The site has historic and cultural significance for the Aboriginal community. The Kurnell Peninsular is well known as the place where Captain James Cook first landed on Australian soil in April 1770. It is also the site of first contact between the English and Aboriginal people in NSW. In 1788 it was briefly the site of Captain Arthur Phillip's first settlement until the First Fleet relocated to Port Jackson. As such, the whole peninsular has acquired a special historical and iconic status in the history of European settlement in Australia and the history of contact between the English and Aboriginal communities. The landscape today bears little resemblance to that experienced by local Aboriginal people and first observed by Cook in 1770. What was a predominantly vegetated and lightly wooded landscape has been heavily modified as a result of European agricultural practices. In the late nineteenth century the dunes became popular with tourists from Sydney. This period is associated with the opening of the railway. Between the 1920s and the 1950s Cronulla became a popular holiday destination famed for its beaches and sand dunes. The use of the dunes for recreation has continued to the present day. The Cronulla sand dunes have been used as a location for major Australian Films. The sheer expanse of the dunes was effectively used to convey remote desert regions in films such as the epic 1941 Charles Chauvel film Forty Thousand Horsemen which starred Chips Rafferty. The film detailed the battles of the Australian Light Horse regiment in Palestine during World War 1. A number of local residents worked as extras in the film. The Rats of Tobruk, Thunder in the Desert, Phar Lap and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome also utilised the dunes as a location. Sand removal began in the 1930s, but accelerated from the 1950s onwards to supply sand for the Sydney building market. Sand removal has essentially evacuated the once prominent dunal system from the landscape. The Cronulla Sand Dune above Wanda Beach survives as the last major exposed dune (undisturbed by sand removal) along the coastal strip and, together with the adjacent Lucas Reserve and Wanda Beach, serves to demonstrate the historical, environmental and cultural transformations of the area over the last two hundred years.
