The Newfield was a three-masted iron and steel barque of 1,386 tons, built by Alexander Stephen and Sons at Dundee in 1889. Bound from Sharpness on the Severn to Brisbane with a cargo of salt, she made her landfall on the Victorian coast in heavy weather at the end of August 1892 and her master, Captain George Scott, mistook the Cape Otway light for Cape Wickham on King Island and altered course to the north-east, believing he was entering Bass Strait. At about 3.40 am on 29 August she struck the reef about 100 yards off the shore just east of Peterborough. The crew tried to launch the boats in the breaking sea; the captain and eight others drowned, and seventeen were rescued by locals who ran lines out through the surf. The Marine Board blamed the loss on the captain's one-man style of navigation and his refusal to heed the crew, and the wreck became one of the set pieces of the Shipwreck Coast story alongside the Schomberg 1 km to the west and the Falls of Halladale, which struck sixteen years later a few kilometres further on.

The wreck is broken over low reef in 5–7 m about 100 m offshore. Iron frames, hull plating, anchors and fittings lie in the sand-floored gutters between low limestone ridges, much of it concreted and overgrown with kelp, and the salt cargo dissolved long ago. Crayfish and abalone shelter in the plating and the usual reef fish – wrasse, sweep, zebrafish, leatherjackets – move over it. It is a shallow dive with no navigation difficulty; the entire challenge is the sea, because the site is very exposed and the reef breaks in all but flat conditions. For that reason it is dived only a handful of times a year, by boat, by people who have been watching the forecast for a week. It is a protected historic shipwreck and part of the Great Ocean Road Historic Shipwreck Trail, with an interpretive sign on the clifftop at Newfield Bay for the far greater number of people who will see it from above.

Peterborough is on the Great Ocean Road 15 km west of Port Campbell and 50 km east of Warrnambool. Boats launch at the Peterborough Bay of Islands (Boat Bay) ramp off Boat Bay Road or the Curdies River ramp at the end of Dorey Street in Peterborough; the river ramp requires crossing the Curdies Inlet bar, which is only possible at higher tides and in small swell. From Boat Bay it is a 4–5 km run east along the coast, 10–15 minutes, to Newfield Bay immediately east of the Curdies Inlet mouth.

The Scuba Doctor lists the site as boat access; in nil swell a fit diver can walk to Newfield Bay beach from the Peterborough side of the inlet and swim out, but the surf normally rules it out. Warrnambool is the nearest dive shop.

The Newfield lies on low-relief reef on an open south-west facing shore where, in the Scuba Doctor's words, dangerous and unpredictable swells break; near-perfect diving and boating conditions are required. That means swell under about 0.5 m, a northerly wind and a settled forecast, because a set breaking on the reef would put a boat and divers on the rocks. Southerly and south-easterly swell is fatal to the site.

Add the Curdies Inlet bar if launching from the river – it needs a rising tide and small swell. Visibility is poor in any surge. A few days a year, almost all in autumn.

Anchor on sand outside the reef, descend to 6–7 m and swim in toward the breaking line where the plating, frames and anchors lie in the gutters. Work the scatter east to west staying low in the surge, turn at half gas or as soon as the sets increase, and return to the anchor line for a direct ascent. Someone should remain in the boat.

No regular operator – private boats, Warrnambool Diving and club trips in exceptional calm; more often visited as part of the Historic Shipwreck Trail from the clifftop.