The day was going to be nice and
warm even though it was still technically winter. I know, I whinge a lot about
the cold but it is only because I feel cold a lot faster these day. The
autoimmune disease seems to have flipped the thermostat switch in my body. I
was used to the cold and actually enjoyed the cold weather. After living for a
couple of decades in a cold country I was used to looking for a fan when
temperatures hit 25C. The flip of my thermostat means 20C and out comes my
fleece and warm socks and even a woolly hat if it’s lower than 17C! However, I
can happily sit around without breaking a sweat till 30C and think about a fan
only when it gets higher than that. Oh but I digress!!
Since it was a nice sunny and
warm day and I was feeling reasonably good we decided to go out for a drive to
some south beach. We had not been to Cronulla beach since we came here but had
been there when we visited in 2009. I remembered that it is a much bigger bay
and beach than the famous Bondi. Being a working day we thought it would be
better as it would be less crowded. The drive was good and we got to the
turning to Cronulla. It was a smaller road and as we went past a roundabout I
thought we had missed turning right. My husband thought not.
Anyway we carried on this Captain
Cook Drive and the road became narrower. The sides had grasses and shrubs with
the smell of brine in the air. We seems to be going right to the sea and not
sure exactly where. I had a quick look at the road map and identified we would
be reaching the end of the road at some point on Botany Bay at a place called
Kurnell. The town has 2 streets and it curves out to run along the bay. The
houses are really nice and the place looks cheerful in the sunshine. There were
a couple of shops and a café / restaurant. We parked in front of the café with
a little grassy strip and then the tiny strip of sand and the waves of the bay
lapping there. There is a nice promenade to walk along the length of the street
with benches to have picnics.
“Kurnell is considered to be ‘the
birthplace of modern Australia’, as it is the place where Captain James Cook
landed on 29 April 1770, making first contact with the original inhabitants of
the area, the Gweagal Aborigines whilst navigating his way up the East Coast of
Australia on Endeavour” (according to Wikipedia). From New Zealand, Cook had
orders to find this ‘rich southern continent of Terra Australis’. The captain aimed
to reach the coast of Tasmania but the gales took the ship to the south east
coast of Australia hitting Victoria. They continued northwards along the coast
and came up to a shallow but extensive inlet and the ship was moored for the
first landing of the crew in this continent. At first the bay was called ‘Sting-Ray
Harbour’ but later called ‘Botanist Bay’ as the botanists Joseph Banks, Daniel
Solander and Herman Spöring found many new plant specimens. This was later
shortened to ‘Botany Bay’.
The end of the road leads into
the Kamay Botany Bay National Park. The ‘Burrawang walk’ has a board to welcome
the visitors all with a kookaburra on sitting on the sign. The path goes along
the water’s edge, most of the time with a very tiny strip of beach now and
then.
There is a stone bollard like
marker that signifies the place where the ship had been moored. There is also a
memorial obelisk on the land. This place is called the Sutherland Point after a
ship’s crew who is buried there. He was the first British person to die (due to
TB) in Australia.
There are also commemorations for botanists Daniel Solander
and Joseph Banks. There is a small area where the path is across a narrow
outlet of water going into the bay. On one side there is a curved seating area
dedicated to Banks.
Along the path on either side there is vegetation and
actual information plaques about the local flora and fauna. The day we went
there was a tremendous noise made by the frogs but could we even see one? No.
There are ferns and grasses and many really old trees.
Also along the edge
there is a small wooden pier and with memorial plaques about the events of
Captain Cook’s landing and their interaction with the aborigines. You can stand
on the pier and look at the clear water gently lapping on the rocks or when it
turns windy there are a lot of small choppy waves.
There was an oil refinery here that
closed down in 2014. The day we were there we saw a big tanker and the
platforms still being used. This is now going to be used as a terminal for
importing petroleum. Across the bay and beyond the cranes is the Sydney
skyline, the high rise blocks around the Circular Quay. Just round the corner
from the bay is the Sydney airport and so during the day time there is a
continual traffic of planes landing and taking off. The only thing that jars
the usual twittering of birds and croaking of the frogs is the sound of these
airplanes, particularly when the direction of the wind it inland.
The path takes you to the Cape
Solander (named after botanist Daniel Solander) which is the best place for watching
whale migration in Sydney. There is the Solander Monument with plaques to commemorate
the botanist. There is a lovely walk that takes you around the sand dunes and
one sees a wide variety of plants which would have fascinated those botanists. All
in all a very pleasant visit rounded off by a nice cup of hot chocolate and piece
of cake at the café. Then we went off to find the Cronulla beach which was our
original destination.
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