Trade up and down the coast of Australia

And even the trading up and down the coast, most towns as you know in Victoria were formed around little rivers and streams and the development of the valleys where they grew their maize and corn and sheep and pigs or whatever they grew, they had to bring little coastal vessels in to pick them up. There were no roads from Mallacoota to Melbourne at those times of course.

They’d bring these coastal vessels in, they’d load them up with produce and they’d take them out and come back with other stuff, so the whole towns was on boats and timber boats. I tend to admire them a fair bit for what they done. But basically, I don’t go swimming over the in the river, but over the years it just catches me eye.

Shipwrecks are like a magnet

You know you could be walking down the street and something catches your eye, in a paddock or a fence or something and wrecks just sort of tend to catch me eye and I go an have a bit of a fossick around and a bit of a look around and see what’s there. Plus there are often not bad money when you get plates laying on the bottom as crayfish tend to live underneath the plates too so you go and stick your head under and go and have a bit of a look around now and then to see if there are any crays under as well. But not many abalone grow on top of the wreck itself, I’d say the Monumental City and The Schar, those two in particular, but from way down at Cape Everard, all the way back where there is any old steel, you know, fairly big plates of steel laying down off some of the shipwrecks, some of the old steel boats that have been in there, abalone don’t tend to grow on top of them. As I said before, it colours them a bit so we tend to keep away from them. They are still like a magnet to me – as soon as you see something a little bit out of the ordinary I want to go and have a look. I say “I’ll go and have a look at that and see what it is!”

You’ve spoken about the Riverina, the Monumental City and the Schar. Tell me about some of the other wrecks along this coastline.

Probably, as far down as we travel from here we travel down to Point Hicks – I used to say 35 miles – so its got to be about 70 something kms down there and as we got into Shark Cats and faster boats the further we went down the abalone hadn’t been fished that much because we were pretty limited to the type of equipment we had so a trip right down to Cape Everard was always pretty exciting. It’s a pretty prominent headland and because of that I think a couple of wrecks went in on that area and most of them have either got blown in with a strong southerly wind and or one in particular went in with – they said it was bushfires and they ran aground.

Which one was that one?

The two Riverinas – Gabo and Island Point

There’s two Riverinas. There is one at Gabo and one down at Island Point. It’s the one down at Island Point that sank in 1890 Plus when you look at the map you look from Sydney down the coast, you’ll come from Sydney down to Cape Howe and Gabo Island and then you change course and you run back down the bottom of Australia, it looks like a bit of a wedge, so when they’d come out of Melbourne they come up the coast, once you come up to Cape Howe you’d alter course up to Sydney, so if a few of the navigations were slightly out they’d turn left too early between Point Hicks and Gabo Island, which most of them come in on, that they’d mistook some of their bearings, even though they did put a light house up on these two points eventually, they’d just turn in too quick and hit the mainland.

But most of them were fairly small boats, they weren’t passenger liners and they weren’t very big boats, but up on the furthest south from here, down around Port Hicks I’ve got a little map in front of me, the Sarus(?) was a fairly big boat, it was about 1837, and the bow of that is still sitting up on the rocks down there. I think they came in and tried to salvage some of the steel and metal off that as well because it was right on the rocks there at the headland at Point Hicks. But up a little further than that up in the bay there’s another area which I haven’t had much luck on finding out what it is, but its back in on the headland itself if you are heading more or less due west, there’s another bay in there and there’s 2 fairly large anchors in there with a bit of steel plate around it so it was probably a steel boat of some sort but not overly big. It’s slightly inshore from that but I’m not too sure what one that was or whether it’s got a name or anything. It’s interesting to have a little look at.

Point Hicks and Mueller River

And as we come back towards Mallacoota there’s –we call it now- Petrel Point’s got the other Riverina on it and that’s down south too. The place we call the Mueller River or the Mueller Creek it doesn’t join up to the mainland, the reef itself, where we dive for abalone, it’s slightly off shore and probably due south from that is Point Hicks. This boat, whatever that’s left of it there, it may have been anchored in the lee of Point Hicks and drifted off through the night and there’s a fairly shallow reef there I come across some of those big old pots they used to boil the blubber down on the whales, those big cast iron ones and there’s even the little triangle bits - and there was that, and that’s about all that was there.

