The land adjacent to Botany Bay was settled for many thousands of years by the Tharawal and Eora peoples and their associated clans. On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cook's first landing of HMS Endeavour on the land mass of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony. Out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove. Although the penal settlement was almost immediately shifted to Sydney Cove, for some time in Britain transportation to "Botany Bay" was a metonym for transportation to any of the Australian penal settlements.
History
Aboriginal prehistory
Archaeological evidence from the shores of Botany Bay has yielded evidence of an Aboriginal settlement dating back 5,000 years. The Aboriginal people of Sydney were the Eora, the Dharawal and the Dharug people who comprised at least 28 known clans with traditional boundaries. The clans of the Botany Bay area were the Gweagal who occupied the south shore and the Gameygal on the north shore. It is possible that the Bidjigal clan lived between the Cooks River and the Georges River, but the evidence for this is unclear.[5][6]
Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell, on the southern banks of Botany Bay, in what is now Silver Beach, on Sunday 29 April 1770, when navigating his way up the east coast of Australia on his ship, HMS Endeavour. Cook's landing marked the beginning of Britain's interest in Australia and in the eventual colonisation of this new "southern continent".[7] Initially the name Stingrays Harbour was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition, for the stingrays they caught.[8] That name was also recorded on an Admiralty chart.[9] Cook's log for 6 May 1770 records "The great quantity of these sort of fish found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Stingrays Harbour". However, in the journal prepared later from his log, Cook wrote instead: (sic) "The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Botanist Botany Bay".[note 1][9]
Eighteen years later, Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the armed tender HMS Supply into the bay on 18 January 1788. First contact was made with the local Indigenous people, the Eora, who seemed curious but suspicious of the newcomers. Two days later the remaining ships of the First Fleet arrived to found the planned penal colony. The land was quickly ruled unsuitable for settlement as there was insufficient fresh water; Phillip also believed the swampy foreshores would render any colony unhealthy as the bay was open and unprotected, the water too shallow to allow the ships to anchor close to the shore, and the soil was poor.[10]
The area was studded with enormously strong trees. When the convicts tried to cut them down, their tools broke and the tree trunks had to be blasted out of the ground with gunpowder. The primitive huts built for the officers and officials quickly collapsed in rainstorms. Crucially, Phillip worried that his fledgling colony was exposed to attack from Aboriginal peoples or foreign powers. Although his initial instructions were to establish the colony at Botany Bay, he was authorised to establish the colony elsewhere if necessary.[11] As such, Phillip decided instead to move to the excellent natural harbour of Port Jackson to the north.[12]
On the morning of 24 January, the French exploratory expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse was seen outside Botany Bay. On 26 January, the Supply left the bay to move up to Port Jackson and anchor in Sydney Cove. On the afternoon of 26 January, the remaining ships of First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove. In 1789, Captain John Hunter surveyed Botany Bay after returning from the Cape of Good Hope, trading for grain. The good supply of fresh water in the area led to the expansion of its population in the 19th century.
The western shore of Botany Bay remained in its virgin state for almost fifty years after the initial settlement of Sydney Town. Land access to the area was difficult until a route from the west was established via Canterbury. As this route developed it became known as Illawarra Road, which is still one of the main access routes to the south-eastern suburbs of Sydney. The land nearer to this crossing of Cooks River was cleared and settled quite early in the infancy of the new colony.
Sydney Airport, Australia's busiest airport, sits on the northwestern side of Botany Bay. Some of its runways go out into the bay. After World War II the mouth of the Cooks River was moved two kilometres west to make way for the airport extension. Land was reclaimed from the bay to extend its first north–south runway and to build a second, parallel, runway.
The first container terminal at Port Botany, east of the airport, was completed during the 1970s and is the largest container terminal in Sydney. A second container terminal was completed during the 1980s and bulk liquid storage facilities are located on the northern and southern edge of the bay. A third container terminal was completed in 2011.
The land around the headlands of the bay is protected by the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service as Kamay Botany Bay National Park. On the northern side of the mouth of the bay is the historic site of La Perouse, and to the south is Kurnell. Despite its relative isolation, the southern shore of the bay is dominated by an unusual mixture of pristine national park and heavy industrial use that includes Sydney Desalination Plant, the Caltex Fuel Terminal, sewer treatment, and historical sand mining facilities.[13] On the southern side of the bay a section of water has been fenced off under the authority of the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Service at Towra Point for environmental conservation purposes.
The western shores of the bay feature many popular swimming beaches including Lady Robinsons Beach and are highly urbanised.
There are also a lot of bunkers around Botany Bay. The bunkers were built by the military during World War II and still remain.[14]
Marine life
Botany Bay has a diverse marine population, and the area around its entrance is a popular area for scuba diving. In 2008, the Botany Bay Watch Project began with volunteers assisting to monitor and protect the Bay Catchment and its unique marine life.[15]
The world's largest population of weedy sea dragon ever surveyed is found at the 'Steps' dive site, on the Kurnell side of the Botany Bay National Park. Weedy sea dragons are just one of hundreds of territorial marine creatures found within Botany Bay. The eastern blue groper[16] is the state fish of New South Wales; it is very tame and is commonly found following divers along the shoreline of Botany Bay.
Despite the move to Sydney Cove, for many years the Australian penal colony would be referred to as "Botany Bay" in England, and in ballads such as "The Fields of Athenry," by Irish songwriter Pete St. John.
A song named "Botany Bay" has been performed as a folk and music hall song since the 1890s, based on older tunes. It also refers to the penal colony.
A song entitled "The Shores of Botany Bay" was written by Brian Warfield and recorded by The Wolfe Tones in the early 1970s. This satirical song deals with a group of Irishmen volunteering for the transportation process in the hopes of finding wealth in Australia.
A song titled "Bound for Botany Bay" is featured on Irish singer-songwriter and guitarist John Doyle's album Shadow and Light.
In the 1941 historical novel Botany Bay by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the protagonist, after various adventures and misadventures in England, gets transported to Botany Bay. A movie based on the book starring Alan Ladd and James Mason was shot in 1953.
In the play and musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Benjamin Barker, the man who would become Sweeney Todd, was transported to Botany Bay for life on a false charge by Judge Turpin.
In the MMORPGRunescape, Botany Bay is the name of a location in-game where players can view other players' accounts being penalized for using "bots", computer macros, to cheat.[18][19]
The 2015 7-part British TV series Banished was a dramatisation of the first few weeks of the penal colony.
Gallery
The mouth of Botany Bay as it meets the Tasman Sea, as viewed from the air, above Kurnell
^Lawrence, Joan (1996). St. George Pictorial Memories: Rockdale, Kogarah, Hurstville. Crows Nest, NSW: Kingsclear Books. p. 3. ISBN0-908272-45-6.
^Attenbrow, Val (2010). Sydney's Aboriginal Past, investigating the archaeological and historical records (2nd ed.). Sydney: UNSW Press. pp. 22–27. ISBN9781742231167.
Britton, Alex R., ed. (1978). Historical records of New South Wales. Vol. 1, part 2. Phillip, 1783–1792. Lansdown Slattery & Co. p. 56. OCLC219911274.
Forster, George (2008). Allgemeines historisches Taschenbuch, oder, Abriss der merkwuridgsten neuen Welt Begebenheiten enthaltend fur 1787 [Neuholland und die brittische Colonie in Botany-Bay/New Holland and the British colony at Botany Bay] (in German). Robert J. King, translator. Canberra: National Library of Australia.
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