'A Tale of Two Riverinas'

NARRATOR: Two steamers, both called Riverina, wrecked on the East Gippsland Coast, the first in 1890 and the second in 1927. John Black describes a crew using explosives to recover metal, he also talks about the hazards between Point Hicks and the mainland.

JOHN BLACK: Probably, as far down as we travel from here we travel down to Point Hicks –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.

There is a wreck called the Riverina. It was a steel ship it was travelling from Tasmania to up Sydney. It went ashore in around about 1937 and the salvage workers come down and they stripped it down to the water line and unloaded all the old deck chairs and seats and everything on to the beach but the basic hull shape was still sitting on the bottom. It was cut off from the bow to the stern, the propeller’s still on it because it was too hard to get it sitting on sand it’s sitting parallel to the beach, but there used to be a huge engine standing up on it and I went up there one day and the engine was blown on its side, and the boys said there was a mob come down from Sydney and they loaded it up with explosives and they tried to tip the engine over to get the bearings because the bearings are made out of brass and white metal etc. which is non-ferrous.

They succeeded – they actually blew the motor and it fell on its side and the whole bottom end of it was exposed but the seas came up very rough so they went away and left it there. There was a diver at time called Garry Waterson, and Garry, when the weather was calm he was in there knocking it all off. Garry had a blinder up there he was in there throwing this stuff on his ab boat, but they never come back, they never come back, they never complained, they never come back.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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

'Discovering the Schah'

NARRATOR: The schooner Schah is the second oldest identified wreck on the Victorian coast. Becalmed near Ram Head in December 1837, it was forced ashore by the current and high seas. John Black is intrigued by this wreck, during his time in Mallacoota he located the Schah by wind and current and by the discovery of an achor.

JOHN BLACK: When I was leaving Sydney, one of the chaps what worked for us was a bit of an old boating person and I told him I was coming to Mallacoota and he reads books, and he said “I’ve got an old book at home that does mention Mallacoota in it”. I said I’d be interested to have a look at it especially as it’s on wrecks. It was one of Rhodes books and I was told it was printed in about 1937 and it did mention in the back two particular wrecks, one was called the Schah.

They said it was probably one of the oldest wrecks on the east Gippsland coast; it was an ex-slaver; it was captured over in Trabizon(?) and went to the - they had a court set up of various countries and they decided what they would do with the captain and the ship should they get caught, they were trying to cut slavery out in those days, and it was a slaver that found its way to Australia.

It was plying its trade from Tasmania to Sydney, that they got it caught in a strong southerly gale and it hit the mainland and the part that interested me said that some of the people or the crew got off and then they realized they weren’t on the mainland, they were on an island, and they re-boarded the ship which eventually broke free. It then dropped an anchor and they said it was quite calm where they were, but during the night the wind sprung up and they were eventually wrecked on the mainland.

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

'Made in Australia'

NARRATOR: John Black remembers when wetsuits, boats and breathing apparatus were hand-made. These early developments in the 1960s enabled divers' access to offshore islands.

JOHN BLACK: Going back to the early 50s owning a boat was impossible, so round about the 60s we started to build these timber ‘rowfloats’ as we called them, and that was we could actually row out to little off-shore reefs and swim around. And these rowfloats didn’t have outboard motors – they were another thing that was probably just being invented then, but they did invent this thing, it was actually an addition to a Victor lawnmower, you could actually take the lawnmower motor off and put a thing on the bottom and it’d putt you along the water so we had one of these and we thought we were Mickey Mouse, we didn’t have to row anymore.

From the old timber floats some of the blokes built wooden boats and Quicktrex started with the aluminium boats so we were able to have wetsuits, boats, outboard motors and we devised this system of getting those big gas cylinders they used to use in hotels for C02 gas for the kegs and we had a bloke that’d fill them up with air for us. He was lucky he didn’t blow himself up! We used to pump them up fill of air, lay them on the floor of the boat and run a hose off them down to the bottom, so all of a sudden we had wetsuits, we had boats and we had underwater breathing apparatus that’d work pretty good in fairly shallow water.

So we were able to catch abalone with air and we started to dive on the off-shore islands instead of just along the shoreline, finding new reefs and travelling to other states of Australia and diving other states, you know, every state of Australia I’ve dived in.