Iron pots and ammunition

And some of the little tiny gutters which I always had a look in, there’d look to be like old ammunition, old 303 cases or something like that. There was a bit brass in these little gutters which I didn’t want to fiddle with or touch. There was some of these big iron pots there so, maybe they hit it and chucked that over to lessen the weight and get away from it. But that was at the Mueller River. There the sort of things that I get interested in. I think how did this get here, or why did it get here, it just shouldn’t be there. Like you’re out off shore, there’s no headland, nothing around and all of a sudden you’ve got these big cast iron pots sitting on the bottom. You can think up all sorts of stories, their exciting but they’re good to look at.

How far off shore would they have been?

Aw, probably about a K, probably about a K, yeah, there’s sand off the beach, then it comes out to a reef and there’s two shallow spots on it which were very good for abalone diving. And it runs out – it’s a fairly extensive reef, and it was probably in one of the shallowest spots that I was swimming around, as I said before, we were picking abalone and I was fishing on the inside edge of the reef, a bit of sand, a few little gutters and seaweed then I come across this gingery-looking coloured seaweed and made me look up and I looked up to the shallow and I thought ‘I’ll be darned”. One of them had a big piece broken out of one side of it like a corner, and I thought well maybe they’ve dumped it, but there was a couple of others there and I’ve seen lately that they used to make them in those segments so they could put them all together and make one big pot out of them. They were actually in segments so, it’s either fallen off, or, I thought the one that was broken they may have just dumped it but it was unusual, it was on the shallowest bit of reef, and there was more that one there. So, yeah, I’ve had a good look around and I found absolutely nothing else to indicate that a boat was wrecked there, just these big cast iron pots. Bit like old Captain Cook up there threw some cannons off to lighten his boat around Cooktown to get off. So they may have done the same thing. Gone in with a thump one night. But it was strange there was else there but these cast iron pots. They couldn’t have drifted out from the shoreline because they were big heavy darn things.

The Romeo

We mentioned earlier the Romeo. That’s back towards Mallacoota. It was carrying barrels of cement when it went in. I don’t know the length of that boat. But, it wasn’t overly big, it’d be luck to be 100 ft in the old scale I suppose, maybe a little bit longer. It’s nice to have a swim on. The actual boat shape is still there, the bow’s up on the shoreline I guess, I think it’s the bow. A fair bit of sand runs over it, because it’s in quite shallow water. It was carrying barrels of cement, and since it went in all the timber staves off the barrels have decayed and rotted and gone away but the cement has got the exact shape of barrels and when you first see it you think ‘wow, look at this – all these barrels of plonk here or something’. But no, alas, alas, they’re just barrels of cement that’s all gone darn hard. Ah well, there goes me million dollars gone again! (laughter)

Bottles

I had a dive on it once and jammed down in amongst everything there was - I could see these round looking things and I realised they were actually bottles. They were bottles of port or something or other, they were just jammed in this area and it was a real surgy day so I couldn’t spend much time but I heard later down the grape-vine somebody else found them and pulled the lid of one and they tasted like vinegar so I don’t know what it was. But one of boys must have seen them too and must have picked them up. I was going to go back one day but I never really got back there.

Back to Mallacoota – Island Head and Island Point

I keep working my way back to Mallacoota now. Back down around a place we call Island Head and Island Point. And that was where the second Riverina went in, the one up near Gabo went in around 1937, and the one down here, I think it was round about 1900, I’m not too sure. Then again it went in very close and apparently they put a road in to that one from the highway, it was a long way in and they salvaged most of the stuff off the boat. The story was it went in on a bushfire season and got lost and stuck it up there, but when you’re abalone diving – a fair way out, probably a couple of K’s out behind it, there’s the big anchor jammed in the rocks with the chain and everything leading in.

Anchors – a good way to find a wreck

As I said before, it’s a good way to find a wreck, if you can find an anchor you look to see which way it’s pointing and it leads straight in to there. Most of the steel was taken off it but there’s absolutely nothing in the way of ferrous metal. On the mantelpiece is an old sauce bottle – I think that’s the only thing I’ve ever found around that one, and that was years after I’d dived around the area because it is quite a good area for abalone. And it was years and years and years and I was flapping around one day and in a gutter, a bottom end of bottle, and I give it a shake and it was an old tomato sauce bottle with a long neck, so I kept that one.

