Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names of people who have died.
Bare Island is that little rock at La Perouse with a fort on it and a long timber bridge running out to it, sitting at the mouth of Botany Bay. If you grew up in the Eastern Suburbs you probably went there on a Sunday: a look at the snake man, a walk out over the bridge. But there's a lot packed onto that headland. It's Aboriginal country with one of the oldest continuing communities in Sydney. It's where La Pérouse's French ships sat for six weeks in 1788, just as the First Fleet was leaving. It has an 1820s watchtower, a French monument, an old cable station that's now a museum, and a fort whose building ended in a Royal Commission. Later it was a home for old soldiers, and even later a film set for Tom Cruise. Below my original notes I've added the full story, a timeline and the sources.
Bare Island is a low sandstone islet off the La Perouse headland on the northern shore of Botany Bay, linked to the mainland by a timber bridge. Captain Cook’s 1770 journal noted “a small bare island” here as a navigational marker, and the English name stuck. The wider headland is part of the Gooriwal cultural landscape, with deep continuing connections for the La Perouse Aboriginal community (including Gweagal and Kameygal associations at European contact) to land and sea for food, work and recreation.
In the 1880s, colonial nerves about foreign naval attack fortified the rock. The fort was designed under imperial defence advice from Sir Peter Scratchley (with Gustave Morell) for the NSW Department of Public Works; Colonial Architect James Barnet is also associated with the works. Construction ran through the 1880s (commonly summarised 1881–1889). Decommissioned in 1911, from 1912 the fort served for decades as a war veterans’ home, except during the Second World War, when the army took it back in 1942.
Bare Island Fort is State Heritage listed and managed inside Kamay Botany Bay National Park / the La Perouse headland precinct by NPWS. It matters both as a near-intact late-nineteenth-century coastal defence work and as part of the living Aboriginal cultural landscape of La Perouse. Guided tours and headland walks are the usual way in.
Bare Island fort, La Perouse, Botany Bay.
The Story of Bare Island and La Perouse
Country first
Long before anyone gave it a French name, the La Perouse headland was known as Gooriwal, according to the Wikipedia history of the suburb. The Dictionary of Sydney says the original owners of the land were the Kameygal, who had plenty of fish and fresh water and moved with the seasons. The State Heritage listing material quoted on Wikipedia says the Gweagal and Kameygal were associated with Bare Island itself at the time of European contact. The Kamay Botany Bay National Park listing puts it a bit differently: Gweagal people on the Kurnell side, speaking Dharawal, and probably Cadigal people on the northern headland. I've set out those versions further down.
What isn't in doubt is how long people have been here. The Dictionary of Sydney calls La Perouse the one area of Sydney with which Aboriginal people have had an unbroken connection for over 7,500 years, and says members of the Timbery family living there today can trace their ancestors back to before contact. There are middens and rock engravings on the headland, including a whale and calf and a shark, though they're slowly wearing away.
Cook's "small bare island"
The island's English name is about as plain as it gets. When Cook's Endeavour came into the bay in 1770, Cook noted "a small bare island" as a handy navigation mark, and Joseph Banks collected shells there. The name simply stuck, which makes it one of the first European names on the east coast.
La Pérouse and the French in 1788
Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, had left Brest on 1 August 1785 with two ships, the Boussole and the Astrolabe, on a scientific voyage around the Pacific for King Louis XVI. He reached Botany Bay on 24 January 1788, only days after Phillip had arrived. Bad weather kept the British fleet in the bay until the 26th, so the French were sailing in just as Hunter was taking the First Fleet round to Port Jackson.
It was all very polite. The British offered help and so did the French, and neither side took up the offer. The French had arrived in a sorry state. In Samoa, 12 of their men, including Captain de Langle of the Astrolabe, had been killed. So the six weeks at Botany Bay were spent building a stockade, an observatory and a garden, and putting together a new longboat. The astronomer Dagelet made observations that the Kamay listing calls among the first European scientific work in Australia. Lapérouse sent his journals and letters home on a British ship. Wikipedia's suburb page says it was the Sirius, while its Lapérouse biography says it was the merchant ship Alexander.
The expedition's chaplain and naturalist, Father Louis Receveur, had been hurt in the Samoan fight and died at Botany Bay on 17 February 1788. He was buried on the headland above Frenchmans Bay. The Kamay listing calls him the first French person buried on the Australian mainland.
The French sailed in March 1788 and were never seen again. Both ships were wrecked on the reefs of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. Peter Dillon found the first real evidence in 1826, wreckage was found in 1964, and in 2005 the wreck was formally identified as the Boussole. That's part of why the headland matters so much to the French. Botany Bay was the last place anyone saw them.
