Thanks! It was an interesting time. A farmer friend who lived near the Shipwreck Coast had lost his seaward fences in what the BOM described at the time as a hundred-year storm. We were attempting to retrieve his surviving livestock (sheep and alpacas) from the dunes, with the wind still blowing a dangerous gale. As we stumbled about trying to dislodge animals from whatever shelter they had been able to find in lees and hollows I bumped into a huge chunk of shaped wood sticking out of a dune. To me it looked too light to be mahogany, but it was certainly part of a ship, and tucked down between two rows of dunes. I'd heard the local tales, of course, which claim it was, variously, a Portuguese exploration ship, a Spanish treasure galleon, and a wreck cobbled together by escaping convicts from Van Diemen's Land. I suspect there are a number of wrecks buried in those dunes, little say the ones sunk offshore. I didn't explore further, because it was getting dark, the wind was coming up again and I could hardly see for blown sand. A few days later I went back to look, but the wind had reshaped the dunes and I couldn't find the spot again.
But that's why I chose that particular ship.
