Janet Wreck

Meet the site

The Janet is the least visible of the Transit Reef wrecks but has an interesting story. Built of jarrah at Fremantle in 1878, she was a 33 m, 211-ton three-masted schooner (described as a cutter in some records) and at the time of her loss was the largest vessel belonging to the port of Fremantle. Returning from Colombo with wheat and furniture, she struck the reef on the evening of 11 December 1887, close to where the Macedon had been lost four years earlier. The crew were found clinging to the masts and were rescued after the pilot station saw their distress signals; by morning the ship was a total wreck.

No wooden hull remains. What divers find are two admiralty anchors, a davit, a boiler and lengths of piping scattered across the reef and sand in 3-7 m, plus a small cave system at the site with a maximum depth of about 7 m. Sand regularly covers much of the wreckage, so on some visits there is little to see and on others more of the site is exposed. A WA Museum plinth and plaque mark the site as part of the Rottnest wreck trail.

The Janet is best treated as an add-on to the Macedon and Denton Holme rather than a destination on its own: it adds history and a couple of anchors to a dive that is already rich in structure. It lies within the Kingston Sanctuary Zone, where fish are unfished and relatively tame, and suits the same beginner and snorkelling audience as its neighbours.

What you might see

Buffalo bream, sweep, bullseyes, western king wrasse, western rock lobster in the cave, old wife, sea stars

Location

Scattered remains of a jarrah-built schooner on Transit Reef about 80-150 m east of the Macedon at the entrance to Thomson Bay.

Facilities nearby

As for the Macedon: public moorings; Thomson Bay settlement facilities; no scuba fills on the island.