The Headland Monuments
Macquarie Watchtower
The oldest building on the headland is the octagonal stone tower. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built in 1822 on the highest point, with a view over the entrance to the bay, so troops could keep watch for smugglers. From 1833 to 1903 it was a customs house, and in the 1860s it was a school as well. The Dictionary calls it the oldest structure in Botany Bay and the oldest customs house in New South Wales. The Kamay listing adds that from 1829 a caretaker for the French monuments lived there. It also says the Customs Department took the tower over in 1831 for a tide waiter and two boatmen, which doesn't quite match the Dictionary's 1833. I couldn't find a freely licensed photo of the tower on Wikimedia Commons, so it'll have to be one for my own camera.
The Lapérouse Monument and Father Receveur's tomb
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In 1825 the French naval officer Hyacinthe de Bougainville visited and arranged for a monument to Lapérouse and a memorial over Receveur's grave. The tall obelisk near the museum is the Lapérouse Monument. The French still gather there every year for Bastille Day and Lapérouse Day. The sources don't agree on the dates. Some give 1825 for the monument and the tomb, and the Kamay listing says 1829. The details are in the section further down.
The Cable Station, now the La Perouse Museum
In 1876 the first telegraph cable between Australia and New Zealand came ashore at La Perouse, running to Nelson. The first station was just tents and huts. In 1881 a brick cable station went up on the western side of the headland, overlooking Frenchmans Beach, designed by the Colonial Architect's office. The cable came ashore at Frenchmans Bay, and that's why the building faces that way.
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After the telegraph company left, the building had a busy second life. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was used as an extension of the Coast Hospital during the Spanish flu of 1918 to 1920. From 1920 to 1933 it housed nurses, and after that the Salvation Army ran a refuge for women and children there. Wikipedia mentions a Salvation Army home for orphans in the early 1950s. Today it's the La Perouse Museum, with French relics, maps, instruments and local Aboriginal history. Wikipedia says Randwick Council was finalising a lease of the museum precinct from National Parks.
The Fort on Bare Island
Why fortify a rock?
By the late 1860s the British garrison had been pulled out of the Australian colonies. When war threatened between Britain and Russia in the 1870s, Sydney got nervous. Imperial engineers Jervois and Scratchley came out to advise. Jervois recommended a small work in Botany Bay to stop a few enemy cruisers from slipping in, raiding Sydney and holding it to ransom for its gold. A military road reached the headland in 1869, and Henry Head had a gun battery by 1871.
Design and building
Scratchley turned Jervois's idea into a detailed design with the help of the civil engineer Gustavus Morell. The Colonial Architect, James Barnet, was responsible for building it. The design was a symmetrical crescent with the biggest gun in the middle, facing where an enemy would most likely come from. The design work ran from mid-1877 to early 1880, and Scratchley kept making changes even after that.
John McLeod, who also built the forts at Georges Head and Middle Head, won the tender in 1881 and started on 7 April. The Clerk of Works, Henry Purkis, had plenty of other jobs and was often away. After Scratchley died in 1885, Major Penrose took over. The fort was built of mass concrete, which was still a fairly new and poorly understood material. That's part of why it's heritage-listed today, and part of why it went wrong.
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The guns were two 9-inch 12-ton muzzle-loaders, two 80-pounders, a 10-inch 18-ton gun in an armoured casemate, and two five-barrelled Nordenfelt machine guns. The heavy guns came across by barge. Before the bridge was built in 1887, getting onto the island meant a barge or a flying fox. About 70 soldiers manned it in its working years.
Cracks, a Board of Inquiry and a Royal Commission
Wikipedia says construction was finished in 1886, but by 1887 problems from poor workmanship were showing up. Barracks were built in 1888 and 1889 by the same contractor without going to tender. Lieutenant Colonel de Wolski, the new head of the military works branch, objected to the barracks design, where they were put, and the lack of a tender. A Board of Inquiry was set up and the contract was suspended.
Then on 1 July 1890 a Royal Commission was set up to look into how the contracts were let and the work that had been done. The evidence from Barnet's office was contradictory. The Commission found that the work was below standard and that the Colonial Architect hadn't supervised it properly. Barnet resigned. He thought de Wolski had swayed the Commission and called its findings unjust, petty and spiteful. McLeod never won another government contract. That's a sad end for the man who designed the GPO. The State Heritage listing says the fort changed the way public building work was done in New South Wales after that.
