Twenty seven years after the First Fleet departed from Botany Bay the first official land grant in the pre-Sutherland Shire was made to James Birnie, a merchant trader and master of a sealing and whale sloop. In 1815, he was given, 'On Promise', Portion No.1, 700 acres of land and 160 acres of saltwater marshes. The semi-literate clearly recorded the grant as he heard it: Birnie's Alpha Farm (meaning the beginning) became Half-A-Farm in the official records. The grant included Captain Cook's landing place.

Birnie intended building a whaling station there. He set up a farm, market garden and dairy and built a homestead, which he named Curnell (the aboriginal name for the area as he heard it). There he installed his caretaker/manager while he pursued whaling and other shipping interest from his Sydney home.

In 1801 John Connell, widowed in England, came to Australia with his two children, Margaret and John, as a free settler. He transferred his London business to Sydney, setting up a large ironmongery shop where Australia Square now stands. Catherine Sullivan, a convict transported to Australia in 1798, was assigned to Connell as a servant and, after marrying him in Sydney was pardoned.

In 1821 Connell obtained 'On Promise' 1000 acres at Quibray Bay adjacent to Birnie's grant. When the 66 year old Birnie was declared insane, in 1828, the trustees of the Birnie Estate sold his land to John Connell, giving Connell possession of the entire peninsular. Connell built a new house, 'Alpha House' on the foundations of Birnie's original cottage.

John's daughter, Margaret married Captain Thomas Laycock and had two sons, Elias Pearson Laycock and John Connell Laycock. Both parents died when the boys were young and John Connell became their guardian.

In the 1830s Connell and his two grandsons, Elias Pearson Laycock and John Connell Laycock, began to harvest timber from the estate. The logs were transported by water. In the 1840s a canal from Woolooware Bay was dug and the logs were floated into Botany Bay to be loaded onto ships and sailed up to Sydney.

In 1848 John Connell died, leaving his entire estate to his grandsons as tenants in common. In 1856 the first Crown land auctions in the area took place and John Connell Laycock bought a further 700 acres, bringing his total landholdings to over 4500 acres.

Laycock also owned property in Sydney which he had financed through mortgages to Thoms Holt. In 1860 a fire destroyed the Prince of Wales Theatre and adjacent properties owned by Laycock. He was under-insured and was forced to auction his properties.

Thomas Holt bought Laycock's whole estate at Kurnell in 1861 for �3275. Holt had arrived in Sydney from Yorkshire in 1842 and made a fortune during the gold rushes of the early 1850s. Holt moved to Sutherland, consolidated the scattered holdings of the Laycocks and further increased his landholdings to approximately 13,000 acres. He built a number of mansions, ran his 'Sutherland Estate' in the English manner, and commuted to Sydney to manage his business affairs.