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Table of Contents
Botany Bay in Australia is an inlet located a few kilometers away from Sydney’s central business district. It was developed into a port, and the primary airport of the city was built near the bay.
See the fact file below for more information on the Botany Bay or alternatively, you can download our 25-page Botany Bay worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.
Key Facts & Information
GEOGRAPHY
- Botany Bay is in New South Wales, Australia. It is 13 km south of Sydney’s central business district.
- The Georges River and the Cooks River supply the bay from the inland.
- The Tasman Sea entrance to the bay on the northern side is the headland called Cape Banks.
- The outer headland on the southern side is Cape Solander, while the Sutherland Point is the inner headland.
- The total maximum amount of water that the bay can hold is about 55 km2.
- Although Botany Bay is relatively shallow, it functions as the main cargo seaport of Sydney’s greater metropolitan.
- Sydney Airport, the leading airport in Sydney, has two runways that extend into the bay. There are also some port facilities in the area.
- The northern and southern headlands of the bay are host to the Botany Bay National Park.
- The Roads and Maritime Services generally manages the surrounding area around the bay. It is a New South Wales government agency in charge of building and maintaining road infrastructure in the state.
HISTORY
- Evidence found on Botany Bay’s shores shows that there were aboriginal settlements near the bay 5,000 years ago.
- Sydney’s Aboriginal people were called Eora. The sub-groups of this native people were classified by the language they spoke.
- On April 29, 1770, Lieutenant James Cook landed on the southern banks of the bay.
- James Cook and the HMS Endeavor crew were the first British to land on Australia.
- Cook called the place Stingrays Harbour due to the significant number of stingrays they found in the bay.
- Later, he named the place Botany Bay after the lead botanist of the crew, Joseph Banks, found an assortment of new plants in the bay.
- In 1786, Banks endorsed Botany Bay as an ideal penal colony due to the land’s apparent fertility.
- Plans were made for the expedition of Captain Arthur Phillip, an officer of the Royal Navy.
- Upon arrival in 1788, Phillip saw that the area around the bay was not suitable for habitation. He instead decided to establish the colony in Port Jackson, 5 miles north of the bay.
- In Britain, a punishment called transportation meant that criminals would be sent to a penal colony where they needed to do work, like farming, for their sentence. When their sentence was over, they could stay or return to Britain.
- For almost fifty years after the first settlement in Sydney Town, Botany Bay’s western shore remained unchanged.
- Until the establishment of Canterbury, land access to the bay from the west was difficult.
- The route via Canterbury later became known as Illawarra Road. Illawarra Road still serves as one of the main routes to access Sydney’s south-eastern suburbs.
LANDMARKS
- The busiest airport in Australia is located on the northwestern side of Botany Bay. This is Sydney Airport.
- Some of Sydney Airport’s runways extend out into the bay.
- After the Second World War, an extension of the airport was accommodated by moving the Cooks River’s mouth two kilometers to the west.
- The first north-south runway of the airport was extended by reclaiming land from the bay. Another land reclamation was done when the second parallel runway was built.
- To the east of the airport lies Port Botany. The first container terminal of the port was completed in the 1970s. It is also Sydney’s largest container terminal.
- The second container terminal was completed in the 1980s, while the third terminal was finished in 2011.
- There are also bulk liquid storage facilities on both the southern and northern edges of Botany Bay.
- The land surrounding the headlands of Botany Bay is known as Kamay Botany Bay National Park.
- The park is heritage-listed and is protected by the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
- The national park is on the southern and northern headlands of the bay.
- The northern headland is a peninsula called La Perouse. It is named after Jean Lapérouse, a French mariner who landed on Botany Bay’s north shore on January 26, 1788.
- The southern headland of the bay is called Kurnell. It has the Botany Bay National Park on its eastern side.
- Kurnell was the landing place of Captain James Cook. It was here that the first contact with the Aboriginals of the area was made.
- Despite being relatively isolated, the bay’s southern shore is occupied mainly by a mixture of heavy industrial buildings and pristine national parks.
- For environmental purposes, the National Parks and Wildlife Service fenced off a section of water on the southern side of the bay at Towra Point.
- Many famous swimming beaches can be seen on the western shores of the bay. This side of Botany Bay is highly urbanized.
- Botany Bay is also surrounded by many bunkers. These were built during WWII.
MARINE LIFE
- The area around the entrance of Botany Bay is a popular scuba diving spot. The bay has diverse marine life.
- Volunteers have started assisting in monitoring and protecting the Bay Catchment and the marine life in it.
- The Botany Bay National Park on the Kurnell side has the world’s biggest population of weedy seadragons to ever be surveyed.
- Weedy seadragons are among the hundreds of territorial sea creatures that can be seen within Botany Bay.
- The state fish of New South Wales, the eastern blue groper, can also be found in Botany Bay.
POPULAR CULTURE
- Even though the Australian penal colony was moved to Sydney Cove, the colony was still referred to as Botany Bay in England for many years.
- Since the 1890s, Botany Bay has been performed as a music hall and folk song. The song refers to the penal colony.
- James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff published the historical novel Botany Bay in 1941. The protagonist in the book is transported to Botany Bay after numerous adventures and misadventures in England.
- In the early 1970s, The Wolfe Tones recorded the song The Shore of Botany Bay. It was written by Brian Warfield and was about a group of Irishmen who volunteered to be transported to Australia to find wealth in the country.
- John Doyle, an Irish guitarist and singer-songwriter, featured the song Bound for Botany Bay on his album Shadow and Light.
- In Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Khan Noonien Singh and his followers flew from Earth aboard the SS Botany Bay.
- A location in the MMORP game Runescape is called Botany Bay. The area enables players to view penalized players’ accounts that use bots to cheat in the game.
Botany Bay Worksheets
This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about the Botany Bay across 25 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Botany Bay worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about the Botany Bay in Australia which is an inlet located a few kilometers away from Sydney’s central business district. It was developed into a port, and the primary airport of the city was built near the bay.
Complete List Of Included Worksheets
- Botanic Places
- Date by the Bay
- Botany Fills
- Eora-ight
- An Airport’s Tale
- Life of the Bay
- Peculiar Name
- Bay Description
- Land Explorer
- Changing Bay
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Link will appear as Botany Bay Facts & Worksheets: https://kidskonnect.com - KidsKonnect, March 4, 2021
Use With Any Curriculum
These worksheets have been specifically designed for use with any international curriculum. You can use these worksheets as-is, or edit them using Google Slides to make them more specific to your own student ability levels and curriculum standards.