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A Home for Old Soldiers, 1912 to 1963
The fort passed to the Commonwealth in 1901. Its garrison was cut back in 1902, and by 1908 there wasn't much military activity left. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was decommissioned in 1911. After petitions from local women's groups, the first seven war veterans moved in in 1912. The heritage listing calls it the first war veterans' home in Australia.
During the Depression in the 1930s the guns were sold for scrap. The two biggest were too heavy to get back over the bridge, so they're still there. In 1942, with Japan in the war, the army moved back in, and 24 servicemen known as the "Bare section" took the veterans' place. In 1962 the army offered to sell the island to the War Veterans' Home for one pound, and the offer was turned down. The home closed in 1963.
Museum, Heritage and National Park
From 1963 the Randwick Historical Society looked after the island and ran a museum. The Fort Artillery Society dressed in period uniform and fired the 9-inch gun, which was a big drawcard until the live firings stopped in 1974. The island was made a reserve for public recreation on 12 March 1965 and gazetted as Bare Island Historic Site on 1 October 1967, under the National Parks and Wildlife Service. Wikipedia says the fort was open to the public until 28 December 1989, the day of the Newcastle earthquake. Today you get inside only on a guided tour.
The fort went on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999, as an almost completely intact example of late nineteenth century coastal defence. The whole headland is part of Kamay Botany Bay National Park, which was gazetted in 1988. The park went on the State Heritage Register in 2013 and the National Heritage List in 2017. Around the island it's the most popular scuba diving spot in New South Wales, with weedy sea dragons, seahorses and the Bare Island anglerfish, which is named after the island.
The La Perouse Community
After colonisation many Aboriginal people left the area. By the 1870s families connected to La Perouse and Botany Bay, along with people from the South Coast, were coming back. In 1881 there were 35 people recorded at the La Perouse camp. By 1885 seven acres had been declared a "Reserve for the Use of Aborigines", the only one in Sydney according to the Dictionary of Sydney. In 1895 it was fenced, and only the constable and the missionary had a key.
Again and again the government tried to move the people off, around 1900 to Wallaga Lake, then again in the 1920s and the 1960s, and every time they refused. In 1928, 53 residents signed a petition in the Sydney Morning Herald: "This is our heritage bestowed upon us: in these circumstances we feel justified in refusing to leave." Jack Patten of La Perouse was a leader of the Aborigines Progressive Association, and Joseph Timbery was among the La Perouse people who played a big part in the 1938 Day of Mourning. In 1984 the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council was finally given the deeds to the reserve.
People on the reserve worked the tourist trade too, selling boomerangs and shellwork to the crowds who came out on the tram. The tram line reached La Perouse in stages between 1900 and 1902, and the last tram ran in 1961.
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The Snake Men of La Perouse
No Sunday at La Perouse was complete without the snake man. The Dictionary of Sydney says snake men drew the crowds from about 1909, letting snakes crawl over them and sometimes bite them, in a pit near the tram loop. The first was "Professor" Frederick Fox, the "Snake King". He went to India in 1913 to sell his antidote and died of krait bites in Calcutta in 1914. Herbert See took over and was killed by a brown snake. Then George Cann took over, and the Cann family ran the show for about 90 years. John Cann's last show was on 18 April 2010, and the Hawkesbury Herpetological Society has kept it going since.
Lights, Camera, Bare Island
Bare Island's had a film career too. Charles Chauvel used shots of the fort as an Arab citadel in Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940). In Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) it became Biocyte's storage facility, where Ethan Hunt steals the cure from Ambrose before the chase back onto the mainland. It has also turned up in East West 101 and the finale of Netflix's reboot of The Mole.
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Timeline
- Thousands of years: Aboriginal people live on the headland, with an unbroken connection of over 7,500 years according to the Dictionary of Sydney.
- 1770: Cook notes "a small bare island". Banks collects shells there.
- 24 January 1788: Lapérouse arrives off Botany Bay.
- 26 January 1788: The First Fleet leaves for Port Jackson as the French sail in.
- 17 February 1788: Father Receveur dies and is buried on the headland.
- March 1788: The French sail away and are lost at Vanikoro.
- 1822: Macquarie Watchtower built (troops there by 1822 according to the Kamay listing).
- 1825: Bougainville arranges the monument and Receveur memorial (1829 in the Kamay listing).
- 1833 to 1903: The watchtower serves as a customs house (from 1831 according to the Kamay listing).
- 1869: Military road reaches La Perouse.
- 1876: Telegraph cable to New Zealand lands at La Perouse.
- 1877 to 1880: Bare Island fort designed.
