From the 1629 Batavia on the Abrolhos to the clipper ships and coastal steamers of the 1800s, these are the oldest wrecks divers can visit. All are protected under the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act: look, photograph, touch nothing.
Updated daily from the directory. 30 sites listed.
1. Pilbara & Dampier · WA
Tryall Wreck (Tryal Rocks)
Sunk 1622 · Australia's oldest known shipwreck (1622), with cannons and anchors in 6 m.
Our takeThe oldest known shipwreck in Australian waters: an English East Indiaman lost on an uncharted reef off the Montebellos in 1622. Cannons and anchors in 6 m of water on a reef that is still awkward to reach; the wreck was not found until 1969.
2. Geraldton & Abrolhos Islands · WA
Batavia Wreck Site (Morning Reef)
Sunk 1629 · Cannons and anchors of the 1629 Batavia – Australia's most notorious shipwreck and mutiny – in 7 m on Morning Reef.
Our takeThe most notorious wreck in Australian history, for the mutiny and massacre that followed it on the Abrolhos in 1629. Cannons and anchors remain on Morning Reef in 7 m; the timbers and the stone portico are in the Fremantle and Geraldton museums. Geraldton charters visit in the calm months.
3. Turquoise Coast · WA
Vergulde Draeck Wreck (Gilt Dragon)
Sunk 1656 · The 1656 VOC shipwreck whose lost survivors prompted the first charts of the Perth coast.
Our takeA Dutch East India Company ship lost off Ledge Point in 1656 with 78,000 guilders of silver; 68 survivors reached the shore and were never found. The wreck site is a protected zone on a reef north of Perth.
4. Kalbarri & Shark Bay · WA
Zuytdorp Wreck
Sunk 1712 · The 1712 VOC wreck at the foot of the Zuytdorp Cliffs, whose survivors may have been the first Europeans to live in Australia.
Our takeThe VOC ship that hit the cliffs that now carry its name, north of Kalbarri, in 1712. The survivors climbed the cliffs and disappeared; whether they lived with the Nhanda people is one of Australian history's open questions. The site is exposed, dangerous and dived only by museum teams.
5. Geraldton & Abrolhos Islands · WA
Zeewijk Wreck (Half Moon Reef)
Sunk 1727 · Cannons of the 1727 Zeewijk, whose survivors built the first European boat in Australia.
Our takeWrecked on the southern Abrolhos in 1727. The survivors spent ten months on Gun Island building a boat from the wreckage, the first European vessel built in Australia, and sailed it to Batavia. Cannons remain in 8 m on Half Moon Reef.
6. Norfolk Island · External Territory
HMS Sirius wreck site
Sunk 1790 · The remains of the First Fleet flagship, lost off Slaughter Bay in 1790 – Australia's most significant colonial shipwreck.
Our takeThe flagship of the First Fleet, lost on the reef off Kingston, Norfolk Island in March 1790 while landing supplies. Anchors, carronades and ballast lie in 8 m inside Slaughter Bay, with the recovered anchors in the museum ashore.
7. Far Northern Reef & Torres Strait · QLD
HMS Pandora wreck
Sunk 1791 · The 1791 wreck of the Bounty-hunting frigate HMS Pandora – a permit-only historic shipwreck at 30–33 m.
Our takeThe frigate sent to hunt the Bounty mutineers, wrecked on the outer Barrier Reef in 1791 with 14 of her prisoners still aboard. The most excavated shipwreck in Australia; the site at 30 to 33 m is a protected zone that needs a permit, and the finds fill a museum in Townsville.
8. Flinders Island & Furneaux Group · TAS
Sydney Cove (Preservation Island)
Sunk 1797 · One of Australia's oldest shipwrecks (1797), whose survivors' ordeal opened Bass Strait to sealing.
Our takeLost in the Furneaux Group in 1797. Seventeen survivors walked from Ninety Mile Beach to Sydney, three of them arriving; their reports of seals and coal opened Bass Strait. Shallow, remote and rarely visited.
9. Coral Sea · External Territory
Wreck Reef (HMS Porpoise and Cato wreck sites)
Sunk 1803 · The 1803 wreck sites of Matthew Flinders' HMS Porpoise and the Cato, on a remote reef with outstanding visibility.
Our takeWhere Flinders' ships struck in 1803 on a reef he had not charted, 450 km off the Queensland coast. Anchors and ballast mounds in extremely clear water, on an expedition charter route.
10. Ningaloo – Coral Bay · WA
Rapid
Sunk 1811 · One of WA's oldest wrecks, once carpeted with Spanish silver coins.
11. Huon & Far South · TAS
Actaeon Island
Sunk 1822 · Remote island with a thick kelp forest at the southern entrance to the Channel, near the 1822 Actaeon wreck site.
12. Esperance & Recherche Archipelago · WA
Belinda & Penguin Wrecks (Middle Island)
Sunk 1824 · An 1824 sealing brig and a steamer's boiler at the Recherche's largest island, home of pink Lake Hillier and pirate Black Jack Anderson.
13. Shoalhaven Coast · NSW
Hive Wreck Site
Sunk 1835 · Site of an 1835 convict-ship wreck from which 250 convicts survived; heritage-listed buried remains.
14. Huon & Far South · TAS
Sterile Island (Wallace wreck)
Sunk 1835 · Barren reef rock with the cannon and ironwork of the 1835 ship Wallace.
15. Bruny Island & D'Entrecasteaux Channel · TAS
The Pineapples (Cape Bruny)
Sunk 1835 · Remote maze of coastal rock formations near Cape Bruny – and possibly the 1835 wreck of the Enchantress.
