Botany Bay
By J. P.
BOTANY BAY is to Australia what the Tower of London is to England or (more accurately) what Plymouth Rock is to the United States. There, one can truly say, it all began: and there, sooner or later, every visitor must go. I chose a rather cold and blowy Sunday afternoon in July when there did not seem to be anything very much to do.
Since Botany Bay is a large inlet, the dutiful tourist must in practice choose between Knrnell on the South shore, where Captain Cook landed in 1770, and La Perouse, on the North shore, where the French explorer Laperouse—he did not separate the article—landed in 1778 while the First Fleet under Cdptain Philip was still riding in the Bay. Kurnell is more historic but La Perouse more popular, largely, I suppose, because it is nearer Sydney. We went to La Perouse.
The road from Sydney to Botany Bay is not of the kind to encourage romantic reflections. The ugliest suburbs in Australia gradually fade into a large but desolate industrial area which in turn fades into a windswept plain of scrub and sand dunes. This, in fact, is the backyard of Sydney where the city fathers placed their infectious diseases hospital, their prison and their one and only reserve for aboriginals.
We stopped the car near a wooden café which stands on the neck of the little rocky peninsula which is La Perouse proper. As we got out, a sudden shower of hard Australian rain drove us into the café. I watched the strong wind urge the Pacific swell through the Heads and into the grey calm of Botany Bay. Beneath us stretched the bleak little peninsula dotted with cars parked at awkward angles and a few ugly huts or shanties. The only building of any distinction was a fine old octagonal tower of red sandstone built as a guard room or customs house in the convict days.
When the rain stopped we began to walk down to the point. Some men were selling toy boomerangs and other curios, but the children who were with me agreed that we should not buy any except from an aboriginal. These men were all white and very much like any other working man.
The actual point of the peninsula is an island separated from the mainland by a bridge, beneath which the surf lunged savagely in a dying thrust. On the island is a tiny but impressive Victorian barrack, once used as a fort and now occupied by the equivalent of Chelsea pensioners. We were allowed into the barracks, where the old men were hanging out their washing, and climbed up to the empty gun emplacements where we could look out over the Bay.
There, with nothing to distract one, it was easier to feel ' the right emotions. Through this channel had nosed the Endeavour with Cook and Joseph Banks standing together on the deck, the one anxiously watching the shoaling water, the other eagerly scanning the shores which no white man had seen before. Here, eight years later, Captain Phillip had brought the First Fleet with its terrible burden of hope, fear and despair. And here, only six days afterwards, landed Laperouse, brave: correct and courteous, on his way to his death in the Pacific. We climbed back up the hill, feeling rather flat. I looked at the monument to Laperouse, and the children cheered up a little when we saw a man selling boomerangs who was dark enough to qualify as an aboriginal, the first we had ever seen. He spoke excellent Australian and charged a very Australian price. For a moment I thought this was the best we could do, but then I noticed a huddle of shanties and wooden huts round the bay-to the West and immediately suspected that this must be the aboriginal reserve. We walked towards it and soon saw two fine, tall, dark-skinned men chopping wood in a little yard. This was better. Half a dozen children were playing near the huts, all obviously half-castes of different shades with bright, intelligent faces. They were watching a white man with a performing dog who seemed to be running some kind of private circus. A notice on the caravan said, " See the live alligator," but when I asked the children where it was, they all started shouting, " Mister, mister, here mister, after the show, mister ! " Since I did not feel inclined• to watch the dog, which was a miserable terrier wearing a large paper collar, we walked back to the café where we had left the Gar. My own children seemed pleased with their boomerangs and the aborigines, though they were disappointed that the latter were wearing clothes.
Just by the car there was a small enclosure surrounded by a low fence of palings which I had not noticed before. In this stood a large stolid man wearing white tennis shoes. On the ground beside him were three sacks. Since the man seemed quite impassive, we should not have stopped had I not seen something move beside one of the sacks. I looked again and saw it was a large snake. I pointed this out to the children, who leaned over the fence to see better, and -asked the 'man what kind of snake it was. " That, friend," he said slowly, " is a diamond snake." Our interest attracted a few more p6ple and when sufficient had gathered the man in tennis shoes- picked up the diamond snake with a short piece of bent wire and displayed it to us like a piece of material. He then shook out of the sack another, much larger, snake about seven feet long, and began his lecture. I use this word because he did not speak like a showman but like a school teacher with a science class.
" These, friends, are non-poisonous snakes of the python family. In a moment I will show you some poisonous snakes." He glanced casually at the other ,sacks, while the two small pythons- looped themselves gracefully around hiS arms and legs. " The small one is a young diamond snake but he will grow very much bigger. The other is the common carpet snake of Queensland and New South Wales. Both make excellent ratters." He paused, deftly picked the pythons up with his bent wire and popped them back in the first sack, their beautiful markings catching the evening light as they curled and twisted.
" Now, friends," said the man in tennis shoes, " I will show you the black snake. These, as you know, are the commonest snakes round here and they are poisonous though they are not in fact deadly." He untied the second sack and shook out two large black snakes which, displaying surprising animation on this cold winter's day, glided smoothly over the grass on their red bellies until caught up by the hooked wire. The lecturer told us that they were not aggressive snakes and nearly always tried to escape if surprised. Slightly relieved by this information, we waited for the climax, while the black snakes were popped into their sack. " And now, friends, I will show you some tiger snakes. These are much more dangerous and aggressive and you will see that they will bite at me even though it is winter and they are really hibernating. But first I shall pass round the hat." The hat was passed round and I put in a shilling. The man then slowly untied the string round the third sack and shook out three tiger snakes, smaller and uglier than the previous ones, with thin bodies and flat wicked heads. They were sluggish and did not try to escape, but one, as the lecturer had promised, struck petulantly at the white tennis shoes. They were quickly picked up by the wife and dropped, still writhing, into the sack. The performance was -over. We got into the car and drove home well content. We had seen La Perouse and would not need to go there again. We-had seen the dignity of the untamed sea, of the old watch tower, of the ancient serpents which match so well this ancient, sterile land. And if we had also seen the indignity of the half-castes selling boomerangs at the very place where their ancestors had thrown them at Lape'rouse and his Frenchmen, that was not their fault. At least they were there at the beginning, were still there and might be there at the end.
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