The Yorkshire-born explorer's initial contact with the local tribe set an unhappy precedent for the next 200 years after Aborigines flung spears at his landing party of 40 sailors and had to be driven off by musket fire.

Kurnell is the place where the Union Jack was first raised and where expedition scientist Sir Joseph Banks began collecting Antipodean flora and fauna.

'What Plymouth Rock is to America, so should this memorable but little reverenced spot be to all Australians,' a government minister, Sir Joseph Carruthers, declared in 1899.

But instead of reverence, the Kurnell peninsula has been treated with recklessness.

In early colonial days it was used as a rubbish dump. In the 20th century, it was invaded by industry and housing. Its sand dunes have been extensively mined for building materials and it is home to an enormous oil refinery and a sewage outfall pipe.

Now comes the latest indignity - plans to build Sydney's first desalination plant, at a cost of nearly A$2 billion (HK$12.8 billion). The controversial plant will suck in seawater, strip it of salt and spit out highly salinated brine.

It will join the long list of ventures that have turned the peninsula into a semi-industrial wasteland.

'In other countries, it would be regarded as a national shrine,' said Daphne Salt, a local historian and the author of Kurnell - Birthplace of Modern Australia. 'Instead it's just been used and abused. It's been ignored and mistreated since the start of the white settlement of Australia.'

The rot set in as far back as 1843, when the area was designated by authorities as a suitable location for 'noxious trades' and poisonous waste.

The same attitude has continued into the 21st century.

Salt calls it the 'black and white peninsula' - a largely forgotten spit of land scarred by the black of the Caltex oil refinery and the white of the sand mines.

One of the reasons the peninsula has been allowed to suffer such ignominious treatment is that much of it is privately owned, and has been since the early 19th century.

Another reason is its isolation. Located on the south side of Botany Bay and jutting out into the Tasman Sea, even now it feels a long way from the rest of Sydney.

Cook's landing site, which is marked by a modest sandstone obelisk, is of significance to Aborigines as well as white Australians.

'This is where Aborigines first indicated that the British were not welcome, so it's terribly important for indigenous history,' said Jenny Gormley, from the Sutherland Shire Environment Centre.

'It should be seen as a place of reconciliation, but it continues to be abused. It's as if state governments don't take Cook seriously. It makes me very sad.'

Certainly there are mixed feelings about Cook. Sutherland Shire Council has argued that having his face on everything from stationery to street signs is outdated and offensive to Aborigines.

Whether regarded as perfidious invader or doughty pioneer, Cook's landing place should be accorded more respect, said Gormley, who is related to the Yorkshireman through his sister.

'We'd like to see the cessation of sand mining and greater regard given to the site, not to celebrate the 'invasion' but to acknowledge that this is a very special site for European Australians and Aboriginal Australians,' she said.