Ram Head

Ram Head – well, that’s a very prominent area down here, and that was one where the Schar said it was two miles to the east of that where it went in. On the south side of that, I don’t think Nick Clark, I told him about it – I don’t think he ever got in to have a dive at it. Again on the southern side it’s got to be a very flat day. There’s two fairly big anchors down there. When I say fairly big – the shaft would be 6 feet long, they’re quite substantial size anchors. Laying one on top of the other which would indicate the bow of the boat went straight in there. Then around it there’s big round rings which I tip may have been what they used to run around the mast at times. They’re steel, they’re made out of steel. And that’s all that’s there; these two huge anchors and these huge round rings are just sitting in this pile in about 3 feet of water, a metre of water. Very, very shallow. Very, very shallow.

And over the back of it there’s a bit of a reef and then there is a bit of a gutter. I’ve snorkelled in there because you can’t get you boat in close enough. But I haven’t found anything else that could have come from it. Certainly the front end of the boat went in there and dropped its two anchors. They may have been lucky enough to get off again but I don’t know what the round rings were. I thought maybe they were from the masts but it could have just gone in bow first and – same thing though – these two huge anchors on the bow and to lighten it they may have just dropped the anchors to get it off, but normally they sail in so if the rings were a sailing boat well they would have had power to back it off, so I’m not too sure about that. I wouldn’t know if there is any more of that just there.

Did the anchors have rings or shackles?

I can’t recall that now – I’ll have look for you but I didn’t take much notice of that one. They haven’t got a bar through them.

They haven’t? So they’ve been folded (?)

They haven’t got a bar through them, it’s just a shaft and I think it’s got an eye (?) on it, I’m not sure. And the T-section on the end of it. I don’t think there’s any bars through them at all. But again these are in areas where you go abalone diving and you’re swimming around and you just come across these things at times. And I’ve mentioned it to divers and they say where did you use to work down the back of Big Ram I always used to do pretty well ‘cause I could get in pretty close in these gutters and they’d say be can’t ever find that spot and you say have you found the anchors and they’d look a bit blank and there’s been 20 divers diving here for years and I don’t think anybody else has ever seen them. Because you really got to tune in to see them. There’s cunjy growing all over them, they just blend in so nicely till you actually stop and chip away a bit and then all of a sudden you’ll get the black carbony stuff come off and you realise that it is steel and not rock. They really blend in and, you know, you could swim over these things unless you’re really looking, really, really looking for them.

But they’re the interesting one’s right down the coast. We’ve got another big reef, and of course the Schar was supposed to have gone around the back of Big Ram Head but I’d say no, I’d say definitely what we picked up the other side at what we called Little Ram would be the Schar, I think that’s gone.

The Lady Doris

There’s an old steam trawler in at the Skerries. It was called The Lady Doris, it wasn’t a steam trawler, it was down in the early abalone diving days. It was a fairly big old boat, had twin engines in it, but again even in that short time from 1967 to now you wouldn’t know it was there. It was a timber trawler, twin engines, shaft, two propellers and it got wrecked there and it stood there for a while, you’d see it, you know, the old timber structure and everything else but just the big seas just flattened the stuff and it just washes all the timber work away and you finish up with an old engine and a couple of nuts and bolts and that’s it. And that’s in the short time so these boats that sink, like the Schar in 1837, they’ve been there 150 years, you can’t expect to find a boat sitting on the bottom with sails up. A lot of people think they’ll go and find a shipwreck and there it is, but you’re lucky to find a couple of nuts and bolts. But its got to be made of brass or copper or a couple of screws and that sort of stuff and that shouldn’t be – and there’s always a couple of options. There’s an option that it may have been washed in with a bit of driftwood and the driftwood’s split open and the nuts and bolts have fallen on the ground or it’s actually been a boat that’s gone in. So you want a little bit more than a couple of nuts and bolts. They’ve got a fence down there that you might have a look at a bit later and they’ve got a couple of little brass rings and bits and pieces and sometimes you find these and they’re the sort of things that might come in on driftwood and they’ve slid down and dropped on the bottom and then that’s it, but usually you find a bit more than that. The old give-away is look for a couple of good gutters that are laying on the bottom and really get down close and look down deep in them. If anything heavy that’s been washing across the bottom, they’ll fall into these crevices and the rest of it will just get carried away with huge seas and especially timber will just get washed away for miles and miles and miles. And so – and quite often you won’t find an anchor because, they’ll often drop an anchor because they’re in trouble and it’ll be a long way away and then it’ll break and drop off and the boat’ll go in, so all’s you’ll find in these gutters that’s got a bit of scrap metal stuff and just a little bit unusual for the area.

