Kyeemagh Boat Ramp Amenities

2018 Kamey Country / Kyeemagh, NSW

Kyeemagh Boat Ramp Amenities on the southern bank of the Cooks River replace a dilapidated 1970s brick block, with a design that references the facades of other local Council facilities.

The design provides new public facilities that respond to the site, are welcoming to the community, sustainable, easily maintained, and accessible to everyone.

A simple corrugated skillion roof sits atop a steel frame and brick base. The carefully designed herringbone patterned brickwork and oversized timber screens evoke the façade detailing, in both timber and concrete, of other amenities built along the shores of Botany Bay. This detail draws these structures into a continuum of improvements by Bayside Council in waterside parks over the past decade.

The building houses accessible and ambulant unisex toilets, park staff facilities and parks storage. A wash basin within a generous covered space overlooks the bike path and playground, providing safety and additional amenity for park users.

The facilities are located near where the river flows into Botany Bay in Kyeemagh (pronounced kye-EE-mah), an Aboriginal name thought to be derived from a Dharug or Dharawal word meaning ‘beautiful dawn’.*

The building is adjacent to paths linking the Cooks River area with Botany Bay. The park is surrounded by suburban housing dating from the 1970s, an RSL Club, and the Occupation Road Market Gardens – a state heritage-listed site where Chinese-Australians have grown vegetables since the 1800s.

* Sydney Morning Herald 4 July 1929

It is generally understood that the Aboriginal people of the Cooks River valley belonged to the Eora or coastal Darug language group. Within this language group were a number of clans, each identified with a part of the country. The country between the Cooks River and the Georges River from Botany Bay to Rose Hill was likely associated with the Bedia clan. Clans spent different months of the year at regular campsites in the area.
In 1788, British Marine officer Watkin Tench noted in his diary: ‘On the northwest arm of Botany Bay [the Cooks River] stands a village, which contains more than a dozen houses, and perhaps five times that number of people’. Large shell middens at campsites near the mouth of the river and in sandstone rock shelters on its north and south banks are evidence of occupation of the valley for at least between 1,000 and 4,000 years*.
*www.dictionaryofsydney.org

Sam Crawford, Anna Paton, Ben Chan, Ken Warr

Builder

Specbuilt Constructions

Consultant Team

Structural Engineer – Partridge
Hydraylic Engineer – ITM Design
Electrical Engineer – Lighting Art + Science
QS – Bylett and Associates

Client

Bayside Council

Photographer

Brett Boardman