Talk:La Perouse, New South Wales

Indigenous History
I'd love to see much more on this page about the Indigenous history of the Area - such as the land rights struggle and all that. Going to a bushwalk by a man who has deep roots to this place, but that doesn't count as a "valid source" does it... until somebody publishes a paper. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.48.201 (talk) 10:03, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

French territory?
I've just been told that some tiny area in that region is actually a French territory proclaimed by La Perouse. Is this true? A: yes, if you go there, there is a plaque explaining the history. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.197.97.177 (talk) 23:31, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Clothing Optional
Removed this reference from Little Congwong beach. As I understand, it is still a controversial and undecided issue.Recurring dreams 13:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Pop culture
I think the bit about the movie stone being made at Bare Island fort is wrong, the movie was made at the Middle Head Fortifications in Mosman. Cheers_Ad@m.J.W.C. (talk) 07:23, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed edit to history section
There are a couple of problems, firstly the name of the man himself (Lapérouse). The Wikipedia page on him also seems to have his name incorrectly formatted, hence the wikipedia link then displays incorrectly. In this edit to overcome that problem it has been placed in a standard html format to 'hide' that issue. The information in this edit also seeks to expand on the current content to both give more information but also to endeavour to clarify soem issues that appear to commonly be misunderstood, I am not suggesting that this article has presented those historical inconsistancies. One such issue is that of the common belief that Lapérouse was despatched by France to lay claim to Terra Australis but arrived to find it was already new south wales. Historical records do not appear to support this idea. Rather Lapérouse was on a scientific mission. Not withstanding this such missions also often had a brief to find new lands and Lapérouse was under instructions to seek out new lands for France in the South pacific. However it appears that he was actually despatched to Terra Australis to observe the British establishing the colony of NSW rather than to claim the place in the name of France. Hence my edits seek to clearly state this. (L’Expédition de Lapérouse. Qui était ce grand explorateur que Louis XVI avait envoyé découvrir le monde avec l’élite scientifique de l’époque ? Une expédition d’envergure à laquelle fut associée l’Académi) Some accounts state they french party built 2 longboats at Botany bay, others say 1.

In regard to the naming problem I have left notes on the [Talk:Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse] page hoping to get some feedback from other editors on this naming issue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Felix505 (talk • contribs) 04:33, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

History Section edit TEXT:

La Perouse was named after the French navigator Jean François de Galaup de Lapérouse (1741-88), who landed on the northern shore of Botany Bay west of Bare Island in January 1788 only days after the first fleet of convicts arrived in Australia. King Louis XVI of France had commissioned Lapérouse to explore the Pacific (L’expédition de Lapérouse, 1785-1788, réplique française au voyage de Cook ). In April 1770 Cooks expedition had sailed onto the east coast of Australia whilst exploring the south Pacific searching for Terra Australis or ‘Land of the South’. Upon King Louis XVI's orders, Lapérouse departed Brest, France, in command of L’Astrolabe and La Boussole on 1 August 1785 on a scientific voyage of the Pacific Inspired by the voyages of Cook. La Perouse in Sydney's south is named after the leader of this French expedition.

Lapérouse’s two ships sailed to New South Wales after some of his men had been attacked and killed in the Navigator Islands (Samoa). The L’Astrolabe and La Boussole arrived off Botany Bay on 24 January just six days after Captain Arthur Phillip (1738-1814) had anchored just east of Bare Island, in H.M. Armed Tender Supply. On 26 January 1788, as Arthur Phillip was moving the First Fleet around to Port Jackson after finding Botany Bay unsuitable for a Settlement, La Pérouse was sailing into Botany Bay,   anchoring there just eight days after the British had.

The British received Lapérouse courteously, and offered him any assistance he might need. The French were far better provisioned than the English were, and extended the same courtesy; but apparently neither offer was accepted. . The commander of the Fleet, Captain Phillip, ordered that two British naval vessels, Sirius and Supply, meet the French. Contrary to popular belief, the French did not have orders to claim Terra Australis for France and the arrival of the French ships L’Astrolabe and La Boussoleand and their meeting with the ships of the British expedition was cordial and followed normal protocols. Lapérouse sent his journals and letters to Europe with the British ship, the Sirius.

