La Perouse
The La Perouse peninsula is the northern headland of
Botany Bay. It is notable for its old military outpost at
Bare Island and the
Kamay Botany Bay National Park. Congwong Bay Beach, Little Congwong Beach, and the beach at Frenchmans Bay provide protected swimming areas in Botany Bay. La Perouse is one of few Sydney suburbs with a French name, others being
Sans Souci,
Engadine and
Vaucluse.
Kurnell is located opposite, on the southern headland of Botany Bay.
La Perouse history
La Perouse was known as "Gooriwal" to the Muruora-dial people of the area.
[2]
La Perouse was named after the French navigator
Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse (1741–88), who landed on the northern shore of Botany Bay west of Bare Island on 26 January 1788. Captain Arthur Phillip and the first fleet of convicts had arrived in Botany Bay a few days earlier.
Louis XVI of France had commissioned Lapérouse to explore the Pacific.
[3] In April 1770
James Cook's expedition had sailed onto the east coast of Australia whilst exploring the south Pacific searching for Terra Australis or ‘Land of the South’. Upon King Louis XVI's orders, Lapérouse departed
Brest, France, in command of the
Astrolabe and
Boussole on 1 August 1785 on a scientific voyage of the Pacific inspired by the voyages of Cook. La Perouse in Sydney's south is named after the leader of this French expedition.
La Perouse Monument, view to Frenchmans Bay
Lapérouse’s two ships sailed to New South Wales after 12 of his men had been attacked and killed in the Navigator Islands (Samoa).
Astrolabe and
Boussole arrived off Botany Bay on 24 January just six days after Captain
Arthur Phillip (1738–1814) had anchored just west
[citation needed] of Bare Island, in
HMS Supply. On 26 January 1788, as Captain
John Hunterwas moving the First Fleet around to Port Jackson after finding Botany Bay unsuitable for a Settlement, Lapérouse was sailing into Botany Bay,
[4][5][6][7] anchoring there just eight days after the British had.
The British received Lapérouse courteously, and offered him any assistance he might need. The French were far better provisioned than the British were, and extended the same courtesy but apparently neither offer was accepted.
[8] The commander of the Fleet, Captain Phillip, ordered that two British naval vessels,
HMS Sirius and
Supply, meet the French. Contrary to popular belief,
[citation needed] the French did not have orders to claim
Terra Australis for France and the arrival of the French ships
Astrolabe and
Boussole and their meeting with the ships of the British expedition was cordial and followed normal protocols. Lapérouse subsequently sent his journals and letters to Europe with the British ship, the
Sirius.
View to Port Botany at dusk
Another perspective of Bare Island Fort.
The expedition's naturalist and chaplain, Father
Louis Receveur, died in February after a skirmish the previous December in
Samoa with the inhabitants, in which
Paul Antoine Fleuriot de Langle, commander of
Astrolabe and 12 other members of the French expedition were killed. Receveur, injured in that skirmish, died at Botany Bay and was buried at Frenchmans Cove below the headland that is now called La Perouse, not far from the Lapérouse Museum. The place was marked by a tin plate but the local Aboriginal people quickly removed it. The British replaced it with another and tended the site. In 1824, the tree was inscribed by Victor-Charles Lottin (1781–1846), an ensign visiting with
Louis Isidore Duperrey. The following year,
Hyacinthe de Bougainville paid for the tombstone that is on the site today. It was designed by Government Architect George Cookney (1799–1876).
[9] Receveur was the second European to be buried in Australian soil, the first being
Forby Sutherland from Cook’s 1770 expedition who is buried at nearby Kurnell on the other side of the Botany Bay headlands.
The French stayed at Botany Bay for six weeks and built a stockade, observatory and a garden for fresh produce on what is now known as the La Perouse peninsula. After completing the building of a longboat (to replace one lost in the attack in the Navigator Islands) and obtaining wood and water, the French departed for
New Caledonia,
Santa Cruz, the
Solomons, and the
Louisiades. Lapérouse wrote in his journals that he expected to be back in France by December 1788, but the two ships vanished. The last official sighting of the French expedition was in March 1788 when British lookouts stationed at the South Head of Port Jackson saw the expedition sail from Botany Bay. The French expedition was wrecked a short time later on the reefs of
Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands during a cyclone sometime during April or May 1788, the circumstances remained a mystery for 40 years.
[10] Some of the mystery was solved in 1826 when items associated with the French ships were found on an island in the Santa Cruz group, with wreckage of the ships themselves discovered in 1964.
[11]
More recently two major expeditions have been mounted to explore the sites in Vanikoro. In May 2005, the wreck was formally identified as that of the
Boussole.
[12] The 2005 expedition was embarked aboard
Jacques Cartier, a French naval vessel. The ship supported a multi-discipline scientific team to investigate the "Mystery of Lapérouse".
[13] The mission was called "Opération Vanikoro-Sur les traces des épaves de Lapérouse 2005". A further similar mission was mounted in 2008.
[14][15][16] Between 16 September and 15 October 2008 two French Navy boats set out from Nouméa (New Caledonia) for a voyage to Vanikoro, recreating that section of the final journey of discovery made by Lapérouse
