Shipwreck Coast, South Australia …

South Australia featured in two of my recent posts – details below – and I wanted to tie this post in with them …

New Holland (Australia) as mapped
on a Coronelli globe commissioned in
1681

The South Australia state borders all the other states of Australia and has the long shoreline of the Great Australian Bight … finally routing ships past Tasmania into Melbourne and Sydney …

The state’s colonial origins in 1836 are unique in Australia as a freely settled, planned British province, rather than as a convict settlement.

However travel to Australia was always in the hands of the gods … six hundred and more vessels lie scattered along this elemental coastline – hewn by winds, strong ocean currents whipped by the Antarctic Ocean and powerful waves that attack the Southern Ocean shore …

The rough shores of Southern Australia

Australia was still being opened up only 200 years ago or so … and members of those wrecked ships would have had little chance of being rescued even if their vessels had been able to find a way to the shore … bush-tracks were the only means along the coastline.

The last sail powered clipper, the Loch Ard, left England in March 1878 bound for Melbourne with a crew of 17, the passengers numbered 37 and with assorted cargo. 

The Loch Ard clipper

The earlier routes had been to the south of Tasmania before, in about 1800, it was realised there was a Strait that could be sailed – however for the next 50 years until Cape Otway lightstation was first lit in 1848 – the passage through was far from safe.

George Bass, after whom the Strait is named, and Matthew Flinders, who was the first person to circumnavigate Australia (1801-1803) had passed through while circumnavigating Van Dieman’s Land (now Tasmania) (1798-99).

Tasmania of Victoria State, Australia -
showing some of the islands in the
Bass Strait

The Strait is treacherous with over 50 islands, at its narrowest point it is 240 km (150 miles) wide, but generally only 50 metres (165 feet) deep … to illustrate its wild strength …

… it is where the waters of the Antarctic-driven Indian Ocean meet the Tasman Sea’s Pacific Ocean in a channel of powerful, wild storm waves.

Matthew Flinders, the grandfather of Flinders Petrie – the Egyptologist of whom I’ve posted – said of the Shipwreck Coast “I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline”.

Rough seas along the cliffs from
Cape Otway

On June 1^st in the middle of winter at the outer western reaches of the Bass Strait the Loch Ard encountered heavy fog and unable to see the Cape Otway lightstation … which was a guiding light, rather than a ‘keep clear’ lighthouse …

The ship’s captain unaware of how close he was running to the coast tried to extricate his sailing ship but they were unable to turn about in time and ran aground on a reef.

The Loch Ard sank within a quarter of an hour or so after striking the reef – amazingly two people survived: an apprentice Tom Pearce, 18, who clung to the overturned hull of a lifeboat, which was washed ashore through a narrow gap into what is now called the Loch Ard Gorge.

Images of Tom and Eva

Tom heard 25 year old Eva Carmichael’s shouts for help … and despite clinging to a spar for five hours, dressed apparently only in a nighty … he was able to rescue her.

Tom was only five foot four and half inches tall – yet he managed to scramble out of the gorge and by pure luck found the only settlement in the area – Glenample Station … so they were both rescued and survived to tell the ghastly tale.

Loch Ard Gorge

Dr Xanthe Mallet of Dundee University, who is one of our leading forensic anthropologists, who reconstructed the face of Sir John de Strychley, who died in 1341. 

Cape Otway Lightstation

He and his ‘family’ were found buried beneath the kitchen at Stirling Castle … and this was a ‘cold case’ programme on the BBC – fascinatingit was too … post is here.

Dr Mallet was here to investigate the remains of the Loch Ard and its occupants … and to see why the ship foundered – they think it was because it was carrying railway lines … 


... they might have interfered with the ship’s compass and sent it off course … let alone the vessel would have been very unwieldy due to the weight of the tracks being transported.

Weedy Seadragon

The Southern Ocean holds all kinds of stories for us … paleantologistic wonders … that might be a new word … fossils, evidence of climate change and continental movement …

… and plenty of wrecks that might come to the fore – letting us research the ships lost, checking out skeletons and finally laying them to rest on land … to be perhaps one day millions of years in the future be swallowed once again by the oceans …

Leafy Seadragon

Weedy and Leafy Seadragons can be found at the A-Z Challenge site here …

… while the story of how the Great Ocean Road was built along this coastline is here at Tina’s Life is Good Blog …

Limestone stacks found just off the
Great Ocean Road, south Australia

That ties the three Australian coast posts together ... 

.... then the post about Matthew Flinders can be found here: A Digger’s Life and the Petrie Museum, London ... 

PS - within the comments I have added a separate note on what happened to Tom and Eva after their rescue ... 

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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