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 celebrations 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 collected 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 sustraining local and national communities.
Contents:
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Road to Botany Bay
1. A Place for Stories: Captain Cook, Colonial Origins and Hairy Wild Men
2. Sydney's Backdoor: Isolating the City's Unwanted at Botany Bay
3. Boomerangs for Sale: Tourism in the Birthplace of the Nation
4. A Little Piece of France: Commemorating the French at Botany Bay
5. From Shantytowns to Suburbs: Botany Bay's Residential Landscape
6. The Past as Future: Industrial Development and Environmental Politics
7. Remembering Dispossession and Survival: Botany Bay Stories Revisited
Notes
Bibliography
Index
