New Zealander & Lighthouse Reef, Nuns Beach

Meet the site

The New Zealander was a three-masted wooden immigrant ship of 1,309 tons, built at Pictou, Nova Scotia, in 1852 and 174 feet long. She arrived at Portland in December 1853 with 465 Irish and Scottish assisted immigrants, one of the largest single arrivals in the young settlement's history, and having landed them she lay in the bay preparing for the return voyage. On Friday 16 December 1853 she caught fire; she was towed to the beach at Whalers Bluff, below where the lighthouse now stands, and burned for several weeks, a spectacle recorded in the town's early chronicles. Her lower hull, ballast and fittings settled into the sand at the northern end of what is now Nuns Beach. Visit Portland's description of a coal ship sunk in 1953 is a garbled version of the same wreck.

What remains is the ghost of a ship: in 3 m of water at the northern end of the beach, the outline of the hull is preserved well enough that, as the Scuba Doctor points out, the January 2017 Google Earth image shows it perfectly, and in the water a snorkeller can follow the line of frames, ballast and iron fastenings around the shape of the vessel. It is a shallow, easy site suitable for snorkellers and for divers doing a shore dive from Nuns Beach, sheltered by the harbour breakwaters and the bluff, and it combines with Lighthouse Reef 240 m to the south-west, a shore and boat site in 1–4 m under the Whalers Bluff lighthouse which Visit Portland lists as a snorkel and beginner dive with wreck remnants visible. Both sit on the same ground as the Lee Breakwater dive and can be done from the same car park. The New Zealander is a protected historic shipwreck on the Discovery Coast section of the Historic Shipwreck Trail; nothing may be disturbed. It is the most accessible shipwreck in Portland and a good introduction to the town's maritime past for families.

What you might see

Small wrasse, leatherjackets, goatfish, sea stars, crabs, stingrays, weedy seadragons in nearby seagrass, kelp and algae on Lighthouse Reef

Location

Outline of an 1853 immigrant ship burnt and beached at Whalers Bluff, in 3 m at the northern end of Nuns Beach below the Portland lighthouse, with Lighthouse Reef 240 m to the south-west in 1–4 m.

Facilities nearby

Parking at Nuns Beach/Lee Breakwater Road and the Whalers Bluff lighthouse; toilets, showers and changerooms at the breakwater; Portland town facilities 500 m; Portland SCUBA for air.