Kurnell, New South Wales

Encyclopedia : K : KU : KUR : Kurnell, New South Wales

Kurnell is a suburb in southern Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located 22km south of the Sydney central business district in the Sutherland Shire.

Contents

1 Location
2 History
3 Attractions
4 Commercial Areas
5 External links

Location

The Kurnell peninsula is the southern headland of Botany Bay. It is home to approximately 3000 residents and is a 10-15 minute drive from the centre of Cronulla.

The Botany Bay National Park is located on the eastern side of the peninsula with sheer sandstone cliffs dominating the coastline. Silver Beach provides protected swimming in Botany Bay, with views towards the city. Cronulla and Woolooware are the only adjacent suburbs.

History

There are two theories for the origin of the name Kurnell. It is either a deviation of an Aboriginal word "collonel" or a deviation of the name of an early settler, John Connell.

Kurnell is considered to be ‘the birthplace of modern Australia’, as it is the place where Captain James Cook landed on 29th April 1770, when navigating his way around Australia on his ship, the Endeavour. The landing place is located on the north-eastern part of the national park. Sutherland Point is named in honour of a crew member, Scotsman Forby Sutherland, who died of tuberculosis during their eight days here and was buried on the shore. Cape Solander is named after Swedish botanist Daniel Solander, a colleague of Joseph Banks. Inscription Point was named by the Australian Philosophical Society in 1822 when they secured a plaque to the cliff face to mark the point of the Endeavour’s crew first landing.

Dampier Street, Tasman Street and Torres Street commemorate other navigators in Australia’s history.

The first land grant of 700 acres was made in 1815, to Captain James Birnie, who established Alpha Farm. 'Alpha' is the first letter in the Greek alphabet and the name was thought appropriate for the first farm in the area. In 1821 John Connell Junior was also granted land here and used it for timber getting. His father purchased Alpha Farm from Birnie and by 1842 the Connell family's estate was over one thousand acres in size. In 1860, Alpha Farm was sold to Thomas Holt (1811-88), who owned most of the land that stretched from Sutherland to Cronulla. The area was known as Birniemere for a time and Holtmere was once a locality.

Before the 1920s, Kurnell was used by fisherman as schools of several varieties of fish inhabited the Botany Bay foreshore and the open sea. Fishermen built numerous huts and shacks which sheltered them for the weekend fishing. During the Great Depression, from the late 1920s, many severely affected low-income families took up residence there. The area was known as Happy Valley.

Attractions

The northern part of the peninsula is a historic site known as Captain Cook’s Landing Place with a number of memorials located here:

the Captain Cook Memorial Obelisk
the Sir Joseph Banks Memorial
the Solander Monument
the Sutherland Monument

The Discovery Centre provides information and displays relics from the early days in Kurnell’s history. Endeavour Heights is a recreation area in the Botany Bay National Park. The Kurnell Lookout provides brilliant views of Botany Bay and the northern headland of Botany Bay at La Perouse.

Cape Solander is popular amongst whale watchers during the migration season.

Commercial Areas

The small residential area is located to the north with a small group of shops in the village of Kurnell. Kurnell is dominated by an industrial area, which includes the Caltex Oil Refinery. Refined petrol is piped to the other side of the bay in an underwater pipeline. A controversial desalination plant has been proposed for this area and would be expected to provide much of southern Sydney with an alternative water supply. It has been criticised on environmental grounds (greenhouse gases and impact of large amounts of deoxygenated brine).

Sand mining on the peninsula has depleted the area of much of the sand that was originally here. Some of the remaining sand dunes are used as a recreational off-road area for 4 wheel drives.

External links

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