Sandpatch Point

And that occurs on a fairly long reef we’ve got down here called The Sandpatch Point and its got reefs that break on it and its very, very good for diving and on the southern side of that there’s quite a large anchor where someone’s got into trouble and they’ve drifted on the sand, because its on to sand, drifted in from the sand, and the anchor’s hooked in the edge of the reef and it points up towards the shallow bit. And up on the shallow bit there is some bits of metal and steel etc., but it’s a reef that if a boat went in there it could have been picked up by huge seas and carried over the reef and dropped on the other side of the reef then which goes back on to sand. Being abalone divers we don’t spend any time on the sand. I’d say somebody’s got into a fair bit of trouble there and maybe they survived or maybe it’s been washed out on to the sand area. But the anchor’s there and there’s a little bit of what looks like steel railing and there was probably a little bit of brass or something there that indicated to me that it certainly didn’t bump it and drift off. It looked like it might have tipped on its side and or put a hole in it and drifted off the reef. There was a yacht not long back done exactly the same thing in the opposite direction. Run into the reef and then was washed back with the strong winds and they come up with the salvage team – it was a ferro-cement boat – and picked it up off the bottom. But to me, I’d say that one’s gone down on to the sand.

A lot of the books have got a fair bit about the wrecks on Gabo but I think again a lot of them that may have hit Gabo and drifted off with the strong winds and gone slightly further north from Gabo, but between say Little Ram, we call Little Ram Head, or where I think the Schah is, there is quite a big bay area comes in towards Mallacoota Inlet along the beach to Tulaberga(?) Island where the Monumental City is, right in that corner there the Riverina’s stuck in there and then some of the literature (?) books I read they say such and such hit Gabo.

Two in particular, one’s The Evesby (?) which was supposed to hit in 1907 but it was levelled in the harbour, there’s a nice little harbour there, it was levelled there I think, to make navigating a little bit easier. But on the shoreline there, there is an old quarry, where they’ve cut stone out from Gabo and taken it away, there is a quite a very large anchor there – I thought it might have been put in so they could actually back their boats in to load the granite on board but it’s in that close, I don’t know why it would be in that close. But there is a boat that went down in there called The Mary Wilson and I don’t know whether this anchor would be related to that boat. It seems to be quite a large anchor and The Mary Wilson seemed to be quite a small boat, so I’m not too sure whether that would be off that.

Not-so-obvious shipwrecks

Again, I’ve said to the guys have you seen the anchor in there, and they say ‘Nuh’. Again, if you had a dive on the Monumental City you’d say that’s where the propeller is, and you nearly bump your head into it until you sit back and you look up and you say ‘my god’ there it is. It’s like a big fan but when the weed grows over it and everything else you’ve really got to tune yourself in to have a look for what is actually there. But I’ve had a bit of a swim around the Mary Wilson. It was apparently a timber boat and I got a little bit – down on the fence there there’s a little bit of timber off the bottom which has been copper sheathed with a few nails in it – it’s the only thing I brought back off that. It was a timber boat and it got in the harbour and it just got smashed up against the face of the rocks there. Very, very close to where the navy the Wollongong went in – they come in there and stuck in up on the rocks there, but they got that off.

Evidence of loading and unloading boats at Gabo Island

Again in the books it must list about 4 or 5 boats. Its got wrecked at Gabo, wrecked at Gabo, wrecked at Gabo, but I’ve swum around every inch of Gabo Island and there’s been no sign of any wrecks. I’d say probably they’d hit the island and been washed further up towards Sydney or gone further north. There is a couple of interesting things on the back of Gabo. They must have brought the supplies in there, and I was swimming along there one time riding in close on a dead flat day and there is quite a sheer cliff face and there was an iron ring been put into the cliff face there where they must have brought boats around to unload for the lighthouse, before they used to cart it from there. I’ve been back a few times and never found it again, but I just one day I bumped into it and I thought ‘I’ll be darned’ here’s this steel peg into the cliff face and an iron ring about 12 twelve inches in diameter and about and inch round just hanging loosely on this iron ring which obviously they’d used come in and tie the front or bow of the boat up or the stern of the boat up and load and unload.

