European settlement –1788 -

“We… had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the world…”

Captain Arthur Phillip, first governor of New South Wales, in a letter to Lord Sydney, May 1788.[1]

1780s

The importance of the South Head district in the earliest years of European settlement is defined by its position at the gateway to the harbour and its role as a navigational landmark.

1788

• Captain Arthur Phillip, with a party of officers and marines, lands in Port Jackson on 21 January at an unnamed place which, in original accounts, is consistent with the beachfront at Camp Cove. The group made a meal at this place, boiling meat over a campfire on the beach. This occasion marks the first landing of members of the First Fleet within Port Jackson, and the first known European landing in Sydney Harbour.
  
• Camp Cove – the first landing place (PDF, 28.4 KB) for more information.
  

A Bicentennial commemoration at Camp Cove, 21 January 1988, of Phillip's landing at Port Jackson.
Photograph Woollahra History and Heritage Society.

• The name ‘Camp Cove’ is charted on Hunter’s survey of the harbour, work on which began on 28 January 1788 and was published in Phillip’s Voyage the following year[2]. Hunter’s instructions for sailing into Port Jackson, also reproduced in Phillip’s Voyage, establish Camp Cove by name as a navigational mark on the advised route for inward-bound vessels[3].

1790s

The origins of a settlement are laid down in the South Head, Watsons Bay and Camp Cove area during this decade, and the first grant of land issued.

1790

• A decision is made in January to establish a Look Out Post at Outer South Head and a flagstaff to communicate with shipping. The Post was established by Captain John Hunter on 20 January, and some ten days after this Lieutenant William Bradley was placed in charge. The site of this first Post is marked today by the South Head Signal Station.
  
• South Head Signal Station (PDF, 250 KB) for moere information.
  

• Governor Phillip and Bennelong visit the Look-Out Post on 3 February. Bradley’s account of their visit includes reference to Bennelong throwing a spear for a length of some 98 yards against a strong wind.[4]

• The first signal from the flagstaff is displayed on 10 February for the armed tender Supply on her return from Norfolk Island.

• Midshipman Daniel Southwell is appointed superintendent of the Post, taking over from Bradley on 14 February.

• The first European settlement in the area is established at a location believed to lie within present-day Robertson Park,[5] when a stone-mason’s gang, bricklayers and carpenters were sent to South Head to build accommodation for the men of the Sirius based at the Look Out.[6] The post established a vegetable garden.

• A thirty-foot brick column on a stone base is erected near the Look Out flagstaff as a further navigational marker for ships in the second half of the year, the work beginning in August[7]. This marker, commonly known as Phillip’s Column, is referred to in a letter from Under Secretary King to Governor Phillip in January 1792 as a ‘measure extremely necessary and proper’[8].

1792

• The first resident pilot is appointed to the South Head area with the establishment in May of a fishery at South Head under the control of a settler by the name of Barton, whose additional duty was to ‘board all ships coming in to the harbour and pilot them to the settlement’. The fishery, at a time of extreme food shortage in the colony, was to be for the ‘exclusive use of the sick’.[9]

1793

• The arrival of the transport Bellona in the waters off Sydney on the evening of Tuesday, 15 January is met by a large bonfire burning at South Head – the first recorded use of a navigational light in Australia. Later an iron ‘fire basket’ mounted on a tripod was built for this purpose. The Bellona brought with it the first immigrant free settlers to the colony.
• The first land grant is issued in the area - a twenty-acre parcel at Watsons Bay and Camp Cove to Edward Laing on 28 May. Laing, who named the acreage Roddam Farm, was the assistant surgeon to the New South Wales Corp. The name Laing’s Point, which today applies to the originally-named ‘Green Point’ at the western end of Camp Cove, derives from this brief ownership. By December 1794 the grant had become the property of NSW Corps quartermaster Thomas Laycock.
• Town of Watsons Bay subdivision (PDF, 22.4 KB) for more information.
  

1. Phillip, Arthur/ Governor Phillip to Lord Sydney, Sydney Cove, New South Wales, May 15^th 1788 reproduced in Historical records of New South Wales Vol.I, Part II.
2. ‘Plan of Port Jackson, New South Wales …1788’/by Captain Hunter, reproduced in Phillip, Arthur The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay …. facsim. ed., Adel., Libraries Board of South Australia, 1968; first ed., Lond., John Stockdale, 1789 Plate 14, (facing) p. 142.
3. Hunter op cit. pp. 142-143.
4. Bradley, William A Voyage to New South Wales : the journal of Lieutenant William Bradley RN of HMS Sirius, 186-1792. facsim of the original manuscript. Syd., Ure Smith/Public Library of NSW, 1969, p. 187.
5. Martin, Megan Op. cit p.27
6. Collins, David An Account of the colony in New South Wales facsim. ed., Adel., Libraries Board of South Australia, 1971;first ed., Lond., T Cadell Jun & W Davies, 1798-1802 p. 113.
7. Collins op.cit.p. 132.
8. King, John Letter to Governor Phillip 10^th January, 1792 reproduced in Historical records of New South Wales, facsim ed Syd., Lansdowne Slettery, 1978 ; first ed., Syd., Charles potter, Government printer, 1892. Vol 1, pt 2, p. 590.
9. Collins op.cit. p. 210.