Botany Bay: Where histories meetAllen & Unwin, 2005 M07 1 - 272 pages Botany Bay is renowned as the site of Captain Cook's first landing on the east coast of New Holland in 1770, infamous as the place chosen by the British as a dumping ground for convicts, and celebrated as the birthplace of Australia. In this remarkable history, Maria Nugent takes her readers on a journey to find what lies behind, beneath and beyond these familiar associations. Drawing on stories, objects, images, memories and the landscape itself, she collects the threads of other pasts to weave a rich, compelling and often surprising account. Local meanings jostle with national mythologies, Aboriginal remembrance disturbs white forgetting, the natural environment struggles for survival amid the smokestacks. In the process, Botany Bay becomes a site for meditating on questions of history, myth, memory and politics in Australia. Botany Bay: where histories meet explores the role both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal history-making plays in creating and sustaining local and national communities. |
Contents
1 | |
7 | |
2 SYDNEYS BACKDOOR | 37 |
3 BOOMERANGS FOR SALE | 63 |
4 A LITTLE PIECE OF FRANCE | 91 |
5 FROM SHANTYTOWNS TO SUBURBS | 118 |
6 THE PAST AS FUTURE | 144 |
7 REMEMBERING DISPOSSESSION AND SURVIVAL | 174 |
Notes | 202 |
Bibliography | 226 |
Index | 243 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abori Aboriginal people living Aboriginal people's Aboriginal presence Aboriginal reserve Aboriginal settlement Aborigines Welfare Ardler arrival Australian Historical Banks Bay's Bay’s north head became blacks Board boomerang Botany Bay Botany Bay Project Botany Bay’s north British broadsheet camp Canberra Captain Cook Captain Cook’s Landing celebrating ceremony claimed Coast Hospital colonial commemorative Cook's Landing Cook’s Landing Place cultural described encounter Endeavour foreshores French ginal Happy Valley headland historians imagined indigenous Iris Williams JNSWLC Journal Kurnell Landing Place reserve landscape Lapérouse Lapérouse expedition Lapérouse Museum late memory Mitchell Library monument narrative native nature nineteenth century non-Aboriginal north shore original past period Perouse Aboriginal Phillip Port Botany Port Jackson Press Protector of Aborigines Randwick Randwick Municipal Council re-enactment residents shantytowns ships significance South Wales SRNSW story suburb Sydney Cove Sydney Morning Herald Sydney’s Timbery tion tourist twentieth century visitors voyage Yarra Bay
Popular passages
Page 27 - Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses ; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy, as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the...
Page 98 - This garden to-day, partly uncultivated, formed in the sandy scrub, provides some vegetables for the soldiers who are quartered in a small tower built a short distance away on one of the points of the bay.
Page 9 - ... so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us, that we fancied we could see their colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.
Page 133 - January 18th, 1788, an interview with the natives took place. They were all armed, but on seeing the Governor approach with signs of friendship, alone and unarmed, they readily returned his confidence by laying down their weapons. They were...
Page 207 - Vagrancy and the Victorians: The Social Construction of the Vagrant in Melbourne, 1880-1907', PhD Thesis, University of Melbourne. Garton, S. (1988), Medicine and Madness: A Social History of Insanity in New South Wales 1880-1940, University of New South Wales Press, Kensington.
Page 94 - We also had the mortification to learn, that M. De la Perouse had been compelled to fire upon the natives at Botany Bay, where they frequently annoyed his people who were employed on shore. This circumstance materially affected us, as those who had rendered this violence necessary could not discriminate between us and them. We were however perfectly convinced that nothing short of the greatest necessity could have induced M. De la Perouse to take such a step, as we heard him declare, that it was...
Page 107 - Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but admire his work,' indicated the generous candour of his disposition.
Page 41 - Early in the month [April 1789], and throughout its continuance, the people whose business called them down the harbour daily reported, that they found, either in excavations of the rock, or lying upon the beaches and points of the different coves which they had been in, the bodies of many of the wretched natives of this country.
Page 37 - ... Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, landed in First settleBotany Bay, whither he had been despatched from England in charge of a Australia, squadron of eleven vessels, in order to found a penal colony in Australia. Finding Botany Bay unsuitable for settlement, in consequence, as he says, of " the openness of the bay and the dampness of the soil, by which the people would probably be rendered unhealthy," he sailed northward to * The latitude of Cape Everard according to the latest computation Is 37°...