The Oldest Shipwrecks You Can Dive in Northern Territory

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.

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.