History tells us that Gabo Island near Mallacoota has caught many a mariner unaware, but there’s little evidence left to show. John has always wondered why and how some of the artefacts he has found came to be.

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NARRATOR: John Black discusses the wrecks around Gabo Island near Mallacoota, while many wrecks have been reported, there's little evidence left except for some anchors and big iron pots near Mueller Creek and Point Hicks. He mentions the Brig Mary Wilson, which sunk at Gabo Bay in 1852.

JOHN BLACK: A lot of the books have got a fair bit about the wrecks on 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.

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 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.

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.

And as we come back towards Mallacoota there’s a 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 that’s about all that was there. 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.

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 there's 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.


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 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.

NARRATOR: To find out more about Victorian shipwrecks search the Victorian Heritage Database at http://heritage.vic.gov.au