Mutiny and gold

Just one other thing, on Tulaberga where the Monumental City is, the story was with the hero that swum ashore and put the rope in, Charles Plumber I think was his name. There’s a story he actually come back, you probably read it in some your books and he mutineered on a whaling boat or something or other. So I kept thinking that if those that got ashore were on the island they would have taken shelter on the northern side because it was blowing quite a hard southerly and it’d be cold and wet and everything and any personal stuff they would have taken with them, and in particular we’re talking about gold miners then, so if there’s any gold or anything valuable they may have taken it there and maybe hidden it there. The old pirates story again of course because they got deserted on the island, the captain took a few ashore and they walked up the coast and left them there. And apparently there’s the story I’ve read somewhere, I can’t relate where it is, this Charles Plumber actually mutineered and they brought a boat back to Tulaberga Island which would lead to me there’s been some stuff either planted on or hidden on the island. And on the Gabo Island side, which we call the lee side, it’s out of the strong southerly winds there’s a fairly big anchor there jammed in the rocks, which is down in the lee.

Abandoning anchors

Whether this related to him coming back, why he come back I don’t know. I think – I’m not sure whether it was the same vessel that’s wrecked – I’ll have to check it out or you guys can check it out – it may have been a boat called the Gunnindale, ‘cause I think there’s one eventually wrecked up on Cape Howe which is slightly north of that and that was 1917, but it may have been the Gunnindale. There was something about a boat come back there and there is – because most of these anchors, they are designed to throw into the sand or soft mud and when they get in close and drop them there’s big boulders and crevices and the anchor jams in them. No way in a million years they’re going to get them out, they just jump in and the easiest way is to abandon it. That’s why there’s one there, that’s why there’s probably one down at Sandpatch point, it’s probably why there’s one down at – I should go into business collecting anchors – I think I know where there’s about 8 anchors around this place (laughter). You’ll see them on bingo, you’ll go ‘hello, there’s (?) but often they’ll drop the anchors, they’ll drift, they’ll jam in, they can’t get it out, you know, they’ll chuck it away and then they’ll fix their problem. A lot of the old sailing boats didn’t have any reverse gear, so if you were in trouble, you were in trouble so you gotta get out of it and maybe anchor until they can get themselves organized or wait until the boat’s pointing in the right direction and then they’ll cast it off and then get goin’ again. So maybe they were just sacrificial but boy there’s a few anchors along the coast here that I’d like to know what they were hooked on to.

The Iron Prince or The Iron Duke

The other big one, that still got the big old boiler there – it’s called the Iron Prince. It was an old steel ship that went in, I think it was called – I don’t know if it was the Iron Prince or the Iron Duke. We called the reef the Iron Prince reef but I think someone’s told us the Iron Duke. But it was wrecked on fairly shallow water up at – we call it the Iron Prince Reef but it’s close to NSW and border up there.

Fly Cove

Another interesting thing – when I got out of diving I bought a sailing boat and went sailing, I was going to get what they call a magnetometer, and I was going to have a look around some of the old pearl diving areas see if I could find some of the old luggers that sunk up further north, but before Ken Morrison died down here, he was with the National Parks, he said if you really read the book about Bass and Flinders, I think it was, or who ever it was – excuse my history on that side – sailed down the coast from Sydney to Tasmania, there’s a little place down off the Wingan Inlet, a little place we call Fly Cove, it’s a perfect, beautiful little anchorage, very small, big enough for about a 35 foot boat to anchor in, and he was the boss of National Parks. He said, according to him, he said they wrote they lost an anchor and he said he’d back it in that it was at Fly Cove. I’d be very interested to go down there and have a bit of a fossick around. It is an area that’s very, very bouldery on the bottom, if an anchor was put down there to hold a boat it could possibly jam in. It’s also an area that when the sand moves, a bit like the entrance here at Mallacoota, and each time I’ve been down there this bay is just completely full of sand, there’s no way you can see the rocky bottom. But I have been down there after really huge seas and idled in there, it’s been too rough to jump in, and it is quite a rocky bottom. So there maybe a real good bit of history down there. That’s one anchor I haven’t found yet but I wouldn’t mind having a bit of a scratch for that one day down in that little Fly Cove area. It would be interesting.

It is a coast, it’s a long coast. As I said we only worked this 35 mile or 70 K’s for abalone. Main interest has been swimming around looking for new bits of seaweed and reef but when an odd object just catches you in the eye you tend to stop and look.

