Botany Bay (Dharawal: Kamay) is an open oceanic embayment, located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, south of the Sydney central business district. Its source is the confluence of the Georges River at Taren Point and San Souci aswell as the Cooks River at Kyeemagh, which flows to the east before meeting its mouth at the Tasman Sea, midpoint between the suburbs of La Perouse and Kurnell. The northern headland of the entrance to the bay from the Tasman Sea is Cape Banks and, on the southern side, the outer headland is Cape Solander and the inner headland is Sutherland Point.
The total catchment area of the bay is approximately . Despite its relative shallowness, the bay now serves as greater metropolitan Sydney's main cargo seaport, located at Port Botany, with facilities managed by Sydney Ports Corporation. Two runways of Sydney Airport extend into the bay, as do some port facilities. Botany Bay National Park is located on the northern and southern headlands of the bay. The area surrounding the bay is generally managed by Transport for NSW.
The land adjacent to Botany Bay was settled for many thousands of years by the Tharawal and Eora peoples and their associated clans. On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cook's first landing of HMS Endeavour on the land mass of Australia, after his extensive navigation of New Zealand. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony. Out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove. Although the penal settlement was almost immediately shifted to Sydney Cove, for some time in Britain transportation to "Botany Bay" was a metonym for transportation to any of the Australian penal settlements.
History
Aboriginal prehistory
Archaeological evidence from the shores of Botany Bay has yielded evidence of an Aboriginal settlement dating back 5,000 years. The Aboriginal people of Sydney were the Eora, the Dharawal and the Dharug people who comprised at least 28 known clans with traditional boundaries. The clans of the Botany Bay area were the Gweagal who occupied the south shore and the Gameygal on the north shore. It is possible that the Bidjigal clan lived between the Cooks River and the Georges River, but the evidence for this is unclear.
European history and later
Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell, on the southern banks of Botany Bay, in what is now Silver Beach, on Sunday 29 April 1770, when navigating his way up the east coast of Australia on his ship, HMS Endeavour. Cook's landing marked the beginning of Britain's interest in Australia and in the eventual colonisation of this new "southern continent". Initially the name Stingrays Harbour was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition, for the stingrays they caught. That name was also recorded on an Admiralty chart. Cook's log for 6 May 1770 records "The great quantity of these sort of fish found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Stingrays Harbour". However, in the journal prepared later from his log, Cook wrote instead: (sic) "The great quantity of plants Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Botanist Botany Bay".
Eighteen years later, Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the armed tender HMS Supply into the bay on 18 January 1788. First contact was made with the local Indigenous people, the Eora, who seemed curious but suspicious of the newcomers. Two days later the remaining ships of the First Fleet arrived to found the planned penal colony. The land was quickly ruled unsuitable for settlement as there was insufficient fresh water; Phillip also believed the swampy foreshores would render any colony unhealthy as the bay was open and unprotected, the water too shallow to allow the ships to anchor close to the shore, and the soil was poor.
The area was studded with enormously strong trees. When the convicts tried to cut them down, their tools broke and the tree trunks had to be blasted out of the ground with gunpowder. The primitive huts built for the officers and officials quickly collapsed in rainstorms. Crucially, Phillip worried that his fledgling colony was exposed to attack from Aboriginal peoples or foreign powers. Although his initial instructions were to establish the colony at Botany Bay, he was authorised to establish the colony elsewhere if necessary. As such, Phillip decided instead to move to the excellent natural harbour of Port Jackson to the north.