Back in the 60s, I think it was probably the early 60s, they started having a convention on Herron Island and we went up there on one occasion and that was another eye opener to be able to get on the Barrier Reef on an island that far off shore and have a look at the fish was just mind boggling.

What you’re used to seeing around Sydney and the south coast where the water was cold to go up on the Great Barrier Reef way out to sea on this coral island and jump in and the water is warm and the fish were top to bottom and all sorts of colours, shapes, sizes, it was just amazing, it was something you couldn’t believe. And a lot of this time was before television I might add so you’d never seen anything like this anywhere until you’d actually jumped in the water and had a look at it. And Ronny Taylor then was starting to dabble into underwater photography and used to have little movie shows, it was an exciting growing up time of diving, it was just fantastic.

I think the divers themselves are very individuals. I’m not a believer in this buddy diving bit – I think that’s totally wrong you seem to drown people two at a time instead of one at a time. I mean, if you’re gunna get in the water you’ve got to be very confident and you’ve got to be able to do it yourself and if you get into strife you’ve got to be able to get out of it yourself.

We would never work in deep water for any long period of time. Even though we bent the rules a lot we spent a fair bit of time in 60 feet, 70 feet of water and then you’d signal to your deckhand you were going to shift your boat in and he’d move the boat in while you swam along the bottom. I mean the rule book says you’re not allowed to do it but we done it and it was just trial and error. There wasn’t too many errors. And you’d be working around the seals, and I dived for 30 years – I seen just two white pointer sharks.

I look back now – we had an Australian Spearfishing Championship at Kangaroo Island and we were swimming around there with a bag of fish tucked up under your belt. Now I look back at that now and think that wasn’t a real smart thing to do at the time. But at the time it didn’t matter much – it was just part of the course and away we went.

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

'Gold Rush – Diving on the Monumental City'

NARRATOR: The American steamer the Monumental City was one of the first screw steamers to cross the Pacific. One of many ships attracted by the Victorian goldrush, it sank in 1853 off Gabo Island near Mallacoota. This is the first wreck John Black dived on.

JOHN BLACK: The first wreck I dived on down here was very well known, it was the Monumental City up at Talburger(?) Island. It was a screw steamer according to all records. It was unfortunately lost at Gabo; 1853 I think it went down on the island.

A lot of the women used to carry the valuables because the men used to - it was ‘53, it was about the gold mining in California, etc. and a lot of these were gold miners, and they do get a fair flogging with the big seas, so most of the stuff is either stuck in either a crevice or stuck in, as the metal breaks down it cements everything together so you’ve actually got to chip away with a little abalone tool or something to loosen something up.


Probably the exception to that is gold coins. For some reason or other you’ll see a gold coin shining on the bottom and it will just be pushed up and it will be laying there, and then it’ll get washed away with the surge and it’ll fall into a little crevice or a gutter and if you’ve very, very careful when you swim around peering down these tiny little crevices, only as wide as your finger, you might just happen to see the little knurled edge of a coin and with a pair of tweezers you might pick it up. I’ve got a couple of coins off it but that’s about all the divers would ever have got off it. When we first came down here, like money was the main object and getting scrap metal, there was no outlet for it here so you went out on a good flat day and you were diving abalone and wrecks, you’d swim over one and not even bother fossicking around, actually you’d go away from it to get away from the rust colour that might affect the abalone. I wasn’t all that excited on actually going searching for wrecks here except the Monumental City which sank in 1853, and there were stories that some of the early divers picked up a few coins and I was probably guilty of that in the early days around the Dunbar. I knew were to go, how to go and how to look and I was able to find a couple of coins which I’ve had made into pendants for my wife and my children.

But nothing like boxes of them, if you got 2 or 3 you were doing alright, not pirates getting around with treasure chests. But again you’ve really you’ve got to have a good flat day and to seek these tiny little crevices and gutters out where these things would wash across.

The women used to carry the money or any gold they had because the blokes were likely to get knocked on the head. And I’d imagine that, as a lot of the women died on the boat, that as they were getting off the boat they may have been carrying purses or bags or personal stuff. And I’ve often gone up there and tried to picture, if I went in there where would I put a line ashore and where would these people have been trying to get across to the island and their misfortune may be got drowned or dropped their bag in the water. So I think away from the wreck somewhere there could be some coins and stuff that would be, you know, great to find.

