The shipwreck of the Walter Hood

The Canberra Times

Tim the Yowie Man discovers the relics from the 1870 wreck of the Walter Hood near North Bendalong, NSW.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:03 Back in April 1870, during a terrible storm,

00:07 the Walter Hood was wrecked on rocks not far behind me.

00:12 Sadly, 13 people lost their lives.

00:16 Ever since then, which is over 150 years ago,

00:19 beachcombers who have walked along the beach here and up through the sand

00:24 have uncovered artefacts from the wreck.

00:26 Artefacts such as bolts, slivers of wood and even bottles.

00:31 Now, one man who's become quite obsessed with the wreck of the Walter Hood is Alan Moore.

00:36 He's got a beach home not far from here

00:39 and he loves to come out and see what he can find in the sand.

00:42 He's even written a book on the wreck of the Walter Hood.

00:46 But not only has he written a book, he also has a gallery.

00:49 Yes, a gallery in his own beach home here,

00:52 in the stairwell and crammed into cupboards.

00:54 Lots of items that he managed to find on the beach here from the Walter Hood.

01:00 Amongst those, not on display, but out the back,

01:03 is a big bucket of literally hundreds of tiles

01:07 that he's uncovered while walking along the beach here.

01:10 While he's got some of the tiles in his cabinet as part of the gallery,

01:14 these tiles in the bucket, they number the hundreds

01:16 and they're believed to actually have been on their way on the Walter Hood to Sydney

01:22 and they were intended for the floor of St Mary's Cathedral.

01:26 Or were they?

01:27 So, Alan, how long have you been collecting these tiles?

01:31 30 plus years.

01:33 30 plus years. How many are there?

01:35 Don't ask me. A lot.

01:37 And why were there tiles on the Walter Hood?

01:40 Well, it's thought that they were intended for St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney,

01:44 but I don't think that's true.

01:47 They were probably intended for where you can still see some in St Mary's,

01:53 that's on the vestry or one of the associated buildings,

01:55 not the floor of the cathedral itself.

01:58 And so if you just go walking on the beach here,

02:01 every time you go on the beach, you can find a tile?

02:03 Or is it like after a big storm?

02:05 No, tiles are fairly rare.

02:07 An awful lot of glass and a lot of ginger beer bottle.

02:10 Fairly rare? You've got a few hundred there.

02:13 30 years.

02:14 30 years, okay.

02:16 [Music ends]

02:18 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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