Map - Bare Island (New South Wales) (Bare Island)

Bare Island  (Bare Island)
Bare Island is a heritage-listed islet located in south-eastern Sydney, in La Perouse in the City of Randwick local government area in the state of New South Wales, in eastern Australia. The islet is located about 16 km south east of the Sydney central business district, within Botany Bay, close to the bay's northern headland. Containing former fortification facilities, Bare Island was a former war veterans' home and museum and is now a historic site that was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 and is significant as an almost completely intact example of late nineteenth century coastal defence technology. It was designed by Sir Peter Scratchley, Gustave Morell and James Barnet and built from 1881 to 1889 by John McLeod on behalf of the NSW Department of Public Works.

Bare Island is connected by a footbridge to the mainland of La Perouse. The heritage-listed military fort and tunnels can only be visited by guided tour. The waters around the island are popular with scuba divers. The Bare Island anglerfish is named after this island.

At European contact the Gweagal and Kameygal Aboriginal groups were associated with Bare Island. It is mentioned in the journals of both Joseph Banks and James Cook. Banks collected shell specimens there, while Cook noted that the island described as "a small bare island" provided a convenient navigational marker. The name stuck from this first usage. As such the name is one of the first European names for a part of the east coast.

Governor Phillip and French explorer Jean-Francois de La Perouse were the next to enter Botany Bay, but neither group is known to have visited Bare Island. The French built a stockade and (kitchen) garden nearby (300 m from the Macquarie Tower) towards Frenchmans Bay and buried their dead, Father (Pere) Receveur.

William Bradley, in his journal "A Voyage to New South Wales", relates that in July 1788 noticeboards were erected on the island to advise visiting ships that the settlement had moved to Port Jackson.

The area was considered remote from Sydney and as the nineteenth century progressed became the focus of noxious trades such as tanneries and fell-mongering as well as the development of a unique Aboriginal community at La Perouse which serviced the diverse tastes of urban Sydney. The removal of all remaining garrison troops from Australian colonies excepting those retained and paid for by colonial governments as a result of the Cardwell reforms in the late 1860s forced a rethink of local defence preparedness, especially with the outbreak of hostilities between Russia and Britain in 1876. As a result, the Australian colonies requested the services of an Imperial Engineer to advise them on defence matters. Military engineers Scratchley and Jervois were sent.

 
Map - Bare Island  (Bare Island)
Country - Australia
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Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of 7617930 km2, Australia is the largest country by area in Oceania and the world's sixth-largest country. Australia is the oldest, flattest, and driest inhabited continent, with the least fertile soils. It is a megadiverse country, and its size gives it a wide variety of landscapes and climates, with deserts in the centre, tropical rainforests in the north-east, and mountain ranges in the south-east.

The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south east Asia approximately 65,000 years ago, during the last ice age. Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world. Australia's written history commenced with the European maritime exploration of Australia. The Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon was the first known European to reach Australia, in 1606. In 1770, the British explorer James Cook mapped and claimed the east coast of Australia for Great Britain, and the First Fleet of British ships arrived at Sydney in 1788 to establish the penal colony of New South Wales. The European population grew in subsequent decades, and by the end of the 1850s gold rush, most of the continent had been explored by European settlers and an additional five self-governing British colonies established. Democratic parliaments were gradually established through the 19th century, culminating with a vote for the federation of the six colonies and foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901. Australia has since maintained a stable liberal democratic political system and wealthy market economy.
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