16. Portland & the West · VIC
Isabella, Cape Nelson
Sunk 1837 · The 1837 wreck of the barque whose captain mistook Cape Nelson for Julia Percy Island – one of the oldest located wrecks in Victoria, under the cape's eastern cliffs.
17. Shipwreck Coast & Warrnambool · VIC
Thistle, Port Fairy
Sunk 1837 · Timbers of the Henty family's Indian-built brigantine, which carried the first settlers to Portland Bay in 1834, in the wading shallows of East Beach.
18. Shipwreck Coast & Warrnambool · VIC
Children
Sunk 1839 · House bricks and scattered iron from the 1839 Henty barque off Needle Rock at pretty Childers Cove – the first great loss of life on the Shipwreck Coast.
19. Port Phillip Heads · VIC
William Salthouse
Sunk 1841 · Australia's first Canada–Australia trader, lost in 1841 with her cargo of barrels still in the hold – an intact early-colonial merchant wreck under a sand mound at 10 m, dived only under Heritage Victoria permit.
20. Rottnest Island · WA
Duck Rock & Transit Plinth
Sunk 1842 · A genuine walk-in reef dive near the ferry, with caves off the rock and the plinth marking Rottnest's first shipwreck (1842).
21. Shipwreck Coast & Warrnambool · VIC
Socrates
Sunk 1843 · Timbers of an 1821 whaling barque driven onto East Beach in 1843 – the oldest of Port Fairy's three shore wrecks and one of the oldest in Victoria.
22. Turquoise Coast · WA
Cervantes Wreck (Thirsty Point)
Sunk 1844 · The timbers of the 1844 American whaler that gave the town of Cervantes its name.
23. King Island · TAS
Cataraqui
Sunk 1845 · The site of Australia's worst civil maritime disaster (1845), with anchor and capstan on an exposed reef.
24. Huon & Far South · TAS
Kellys Rocks (Recherche Bay)
Sunk 1846 · Large, weedy headland reef in Recherche Bay with remains of the 1846 whaler Maria Orr.
25. Shipwreck Coast & Warrnambool · VIC
Lydia
Sunk 1847 · Timbers of an 1825 barque that her master ran onto East Beach in 1847 to save her cargo – one of three shore-accessible wrecks within 400 m of sand.
26. Albany & Great Southern · WA
Arpenteur Wreck (Hassell Beach, Cheyne Bay)
Sunk 1849 · Frames and planking of an 1849 French whaling brigantine, one of the south coast's earliest wrecks.
27. Melbourne & Port Phillip Bay · VIC
Clarence
Sunk 1850 · An 1841 Hunter River-built schooner wrecked in 1850 and lying almost complete on her port side in 5 m off St Leonards – the best-preserved early Australian-built schooner, permit-only.
28. Yorke Peninsula · SA
Troubridge Island and Marion Reef Wrecks
Sunk 1851 · The graveyard of six of South Australia's earliest wrecked sailing ships on the shoal beneath the 1856 Troubridge Island lighthouse.
29. Limestone Coast · SA
Cape Jaffa – Margaret Brock Reef
Sunk 1852 · A vast shallow reef around the old Cape Jaffa lighthouse platform – seadragons, sanctuary lobster and five historic wreck sites.
30. Port Phillip Heads · VIC
Conside
Sunk 1852 · Victoria's earliest screw-steamer wreck (1852) and possibly the first steamship across the Pacific – remains of her rare geared oscillating engine on the outer corner of Lonsdale Reef in 5 m.
The guide
Four centuries of wrecks
Australia's oldest wrecks are Dutch. The East India Company route from the Cape to Batavia ran east across the Indian Ocean before turning north, and ships that misjudged their longitude ran into the Western Australian coast: the Tryall in 1622 (English, but on the same route), the Batavia in 1629, the Vergulde Draeck in 1656, the Zuytdorp in 1712 and the Zeewijk in 1727. Then the British: HMS Sirius in 1790, HMS Pandora in 1791, the Sydney Cove in 1797, the Porpoise and Cato in 1803. From there the list runs into the colonial trade: sealers, coastal traders and the clipper Rapid, wrecked at Ningaloo in 1811 with a cargo of Spanish silver.
Every wreck here is protected under the Underwater Cultural Heritage Act 2018. Nothing may be disturbed or removed, and several sites (the Pandora, the Vergulde Draeck, the Batavia and others) are protected zones where entry itself needs a permit from the state museum or heritage office.
What is actually there to see
Manage expectations. Four hundred years on a reef leaves iron, stone and brass: cannons, anchors, ballast mounds and the ceramic and coin scatters that archaeologists have mapped. Timbers survive only where they were buried in sand and have mostly been raised (the Batavia's stern is in Fremantle's Shipwreck Museum). What these sites offer is the place: standing on the reef where the Batavia struck, or hovering over the Sirius's carronades in the bay where the First Fleet's flagship broke up.
The Abrolhos and Norfolk Island are the practical destinations. Geraldton operators run Abrolhos trips that include the Batavia and Zeewijk reefs in the calm from March to May; Norfolk Island's dive shop visits the Sirius site in Slaughter Bay when the swell allows. The Pandora and the Coral Sea sites are expedition dives.
Editorial last reviewed September 2026. The list itself is regenerated from the directory daily.
Frequently asked questions
Can I take anything from an old shipwreck?
No. Every wreck older than 75 years is automatically protected under Commonwealth law, and many sites have protected zones requiring permits even to enter.
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