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

'The wrecks of Gabo Island'

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

'There She Blows'

NARRATOR: As the abolone industry evolved, so did wetsuits, boats and breathing gear. John Black remembers the evolution of early technology enabling divers to stay under water for longer. The results were creative, adaptive and perhaps a little dangerous.

JOHN BLACK: When we were diving for abalone was when we started to get wooden row floats and even surf skis, we’d use surf skis sometimes – and just anchor them and put a bag on the surf skis, put in abalone in and then paddle back. I you come across an old bit of wreckage or something you’d – what you could actually dive down and pick up and kick off the bottom and swim like blazes and then try and plonk it on your surf ski if you were in fairly shallow water. Again you could only do these of very calm days and you’d only abalone on calm days so you were in quite close.

We evolved into aluminium boats, Quintrex were a very popular boat at the time, with an outboard motor on it with wetsuits and we changed into – originally we did snorkel diving of course, and then we went to this big bottle system and this was before anyone I could recall made up what we called a hookah unit with an engine and a compressor on it; even though I’d seen one made out of an old motor bike engine once. It had one cylinder taken out and the other one would pump air. This bloke invented this thing but nobody was brave enough to use it. But, it was probably till abalone started to really kick on that guys started to try and invent things to stay down and get them off the bottom.

So when we’d be abalone diving with a old surf ski and you’d find an old wreck you’d sort of remember it in the back of your mind. So when our equipment got better we go back there. There was a place in - it may seem crazy now - there was place in Miranda in Sydney, it was called Penprase Hardware. You could drive in the back of Pentroses – they had a hardware shop at the front, down the back they had bricks and mortar and cement and everything else. And you could go to the store there and you could actually buy a box of gelignite. Of course, Sutherland south of Sydney was still pretty bushy, and that, and people were buying to get rid of rocks and blow trees out and all sorts of stuff. You could basically go there and buy a box of gelignite. So we’d drive in and get a box of gelignite and a box of instantaneous detonators and away we’d go. So we’d put that in the boat, not the whole box, but you’d take a few handfuls with you and you’d get a good flat day and you’d say “We’ll go back down to that wreck there was a couple of bits we couldn’t get off”. We’d put about two or three sticks of gelignite together and we’d put an electric det in one end, we’d poke it in with a skewer and put the det and join the two wires up. I suppose we were smart enough – we used to wrap the wire around the explosives. Then we’d swim down – there’d be bubbles coming out of it and we’d be looking at it say – “Jeez, I hope this is alright!” You’d put it where you reckoned it would do the most, sorta be the most beneficial to you, then you’d undo the wire and bring it back to the boat and put it across the battery and then give the bottom of the boat a belt. Then you’d wait 20 minutes and the water cleared and then you’d go back down to see how successful you were. That way we got a few portholes and a bit heavier stuff and we still hadn’t worked out how to – even some of the earlier divers down here hadn’t worked out the system of using lifting air bags.

I remember the boys, when I first started ab-diving same thing,they had hookah gear, they could get to the bottom and they’d get half a bag of abalone and then they’d try to swim like blazes to get to the top and I think it was one of the guys said one day, he had a plastic bag, he’d got his sugar bag full of abalone and then he blew the plastic bag up with his demand valve and held onto the plastic bag with one hand and the other bag with the other and then they decided why don’t they put the two together and they made these lifting bags and parachutes, as we call them. There was a necessity and somebody thought about it.

Back to the wrecks. It was before we had lifting bags and then you’d sometimes you’d get your boat in right over the top of the wreck and you’d dive down and you’d tie a rope around it and you’d be trying to heave it off the bottom. We tipped one boat over and numerous times we had sort of funny accidents with half filling boats with waves coming in. And we couldn’t let go because we’d tied up this dirty big bit of brass on the bottom and the waves were coming and you’d try to get out of the way – and too late you were gone. (laughter) We’d go and drop a bit of scrap metal off at the yard and we might get 50 bucks or something and you’re king of the kids for a while.

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