 Facts: Victoria facts, Demographics, Geography, Government, History
Kurnell Peninsula Headland
The Meeting Place Precinct, Kurnell Peninsula, was the site of first recorded contact between Indigenous people and Britain in eastern Australia, and symbolically represents the birthplace of a nation, and the dispossession of Indigenous people. This symbolism is reinforced by its proximity to Sydney, the site of the first British settlement, as well as its accessibility. The discovery of Botany Bay, including Kurnell Peninsula, in April 1770 by Lt. James Cook, Commander of the Endeavour, was a precursor to the colonization of Australia by Britain. The association of Cook's visit with the place is clear and well substantiated and has been celebrated since 1822.
The Meeting Place Precinct, including Captain Cook's Landing Place, includes memorials and landscape plantings commemorating the events of 1770. Place names such as Inscription Point and Point Solander, the remnant watercourse, the memorials to explorers and Indigenous inhabitants, and Cook's maps of the Peninsula, in conjunction with Cooks Journal, and those of officers and scientists, clearly illustrate the events of 1770. Attributes specifically associated with its Indigenous values include the watering point and immediate surrounds, and the physical evidence of Aboriginal occupation in the area broadly encompassed by the watering place and the landing stage.
Kurnell Peninsula, Botany Bay, was the first site on the east coast of the Australian continent explored by scientists from Britain, with many of the first type-specimens of flora and fauna collected near the landing site by both Banks and Solander. Of particular note in 1770 was the naming of the Banksia genus after Joseph Banks. Cook's naming of 'Botany Bay' in 1770 would result in its adoption as an emotive term for a destination, which came to be associated with convictism for much of the nineteenth century.
Although Cooks' mapping of the east coast of Australia in 1770 did not appreciate the extent and importance of Port Jackson, nor the existence of Bass Strait, his running surveys were an outstanding achievement, which enabled the continental characteristics of Terra Australis, and its relationship to Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, to be defined fully for the first time. Cook's survey of Botany Bay in 1770, and clear description of the headlands at its entrance, provided information about a safe harbour with fresh water for British ships which followed.
The headland area of Kurnell Peninsula, in its landmark role bounding the entrance to Botany Bay, is significant to the nation as the destination for the First Fleet under Captain Arthur Phillip in 1787. Although first settlement occurred at Sydney Cove in January 1788, Cook's first voyage, with his first landfall in Australia at Kurnell Peninsula, Botany Bay, informed the subsequent British declaration of terra nullius through his reports, and, as the destination of the First Fleet, began the process that would lead to British possession of the Australian continent by 1830.
This document has been prepared by the Australian Government's Department of Environment and Heritage. The help received from Australian government departments, associated organisations and other authorities is gratefully acknowledged. Money values are in Australian currency, weights and measures in metric.
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