Diver: Andrew, John C, Mick, John Y and Mark
Surface support: Allan, Daz and Brenden

After the usual months of planning and arranging travel, accommodation, boats and food, a group of 8 divers from SOE headed up to Merimbula Divers Lodge to prepare for a few days of wreck hunting. Arriving late on a Monday afternoon, our host Michael Standen had prepared everything for us & we had arranged to park our boat trailers in the driveway over night (which allows the boat owners sleep easy at night!!). So after preparing the boats and our dive gear (maybe a bit optimistic) the crew headed off for an evening meal & a few drinks, then back to the divers lodge for briefing on the next days proceedings. Then it was off to bed for a good nights sleep for Tuesday morning we will have 18 nautical miles to travel just to get to the search area.
The marks we are looking at on this trip were supplied to me by fisherman about 5 years ago, but unfortunately we have not had a chance to get back up to Eden to check them out. There are too many good dives to be had here & we still have a lot of sites to be located in Victoria with out spending too much time in Samir's backyard! However, the Tathra/Eden area has been a real hot spot over the last few years for wreck finds, Greg Hodge, Dave Apperley and myself located the Cumberland back in 2003. The Sydney Project have had some great finds as well with the Bega, William Dawes & Iron Knight (or what ever it is??).
It's an early morning start, we arrived at the search location and dropped a shotline on the mark, this will give us a good visual reference & makes keeping ones bearings easier for the crew. The search pattern is set, we will centre our search around the bouy travelling in a north - south direction, then the 'mowing' begins. It's not long before we get some small action on the magnetometer but nothing to get excited about. A few small rises show up on the depth sounder, but we've seen it all before & unless we get a definite hit on the screen, we will continue with the mowing & asses our options at the end of the day. Mick's boat picks up an area North of the shotline where a slight rise is consistent for 10 metres or so, however not really looking like a shipwreck. In Allan's boat we have some small hits on the sounder, but again, not really looking like a shipwreck. One thing that does become apparent is that the mag is rising consistently in the same area each time, about 600m south from the shot line, but still nothing on the sounder.
Time catches up with us & we have to leave the site and head for home, the decision to make now is, do we return and dive the site which at this stage is more than likely reef or do we head off to another set marks we have that also need investigating? I don't like leaving a job half done so I decided to return to dive the site tomorrow & even if its reef we can at lest eliminate the area as a possible wreck site. The weather has been very kind to us and with the almost perfect conditions the run out to the site is relatively short & easy, so instead of just jumping in for the dive we decide to maximize our time on the water and spend a couple of hours searching - just in case!! The plan for today is to only search south of the bouy because this is where we had the hits on the mag yesterday. After several passes, we notice a plum of seals 800 metres south west of our shot line. It's always a good sign seeing seals out on a flat sandy bottom because they are there for one thing only - food. With a wreck being the perfect artificial reef, most wreck searches are encouraged by the sight of a seal. However, we must once again stick to our plan and continue on with the regimented mowing, whilst in the back of my mind I am hoping we will at least get the to area where the seals are frolicking at the srface, before we run out of time once again. I now believe that we have a legitimate search area and whether we dive today or not, I am convinced this area will eventually produce results. The anticipation grows as the search line slowly edges towards the seals, but before we get there & out of nowhere the depth sounder starts to show a rise, meter after metre the lump on the bottom appears to climb - the centre of which is a dark red color with a much lighter yellow underneath - this means something which is solid but not apart of the bottom topography. "pull the fish in" I call, not even waiting for the mag to pass over the target "we're diving this". I call Mick over, he is still checking out his lump from yesterday but one look at this target & he changes his mind, this something worth diving.
Our boat pulls up the shot line and we relocate it next to the target, we spend a few minutes setting up our deco station, it's sitting well in the water and there appears to be no current (very unusual out here!). Descending the line we find the shot only 2 metres from what looks like massive ball of fish - Bullseye's in fact, I have to push my way through them to get to the rust. The fish are so thick on the bottom that I can not see my other team members, not even their torches even though they are only 1-2 metes away!! Eventually the fish start to clear, although not enough to allow us to get a good overall picture of the site, but enough for us to see the individual items. Not knowing how big the site is going to be & with the issue of the fish making seeing anything difficult, we decide to run a line from the shotline just in case. It turns out the site is not all that large, in fact it is only the rear half of a small ship, but we do find enough to determine it is not a very old wreck. It does have a few very nice portholes, but it also has PVC piping, electrical wiring, car tyres, a bloody big deck winch & the 2 fan belts are still on the diesel motor. Unfortunately the one camera we did have malfunction and we were not able to get any photos, but we will certainly be back to spend a few more nights at Merimbula Divers Lodge and hopefully the weather will allow us dive this site again and hopefully get a few clues as to what this site could be and some footage would be nice too!!
I would to thank our surface support Brenden Stevenson, Darren Pearce & Allan Easter who without their help trips like this would not have be possible.
Research into what this site could be continues and any input at all would be greatly appreciated.

Mark