La Perouse

This guide to La Perouse in Sydney opens on two French ships anchoring in Botany Bay in January 1788, just days after the British claimed the same shore, and the six wary weeks the crews shared before sailing off one March morning, never to be seen in Europe again. It follows France's decades of waiting, and an 1825 visit by officer Hyacinthe de Bougainville, who raised the stone obelisk on this headland for a homecoming he still believed might come. A short walk away lies the small grave of Father Louis Receveur, the expedition's chaplain, lost in an island skirmish months before the ships vanished.