- 7 April 1881: McLeod starts work. The brick cable station is also built this year.
- 1885: Scratchley dies. The La Perouse Aboriginal reserve is declared.
- 1886: Construction finished, according to Wikipedia. Other dates are given, see below.
- 1887: The bridge is built.
- 1888 to 1889: Barracks built without a tender.
- 1 July 1890: Royal Commission into the Bare Island works. Barnet resigns.
- 1901: The fort passes to the Commonwealth.
- 1900 to 1902: The tram reaches La Perouse.
- c. 1909: Snake men start drawing crowds.
- 1911: Fort decommissioned, according to the Dictionary of Sydney.
- 1912: The first seven war veterans move in.
- 1918 to 1920: The cable station is used as a Coast Hospital annexe during the Spanish flu.
- 1928: Reserve residents petition against removal.
- 1930s: Guns sold for scrap, except the two biggest.
- 1942: The army takes the island back for the war.
- 25 February 1961: Last tram to La Perouse.
- 1963: Veterans' home closes. Randwick Historical Society takes over.
- 1 October 1967: Bare Island Historic Site gazetted.
- 1974: Live gun firings end.
- 1984: La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council given the reserve deeds.
- 1988: Botany Bay National Park gazetted.
- 28 December 1989: Fort closed to general public entry.
- 2 April 1999: Bare Island Fort added to the State Heritage Register.
- 2000: Mission: Impossible 2 released, with scenes shot on Bare Island.
- 2005: Vanikoro wreck identified as the Boussole.
- 18 April 2010: John Cann's last snake show.
- 2013 and 2017: Kamay Botany Bay listed on the State and then National Heritage registers.
Where the Sources Disagree
- When the fort was finished. Wikipedia's Bare Island article says it was completed in 1885 at a cost of £34,000, with work inside starting in 1889. A few lines later the same article says construction was completed in 1886. It also gives the build as 1881 to 1889. The Kamay listing says it was operational by 1890. The La Perouse suburb article says it was fortified in 1885.
- Who designed it. The Bare Island article and the heritage listing credit Scratchley, with Morell and Barnet, working to Jervois's specification. The La Perouse suburb article says it was built to a design by Barnet.
- When the fort stopped being a fort. Wikipedia says the garrison was cut back in 1902, with little military activity by 1908 and decommissioning in the early 1900s. The Dictionary of Sydney gives 1911.
- Who the traditional owners were. The Dictionary of Sydney names the Kameygal. The Bare Island heritage material says Gweagal and Kameygal. The Kamay listing says Gweagal at Kurnell and probably Cadigal on the northern headland. The suburb article says Gooriwal was the name used by the Muruora-dial people, with the Kameygal clan of the Dharug probably living there.
- The monument and tomb. The Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia say 1825, through Bougainville. Wikipedia's suburb article says the tombstone was paid for "the following year" after 1824. The Kamay listing says the monuments were erected in 1829.
- The watchtower. The Dictionary of Sydney says it was built in 1822 and was a customs house from 1833. The Kamay listing says it was used for customs from 1831. Wikipedia says it was built in 1820 to 1822.
- Which ship took Lapérouse's letters. The suburb article says the Sirius. The Lapérouse biography says the Alexander.
- The snake men. The Dictionary of Sydney says they started about 1909. Wikipedia's suburb article says Professor Fox began the shows in the late 19th century, and dates George Cann's start to 1918. The Snake Man article says 1919.
- The fort's own heritage text as copied on Wikipedia also includes a sharp opinion that the fort "served no real purpose at all". That's one writer's view, not a settled fact.
My Earlier Posts
- Botany Bay
- Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet Arriving at Botany Bay, January 1788
- Frenchman's Road
- The Wreck of the Malabar, Long Bay, 1931
- Mundarrah Towers, the Lost Castle of Clovelly
- The Shark Arm Case, Coogee Aquarium, 1935
- Randwick Tramway Workshops
- Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Bare Island (New South Wales)", including material from the NSW State Heritage Register entry 00978 (CC BY 4.0)
- Wikipedia, "La Perouse, New South Wales"
- Julia Kensy, "La Perouse", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008
- Wikipedia, "Kamay Botany Bay National Park", including NSW State Heritage Register material
- Wikipedia, "Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse"
- Wikipedia, "James Barnet"
- Wikipedia, "Snake Man of La Perouse"
- Wikipedia, "Mission: Impossible 2"
- Wikimedia Commons, for all the images and their descriptions (State Library of NSW, Powerhouse Museum, Australian National Maritime Museum, RAHS and individual photographers)