A scientist on the expedition, Father Receveur, died in February and was buried at what is now known as La Perouse. In Samoa there had been a skirmish wth the inhabitants, Langle, commander of L’Astrolabe and 12 other members of the French expedition were killed, Father Reçeveur, expedition naturalist and chaplain, was injured in that skirmish and died at Botany Bay. He was buried at Frenchmans Cove below the headland that is now called La Perouse. The place was marked by a tin plate but the local Aborigines quickly removed it. The British replaced it with another and tended the site. Reçeveur was the second European to be buried in Australian soil, the first was Sutherland from Cook’s 1770 expedition who is buried at nearby Kurnell on the other side of the Botany Bay headlands.

The French stayed at Botany Bay for six weeks and built a stockade, observatory and a garden for fresh produce on the La Perouse peninsula. After completing the building a longboat (to replace one lost in the attack in the Navigator Islands) and obtaining wood and water, the French departed for New Caledonia, Santa Cruz, the Solomons, and the Louisiades. Lapérouse wrote in his journals that he expected to be back in France by December 1788, but the two ships vanished. The last official sighting of the French expedition was in March 1788 when British lookouts stationed at the South Head of Port Jackson saw the expedition sail from Botany Bay. The French expedition was wrecked a short time later on the reefs of Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands during a cyclone sometime during April or May 1788, the circumstances remained a mystery for 40 years.. Some of the mystery was solved in 1826 when items associated with the French ships were found on an island in the Santa Cruz group, with wreckage of the ships themselves discovered in 1964.Felix505 (talk) 02:07, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I have now formally proposed a name change (move) of the article on Jean François de Galaup de Lapérouse/La Perouse to which this article links. Those interested in the above edit proposal will no doubt be interested in the main article. If so please see the discussion for - Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse → Jean-François de Galaup comte de Lapérouse - . If you have an objection or any comments to the above please first look at the detail on the discussion page for Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse. If no one comments in the next week or so I will go ahead and make this edit. Felix505 (talk) 15:05, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

removal of Henry Head Battery image
I have reinstated this image as it is contextual to the information provided in the article. These are significant historic structures and are described in the article. Indeed it may be appropriate to expand on the information pertaining to them rather than diminish it. That they have graffiti on them is a great pity, however it is a reality and the photograph documents that. At WP the aim is not to glamourise, promote or to censor information. If the graffiti offends it may be more appropriate to contact NSW parks and make a complaint about it there. I would support the addition of a further photo of the facilities showing an above ground POV, maybe the disappearing gun as it was an engineering achievement, and it has indeed now truly disappeared. These structures were considered most important in their time and they remain as an iconic reminder of previous international issues that were perceived to be confronting the nation. I would support a section in the article that gave them fuller description. Please do not remove the image again without clear consensus from other editors. Felix505 (talk) 11:54, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for discussing the relevance of the image. I added the image and text due to the historical significance of this site in La Perouse and because I once had a passion for historical sites like this around Sydney. Perhaps in future if I do return to the site I will try to take a more desirable shot of the exterior with a bit of Botany Bay in the background. As for expansion of the text well this is a little hard to come by, a lot of the historical data added was added by another editor who seems to have a lot of books about military history and there is little to find on the web, although I have not checked recently but will look into it soon. I would have liked to have expanded the article so that it would be of similar length to the Bankstown Bunker article. Hopefully some more information will come along soon. Also the rooms pictured are not just dirty rooms covered with graffiti, these rooms were used as gunpowder magazines or to store munitions as well as providing accommodation for Australian troops. So I am not just trying to promote my adventures in some hidden tunnel somewhere. ***Adam*** 12:45, 9 October 2010 (UTC)


 * To be quite frank I found the comments by User talk:125.63.187.56 a little odd. I am wondering if User talk:125.63.187.56 is actually User_talk:203.35.135.136 who was also deleting the image. That IP seems to have a bit of a history. Certainly your interest in the bunkers should not preclude you from contributing to the La Perouse article. Rather I consider that your apparent interest was quite in context. I will have a read of the Bankstown article it looks quite interesting. Maybe NSW parks or the DOD archives of the era have something. I recall reading something on the coastal fortifications some time ago. I stumbled upon it when I was researching something related to Darwin. I will try and recall where I saw it. The nations coastal defence structures have an interesting history partly due to their folly in some cases such as the Russian scares and in the context of WWII the considerable delays in building them and their sometimes dubious worth in terms of the diversion of resources. It is interesting to see that you feel you need to explain these rooms as being more that dirty rooms with graffiti. They are indeed a significant part of a complex and integrated coastal defence system. I think the person who deleted the image may have misunderstood that WP is not a travel brochure, it is meant to be encyclopaedic and so content like this is both appropriate to the article and in completely in context with a description of the area and toward a historical account of La Perouse.Felix505 (talk) 14:05, 9 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The two ips are definitely the same person and possibly a disgruntled ex user who was responsible for adding excessive poor quality images across Wikipedia, especially those related to Sydney suburbs. There is nothing wrong with the poor quality images if they are relevant, but when you add over thirty to forty of them to almost every article it seems get a bit much. Here is an example of one of the articles, and you can see the article after I gave it a clean up, still with plenty of photos. The quality of the images wasn't to bad here but just the amount of images in the article was excessive.