Abandoned anchors

Back at Gabo – I seem to be rattling – back at Gabo in close towards the shore a lot of the trawlers used to take anchorage there when the weather came bad. This is, we’re going back to the turn of the century and there’s probably three old anchors along there that I’ve come across with bits of chain on it, but then again they are only about a metre in length, they’ve come off an old wooden trawler of some sort that’s anchored there in the lee for the night, or if it blows a hard southerly they anchor there for two or three days. Can’t get it up and abandon it there. There’s quite a few abandoned anchors down on the northern side of Gabo Island. They’re certainly not there from the wrecks, they’ve just been unable to retrieve them I’d say and dumped them there.

Someone mentioned to me a small boat actually in the lake. There’s maybe a coal – loaded with coal. Does that ring any bells?

Boats moving over the bar to Lakes Entrance

No it doesn’t ring any bells, but there is a couple of old rigs up behind Rabbit Island. Some old boats in there, but I’m not real sure about it, but some of the old history goes back to when they used to come in over the bar and take their produce out. It goes back to old E. J. Brady’s poems days and all that – he’s got one about “I must get over the bar today”. The story was that those that wrote the history of the Mallacoota Inlet about the entrance shutting up, they said it shut up twice in about 60 years and they blamed the reason, one time there was a boat trying to cross the bar and got into trouble and sunk on the inside. It caused the sand to build around it, but that boat, look, I don’t know anything about it. It might have been one of Bull’s old steamers and that because they used to come into the lake entrance and take all the stuff and they’d go back down to Lakes Entrance itself, they’d come from Mallacoota then back down to Lakes Entrance.

Flat bottomed boats

And they’d design those with very, very flat bottoms on them because most of the inlets they went into were quite shallow. The other reason is, if they got caught in a strong wind they could sail them straight in on to the beach and with the flat bottom they wouldn’t lay over on their side, so they’d sit almost upright. So if the weather went really crappy on them and they looked like they were going to get into trouble they’d actually sail them on to the beach and then try and drag them up as far as they could and put logs underneath them and run a winch off the boat up to a tree and try and winch the boat up out of water line. And then when everything cleared they’d turn around and put it back in again. So they were pretty adventurous sort of things. But then again they were only fairly small boats and they probably wouldn’t be as long as some of our Sydney to Hobart yacht racers. People say, aw they were trading boats, but when you look at some of the pictures of them, they are only just boats. That’s just about all they are, they’re quite small quite lightly built, but as far as vessels in the lake go, I don’t know.

I’m going to grab out a map and we can have bit of a closer look at where some of these things are. Are there any other questions you want to ask?

No, but we should be conscious of time though.

Is there anything else you want to add to what you’ve said.

Victorian Maritime Museum

No I don’t think so. I’d like to see Victoria get a darn good Maritime Museum like they have in Sydney. I’ve got a bit of stuff here, I mean there’s people in town would do the same, we’ve been even thinking ourselves here as a co-operative we’d like to put a bit of a museum up from the early ab diving days and incorporate stuff from the wrecks in it. Because people like to come in and look at that stuff and I go to that one in Sydney at it all looks good, you know, they’ve got it set up pretty well. I’ve been to a few displays down in Melbourne etc, etc. It would be nice to have a nice museum somewhere with some of that some put in. But again we haven’t got a lot of wrecks down here really. What sinks in the bays is nowhere like out here, these things just get flogged out here, we get some enormous seas up here, just absolutely enormous. And that’s where we find some of these really big boats in really shallow water, they just keep getting lifted up and dumped, lifted up and dumped then they’ll just smash to bits. And there’s anchors and they’re huge, and they’re in about this much water, and they’re huge and you think how the hell did that get in here.

Big seas.

Oldest wreck in Victoria

Yeah, how the heck did that get in here? And they get there you know, and you just think. Talk about the water rising, the water must be going down because you just don’t know how they can get in so close, it’s so shallow. But, no we, I suppose we’re not going to get too many now – navigation’s that good – there’s only these few that we’ve got. That Schah I think, I say, one of the – whose the mob from Tasmania? Went over to Port Fairy – Hentys – yeah Hentys. They said their’s was one of the oldest identified wrecks in Victoria, but this Schar is older than that and if it is positively identified it could be the oldest wreck you’ve got in Victoria so far.

What is it ’37?

Yeah, 1837.

It would be a competition about which month.

Yeah, it’s within months, yeah.

The Isabella was the other one….(??)

THE END