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The Ocean Road

We are tossed from side to side as our ship rises and plunges in the storm and is smashed against the reef. It’s pitch black, lashing wind and rain and the hull is shattered, quickly flooding with water. All the passengers are asleep down below, and there’s no time to get to life boats before the ship goes down. Only three of us survive: a young Irish sailor, a young Irish girl and a ceramic peacock. The boys are thrilled.

The Loch Ard

All this excitement is a sound and laser re-enactment of the wreck of the Loch Ard, a Glasgow-built ship that came to grief on the southern coast of Victoria in 1878. We are at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village in Warrnambool, one of our stops along the legendary Great Ocean Road, a spectacular route winding west from Melbourne along a coastline that is as treacherous as it is beautiful. The striking rock formations that created London Bridge and The Twelve Apostles have also brought ruin to over 200 ships, thus earning the title ‘The Shipwreck Coast’.

Two of the Twelve Apostles

As we journey, the boys are doing a Shipwreck Project, investigating such questions as: Who was on the ships and why did they come? How were the ships powered? What navigation and communication instruments did they use? And why did so many get wrecked?

Many of the answers we find at Flagstaff Hill, an outstanding museum and 1850s port town reconstruction that is packed with information, activities and relics of the era, including the original Loch Ard peacock, 5 feet high and shiny as new. The day before, we had visited the gorge where the wreck happened and marvelled that anyone survived.

Where the Loch Ard was Wrecked

Answers to why people came we found in the Immigration Museum back in Melbourne, but also in the annals of my own family history. My forebears include a Swedish sea-captain plying trading vessels in the south; English, Irish and Scottish settlers seeking better lives; a Lithuanian Jew escaping persecution and – of highest status in a white Australian genealogy – a convict.

Early Aussie Scuba Kit

The effects of foreign arrivals here have been as varied and complex as the reasons for coming, but one thing is clear: the impact on the Aboriginal people has been devastating and still casts a long shadow. There are steps of apology and reconciliation, and I am glad to see statements in many places that honour the original Aboriginal custodians, but the damage is deep and far-reaching and Australia still has a long way to go towards restoration.

The Southern Ocean

One place where this is taking place, on many levels, is the Coorong Wilderness Lodge, a spit of land in the lagoons of the South Australian coast that has been returned to the Ngarrindjeri people. They are re-planting the vegetation (stripped bare by sheep farming) and witnessing the return of wildlife and a natural balance. Visitors to the lodge can take guided tours to learn about the land and its people. Our overnight stay there is all too short, but brim full of beauty, from the flocks of pelicans and ducks skimming over the lagoons, to the thunderous surf on the ocean beach, to the carpet of shell fragments on the sand. As we pull our kayaks out of the water at the end of the day, we are thankful for safe passage and welcoming shores.