 * With the the Sydney fortifications I was simply trying to share or reveal a lessor known but interesting history related to Australia's military history and plan to expand on these once the information becomes available. Another example similar to Henry Head but on a larger scale is the Middle Head Fortifications in Mosman. Although larger and more notable the amount of info on this is still fairly limited and there is a lot of smaller hidden stuff around that area as well. The Henry head battery was probably just as significant as the Bare Island fortification when it came to coastal defences but because it is less of a tourist attraction and located in an out of the way location not to many people are aware of its existence and its historical significance to the area of La Perouse. One other article that may explain the importance of these sites is Sydney Harbour defences. I also put together this Utube videos to document and share these locations with the general public. ***Adam*** 02:36, 10 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Good work Adam. Lets try and develop it a bit more in due course. Felix505 (talk) 10:40, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Will do cheers. ***Adam*** 11:37, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on La Perouse, New South Wales. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20050511054338/http://www.abc.net.au:80/news/newsitems/200505/s1364055.htm to http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200505/s1364055.htm

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Cheers. —cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 15:02, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 21:30, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

South-East
La Perouse is in Sydney's south-east as per its official description.

https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-east/la-perouse 2405:6E00:289:B4FC:8517:E35F:71FC:1A99 (talk) 13:01, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
 * and this one says East https://www.sydney.com/destinations/sydney/sydney-east LibStar (talk) 03:24, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * and this one puts La Perouse in the eastern suburbs. https://economy.id.com.au/sydney-eastern-suburbs LibStar (talk) 03:28, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Eastern Suburbs
La Perouse is in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. The article about South-Eastern Sydney has been nominated for deletion and merger into the main Eastern Suburbs page, as it appears that so-called South Eastern Sydney is at best an unofficial subregion of the Eastern Suburbs. Daceyvillain (talk) 03:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)


 * The anon IP editor has been pushing this concept of South Eastern Sydney for weeks. I don't support retaining the article because it's not an official title and not backed by reliable sources. LibStar (talk) 03:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * It is easy to find government maps of the Eastern Suburbs (and these generally extend all the way to south to La Perouse). But it is hard to find maps of so-called South Easern Sydney or South East Sydney. The closest I have come to finding a map is the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District map, but this map includes all of the Eastern Suburbs, the Inner City, and large amounts of South Sydney. See https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/lhd/Pages/seslhd.aspx Daceyvillain (talk) 03:33, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

From an official report of Council, https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/132769/Eastern_Suburbs_Economic_Profile_2013.pdf This economic profile is a joint initiative of Randwick City Council, Waverley Municipal Council and Woollahra Municipal Council as local government authorities located in the Eastern Suburbs sub-region of the Sydney Metropolitan area.

The Eastern Suburbs study area is a sub-region of the wider Sydney metropolitan area, located east and south-east of the Sydney Central Business District. The Australian Bureau of Statistics identifies the Eastern Suburbs as an SA3 statistical subdivision that includes the local government areas of Waverley, Woollahra and Randwick.

The Eastern Suburbs extends from the peninsula of South Head at Watsons Bay in the north to La Perouse on Botany Bay in the south. The northern part of the Eastern Suburbs comprises the affluent suburbs of Vaucluse, Rose Bay, Darling Point, Dover Heights, Double Bay, Point Piper, Watsons Bay, and Bellevue Hill. Centrally located to the Eastern Suburbs is Centennial Park, surrounded by the suburbs of Woollahra, Paddington, Bondi Junction, Queens Park, Randwick, Kensington, Clovelly and Coogee. To the south, the area includes suburbs such as Maroubra, Matraville, Malabar, Little Bay and La Perouse. In total, the Eastern Suburbs covers an area of around 58 square kilometres, incorporating 34 suburbs. The Eastern Suburbs features an extensive coastline, including some of Sydney’s most popular and best known beaches such as Bondi, Tamarama, Bronte, Clovelly, Coogee, Maroubra, Malabar, Little Bay and La Perouse. The region also borders Sydney Harbour to the north and Botany Bay to the south.

LibStar (talk) 03:52, 9 March 2023 (UTC)