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It is an odd piece of Australian history that the first people to repeat Captain Cook’s voyage up Australia’s east coast were not other intrepid navigators or explorers, but a motley band of prisoners bent on escaping penal servitude. On 28 March 1791 William Bryant, a fisherman by trade, his wife Mary and two children with seven other convicts stoleContinue reading “William Bryant’s Great Escape – 1791”

Some people might be surprised to read that the oldest shipwreck recorded off Australia dates back to 1622.   That is 148 years before Cook plied his way up the east coast.  Twenty years before Abel Tasman partially circumnavigated Tasmania.   Or just six years after the Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog nailed a pewter plate to a post near Shark Bay warningContinue reading “The Tryall: Australia’s oldest known shipwreck.”

Far out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, a seaman on board a small schooner thought his imagination was getting the better of him.     It was daybreak on 5 February 1850.   His ship, the 140-ton schooner Wanderer was en route from Sydney to San Francisco and still under storm canvas having just survived a powerful storm.   They had sailedContinue reading “The Wanderer and a Miraculous Rescue”