Mark Longden and his wife, Lucy, have been walking the ocean beach between the Victorian towns of Ocean Grove and Point Lonsdale for 30 years. Sometimes they pick up shells and sea glass, pieces of pottery, scraps of flotsam and jetsam. Once, they found a tiny, headless porcelain figurine of a woman in an old-fashioned dress.
Then one Friday morning in early October, they found a shipwreck.
“Generally, the beach is pretty flat. It might have seaweed or wood washed up, or bits of trees from the river after floods,” Longden says. “But on this day, there were actually bits of wood sticking out of the sand on an angle … It wasn’t anything that had just washed up on the shore.”
The Bass Strait coastline is one of rocky cliffs, constantly shifting sands and notoriously treacherous waters. Storm surges from wild weather and spring high tides had resulted in significant erosion along the beach, exposing parts of the wreck.
Longden called his friend Jamie McKechnie, a volunteer at Queenscliffe Maritime Museum, who hurried down to the site, and sent drone footage, photographs and GPS coordinates to Heritage Victoria. The following Monday, McKechnie led the agency’s marine archaeologists there, who inspected the wreck and confirmed: this was something new.
“It’s great seeing archaeologists getting excited,” says Longden.
There are about 660 historic shipwrecks known to be in Victorian waters and off Victorian coasts, but only half of those have ever been found. Some may be in tidal areas but many are assumed to be underwater, their locations still a mystery.
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The identity of the Point Lonsdale vessel has yet to be determined, but Heritage Victoria senior maritime archaeologist Danielle Wilkinson says it may have lain undiscovered there for more than a century.
“We do know that it is a timber-built sailing vessel,” Wilkinson says. “And we know it’s a vessel that’s maybe about 20m to 25m long.”
Marine archaeologists use a combination of techniques to help them identify wrecked vessels, including taking measurements and samples of the timber used for construction, and noting the characteristics of any visible joinery or metal elements.
The size of the Point Lonsdale wreck suggests it was a local vessel, but one that could handle coastal waters as well as the bay – possibly a fishing or trading boat. It was held together with square-headed nails rather than older-style trunnels (wooden pegs, also called tree nails) and the shape of the hull indicates that it had a flat bottom.
The condition of its timber and the style of construction indicate the vessel is most likely from the late 19th or early 20th century, and definitely more than 75 years old, says Wilkinson.
“We’re just waiting on the timber species ID to kind of confirm our suspicions about this one,” she says. “There are three or four shipwrecks we’re thinking of that might match it, that were lost roughly in the same area that are roughly the same size.”
Shipwrecks over 75 years old are protected by federal and state legislation, but Heritage Victoria encourages the public to report wrecks they might find and to help with the fieldwork, as Longden and McKechnie have done. The agency has a list of shipwrecks they would most like to find, and have enlisted surf lifesaving clubs and coastguards to help monitor the most fragile and at-risk sites.
“We want people to be able to access shipwreck materials,” says Wilkinson. “They are exciting and it’s a very valuable piece of local history for people to be involved with and proud of. But we encourage healthy behaviours – just take photos, leave only footprints, don’t take any material off the shipwreck or relocate it.”
In the weeks since its discovery, the Point Lonsdale shipwreck has been covered up again by sand. That’s not a bad thing – the sand helps with preservation.
“We don’t like to do extensive excavations because that can be very damaging to the shipwreck material,” Wilkinson says. “It’s actually quite well protected in waterlogged sediments on the beach.”
Longden and McKechnie say the shipwreck has created a wave of intrigue in the local community. “What happened [to it]? What happened to the people? What happened to the cargo? … All these sorts of things come to mind,” says Longden.
For McKechnie, the allure of shipwrecks is in “the mystery and the possibility of treasure” – historical treasure, that is. “To find something that somebody held in their hands many years ago, and wonder where that journey went,” he says.
“It’s like a puzzle. And I think we all like to solve puzzles if we can.”
