La Perouse (Cruwee Cove, Congwong, Little Congong, Frenchmans Bay North and South Beaches)

Cruwee Cove Beach

From the pink rock pools of Cruwee Cove Beach perched over a deep sea, along the coastal Henry Head Track and down through the trees and bushland, to the two Congwong beaches where light glistens off the ocean like stars in a turquoise sky, these have to be the most beautiful beaches I’ve visited. Oases in isolated coves, protected from the outside world, the area remains untouched, untainted by development, industry and the hustle and bustle of the surrounding Sydney city life. Located in La Perouse, the only Sydney suburb where Aboriginal people have kept their territory from European settlement until today, one is transported back 7,500 years to a natural environment of pre-colonial times. 

It was at this time that sea levels stabilised to form today’s coast for the original owners of the land, the Kameygal. With an abundance of fresh water supplies, fish, and places of natural shelter, the area was ideal for sustained inhabitancy. The Aboriginal people have maintained an unbroken connection. 

But as one walks back up 
the sandy path from Congwong Beach onto the asphalt road, populated car park, and past the monuments, to look out over Frenchmans beach to Port Botany on the horizon, one is reminded of their struggle to do so against a European invasion and imposed modernity.

Indeed, the decision to name La Perouse after the French explorer itself is symbolic of the historic denial of the original indigenous occuparants as owners of the land. Landing on January 26, 1788, passing through on a scientific expedition, La Perouse and his crew stayed in the area for a mere six weeks. 

Congwong Beach

At the exact same time Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet were pulling into Port Jackson to form the first British settlement. Just missing the French, eight days earlier they too had landed in Botany Bay, but finding it unhealthy for settlement due to the swampiness of the area  had moved on to find something more suitable.

Over the next century as the British settlement expanded and Sydney urbanised, Aboriginal camps would come to be scrutinised as a nuisance to white society, increasingly vulnerable to closure. However, with the request of five Aboriginal men and their families honoured by Parliament in 1882, their camps were allowed to stay in La Perouse, justified in that they were economically viable.

Soon the population in the area began to grow as the fishing sites attracted Aborigines from the South Coast seeking employment. This resulted in the decision by the Aborigines Protection Board in 1885 to officially declare seven acres of land at La Perouse a ‘Reserve for the Use of Aborigines' - the only one in Sydney. 

Reserves like these throughout New South Wales were designed to effectively segregate Aboriginal people from white Australia. In La Perouse the Aboriginal people were tied to the reserve through a dependency on government rations and were literally locked in by a fence enclosing the reserve.

This was done to ‘protect’ them from the white community, but its very isolation and absence of white settlement made the area attractive to city residents for weekend day trips. By the turn of the century the Aboriginal residents were participating in the tourist industry selling souvenir boomerangs, woven baskets and shells, while ‘snake men’ would perform in the snake pit. 

George Cann Sr., Snake Handler. Source: https://www.valeriebarrow.com/?p=1360

In 1900 concerns about the interaction between Aboriginal people and white tourists led to a decision by the Aborigines Protection Board to relocate the reserve to the South Coast. But despite ration supplies being phased out, the people refused to move on, and eventually the Board gave in keeping the reserve open.

This was the first of many failed attempts throughout the 20th century to close the reserve. Each time an emboldened people –fighting for their historical right to live on the land - refused to leave. In 1988 their claim to ownership was finally recognised when the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council was given deeds to the reserve.

La Perouse remains a significant site for many Aboriginal people – symbolic of the people’s continuing connection to their land in the face of colonial invasion. In 1988, after around 40,000 bicentenary protesters from around Australia marched in Sydney from Redfern Oval to Hyde Park, many gathered at La Perouse to both mourn 200 years of violence but also celebrate survival and new beginnings. Funeral wreaths were thrown into the water, fires burned in the dark, and people danced into sunrise.

Survival Day Ceremony

Each year around this time members of the Aboriginal community gather at La Perouse in the celebrattion of their cultural continuity - inviting all to join in. As I watch the cermonial smoke loft up and over the luminescent waters I’m grateful  after everything they’re still prepared to do so.

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For a more detailed history of La Perouse visit The Dictionary of Sydney.