The SS Minmi was a 75 m, 1,455-ton steel collier built at Meadowside, Glasgow, in 1927 for J. and A. Brown and Abermain Seaham Collieries and registered at Newcastle. She was named after the Lower Hunter town or the Minmi colliery and spent her career on the Newcastle–Melbourne run, carrying coal south and returning in ballast.

On 8 May 1937 she left Melbourne for Newcastle; at about 10.15 pm on 13 May, in dense fog and fairly heavy seas, she ran onto the outside of Cape Banks, the south-eastern corner of Botany Bay's northern headland. At 12.45 am she lurched and broke her back, splitting in two just forward of the funnel. The cook, Frederick Boulton, died of a heart attack after the impact and fireman Robert Burnside drowned during the rescue; 24 of the 26 crew survived.

Over the following decades the sea pushed wreckage around the point, and today the largest surviving piece – the stern section – sits on the rock platform inside the headland at Cruwee Cove, also called Pussycat Bay, next to the NSW Golf Club. By around 2021 McFadyen described it as almost flat. Girders and plates are scattered through the cove in shallow water, and the boiler, engine and propeller probably lie close to the original strike point on the exposed outer corner, where the sea is nearly always too rough to dive.

Coal from the ship is also found in the nearby Minmi Trench inside the bay entrance. The wreck is more a heritage curiosity than a structured wreck dive: shallow twisted steel on a rock and barnacle bottom, colonised by kelp, cunjevoi, sea urchins and the usual Botany Bay reef fish – luderick, silver sweep, mado and blue gropers. It is best combined with a dive on the Cape Banks caverns or the Cruwee Cove reef, which are among the most interesting sites in the area.

It suits experienced shore divers comfortable with surge and rock-platform entries, or boat divers looking for a shallow second dive.

Drive to La Perouse via Anzac Parade and take Cape Banks Road through Kamay Botany Bay National Park (vehicle entry fee) past the NSW Golf Club to the Cape Banks car park at the end. Walk down the track towards Cape Banks and the footbridge; the stern section of the Minmi lies on the rock platform inside the headland at Cruwee Cove and is visible at low tide. Divers enter from the platform into the cove at its sheltered western side.

Boat divers from the Botany Bay ramps (Kyeemagh, Foreshore Road, Bonna Point) anchor in Cruwee Cove about 10–15 minutes from the ramp and swim to the shallow wreckage.

The outer strike point on the Cape Banks corner is almost always too rough to dive because swell picks up on the headland from every direction except west. The wreckage inside Cruwee Cove is more sheltered from southerlies by the headland but is still exposed to easterly and north-easterly swell, which creates heavy surge on the shallow rock and barnacle bottom. Only dive it with swell under 1 m, ideally on a westerly and a mid to high tide.

After rain, outflow from Botany Bay on the ebb reduces visibility, so the incoming tide is better.

Enter in the sheltered part of Cruwee Cove and swim east along the base of the rock platform, inspecting the scattered plates and girders in 2–6 m, then follow the edge of the platform towards the stern section. Turn well before the exposed corner of Cape Banks. Return the same way.

Often done as the shallow end of a Cape Banks caverns dive.

No regular operator – visited occasionally by private boat divers and during Cape Banks/Cruwee Cove shore dives; Abyss and Pro Dive Coogee anchor in Cruwee Cove for the Cape Banks caverns and may point it out.