksia community (Banksia ericifolia), prickly tea tree (Leptospermum juniperinum) and paperbark (Melaleuca nodosa). To the west of the park is a thick covering of coastal tea tree scrub (Leptospermum laevigatum) consisting of coast banksia (Banksia integrifolia) and bangalay (Eucalyptus botryoides). In sheltered areas such as behind little Congwong Bay lies a low closed forest of smooth-barked apple (Angophora costata).
Towra Point Nature Reserve
Within the nature reserve is the Towra Point Keeping Place Aboriginal Place, which is an Aboriginal reburial site where ancestral remains have been returned to Country. Evidence of past Aboriginal occupation (campsites evidenced by shell middens and stone artefact scatters) can be found in the local area. Local vegetation is dominated by sclerophyll forest and includes coast banksia and tea tree.
Features
A number of memorials commemorating Australia's history are located at the entrance to the Kurnell Peninsula portion of the park. This area has a coast walk connecting the memorials and is near the information centre and a museum.
The Kurnell Peninsula portion includes much of the eastern half of the promontory, adjacent to the Caltex Oil Refinery. The area is bordered by sandstone cliffs, eroded to a few metres above sea level in the north and higher in the south. The highest point is about above sea level and there are two mapped lookouts, Kurnell Lookout and Houston Lookout. Hills of dry sclerophyll bushland include Botany Cone at above sea level and Long Nose at . There are many small points and cliff formations and several walking tracks. The carpark and lookout at the end of the Yena Track is popular for whale watching in the migration season.
Also present in the park is the Cape Bailey Light, a lighthouse built in 1950.
Heritage listing
As at 29 July 2013, Kamay Botany Bay National Park and Towra Point Nature Reserve are of outstanding state heritage significance as a rare place demonstrating the continuous history of occupation of the east coast of Australia. The place holds clear and valuable evidence of Indigenous occupation prior to European settlement and the natural history of the state. It is also the place where the shared history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia began. It was the place where Lieutenant James Cook first stepped ashore to claim the country for Britain and plays a central role in the European history of arrival, the history of Indigenous resistance, dispossession and devastation through illness, land grants, cultivation and development.