 Kurnell headland was a remote spot and was not subject to a land grant until 1815.On the northern shores of the bay the La Perouse peninsula remained relatively unsettled until the 1860s and 1880s when a pioneering fishing community worked the waters at Botany Bay and lived in La Perouse.While their land was not immediately settled by Europeans white colonisation had a profound impact on the people of the area, the most significant being the spread of disease such as smallpox.