Here is a short video by Sean and James McAnulty, narrated by Rex Mathieson, telling of his family history with the wreck of the full rigged sailing ship Antares, which came ashore in 1914 on Victoria, Australia’s “Shipwreck Coast.”
The story of the Antares from sean on Vimeo.
From Wikipedia: The Shipwreck Coast of Victoria, Australia stretches from to Cape Otway to Port Fairy, a distance of approximately 130 km. This coastline is accessible via the Great Ocean Road, and is home to the limestone formations called The Twelve Apostles.
Explorer Matthew Flinders said of the Shipwreck Coast, “I have seldom seen a more fearful section of coastline.”
There are approximately 638 known shipwrecks along Victoria’s coast,although only around 240 of them have been discovered. The Historic Shipwreck Trail along the Shipwreck Coast and the Discovery Coast shows some of the sites where gales, human error and, in some cases, foul play caused these vessels to be wrecked.
Australia has established the Historic Shipwreck Trail on Victoria’s West Coast.
Thanks to Irwin Bryan for passing along the video.
As he says, that coast is littered with shipwrecks. One of the most famous is what they call the Mahogany Ship, believed to be a Portuguese explorer sunk in the early 16th century; possibly the first European ship to visit southern Australia. It was buried in sand hills but exposed a few times over the centuries until it eventually rotted away.