Gunnamatta Bay

Gunnamatta Bay is a small bay in southern Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Gunnamatta Bay is located off the Port Hacking estuary, in the Sutherland Shire. The foreshore is a natural boundary for the suburbs of Cronulla to the east, Woolooware to the north and Burraneer to the west.

Transport

Cronulla and National Park Ferry Cruises operate a ferry service from the wharf on Gunnamatta Bay, which provides a link between Cronulla and Bundeena across Port Hacking, on the edge of the Royal National Park.

Though the wharf was built for boat use the area inside the shark nets is now mainly used to dive, jump, flip into the water. It is hard to go to the wharf without seeing hordes of people jumping and pulling a 'coffin' (maori bomb). Kids generally just jump feet first but there are some who dare to do more. Teenage locals attempt backflips forward flips and ultra flips the latter being the hardest to pull off. Some even use the surroundings to their advantage jumping and flipping over the rail just managing to clear it.

Parks

Gunnamatta Park and Darook Park are located on its eastern foreshore. Tonkin Oval on the northern foreshore features a large cricket oval and is also used for baseball. Cronulla Public School is located nearby.

History

Matthew Flinders and George Bass explored and mapped the coastline and Port Hacking estuary in 1796 and the southernmost point of Cronulla is named Bass and Flinders Point, in their honour. Thomas Holt (1811-88) owned most of the land that stretched from Sutherland to Cronulla in the 1860s.

The area around the bay was subdivided in 1895 and land was offered for sale at 10 pounds per acre. In 1899, the government named the area Gunnamatta, which means "sandy hills". On the 26th February 1908 it was officially changed to Cronulla and Gunnamatta was used for the name of the bay, on the western side.

Cronulla is derived from "kurranulla", meaning ‘‘place of the pink seashells’’ in the dialect of the area's Aboriginal inhabitants, the Dharawal people. The beaches were named by Surveyor Robert Dixon who surveyed here in 1827-28 and by 1840, the main beach was still known as Karranulla.

References

*"The Book of Sydney Suburbs", Compiled by Frances Pollen, Angus & Robertson Publishers, 1990, Published in Australia ISBN 0-207-14495-8