Kamay Botany Bay National Park

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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 456-hectare (1,130-acre) national park is situated approximately 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) 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...

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.

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.

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.