Coast Australia (2013–2017): Season 1, Episode 8 - Coral Coast - full transcript
This has been Coast's
biggest expedition ever.
We've come to Australia.
A country so dramatically defined
by its ancient and diverse coastline.
With stories of a resourceful people
shaped by the tyranny of distance
and the extremes of climate
and scale.
There's been a rich
coastal culture here
for at least the last 50,000 years.
The true marvel of this coast
is its power to inspire
the imagination.
Any wonder that most Australians
choose to live along
their dazzling coastline
and revel in its infinite horizons.
I'm on the cusp
of West Australia's wild,
remote, and famously wind-ruled
coral coast.
It's a coastline that's blessed
with outrageously beautiful
natural wonders
but peel beneath
the picture-perfect façade,
and I'm told it also harbours
some very dark secrets.
Joining me
on this splendid adventure,
Dr. Xanthe Mallet investigates
the first European tragedy
on Australian soil in 1629.
So all of this was the mass grave.
3-billion-year old life
with Professor Tim Flannery.
These black rocks,
they're not just rocks.
They're some of the oldest
living things on our planet.
Dr. Emma Johnston,
up close
with a 60-million-year-old fish.
And I'm tracing the mystery
of a lost Australian battleship.
And why does no-one
get off of Sydney alive?
This is Coast Australia.
In this episode,
our journey runs
from Wedge Island in the south,
across to the
Houtman Abrolhos Islands,
up to Shark Bay, Carnarvon,
and the remote North West Cape.
Sixty kilometres off the coast
of Geraldton,
the Houtman Abrolhos
are a cluster of 122 islands.
Named after a 17th Century
Dutch explorer, Frederick de Houtman,
their featureless isolation
has deterred all
but a hardy community
of cray fishermen,
and the occasional yachting tourist.
Historically, though,
the Abrolhos are known
for a bizarre tale
of murder and madness.
- Jeff. Hello.
- Hi, Xanthe. Welcome.
Anthropologist
Dr. Xanthe Mallet
is starting out from Geraldton
to investigate a macabre tale
of three men and a bloodbath,
that took place 140 years
before Captain Cook first set eyes
on Australia.
400 years ago,
the spice trade
was the resources boom of the time.
The Dutch East India Company,
was the most wealthy and powerful
institution in the world.
Thanks to its control
of the legendary Spice Islands,
in modern day Indonesia.
In 1628, the Company's
newly-commissioned Batavia
set sail from Holland
to its eastern headquarters in Java.
By June 1629,
it was sailing off the coast
of Western Australia
when disaster struck.
The Batavia hit a reef
and was wrecked with 40 lives lost.
Another 280 made it to land,
mostly here,
on the Abrolhos's Beacon Island.
Enter our first character,
Commodore Francisco Pelsaert.
Having survived the loss of his ship,
Pelsaert now faces the grim reality
of a barren outcrop
with no fresh water
for his marooned charge
of soldiers, men, women and children.
He had to act quickly.
Cast off forward.
Let's have the jib up.
Okay, we've just got a gentle breeze.
With 48 desperate passengers
in a longboat exactly like this one,
Pelsaert heads out
in search of water,
or so he claims.
I'm with modern day
mariner, Jeff Brooks,
a Geraldton local and guardian
of this historical replica.
You know the story
of Pelsaert as well as anybody.
What do you think his thoughts were
as he rowed off, you know,
into the distance
leaving all of those people?
On that island?
There's a lot written about it.
They were saving their skins.
They were.
- Do you think?
- Absolutely.
If you're going sailing
to the mainland to look for water
which is what they were doing,
why would you take 48 people.
The boat was already overloaded.
Be that as it may,
they make an epic
1700-kilometre journey to Java
in terrible conditions.
They were at sea
for quite a long time.
Yeah, 30 days roughly.
That's a long time to be here,
isn't it?
Yes, not a lot of privacy.
Not a lot of comfort,
a lot of salt water boils,
and the boat would have leaked,
because all boats
at that time leaked.
But that was nothing
compared to what was happening
back on the islands.
With no water and little food,
the second man in this story,
Jeronimus Cornelisz,
steps up
and begins a reign of terror.
I've come to Beacon Island
to piece together a gruesome jigsaw
with the help of Jeremy Green,
a leading Maritime Archaeologist
who pioneered excavations
of the Batavia wreck,
and has been studying its history
for 40 years.
Jeronimus Cornelisz,
who is the really baddie,
baddie person in this whole story,
came late off the vessel.
And he was then
the most senior person.
And he had been involved
in this fomenting mutiny
that was taking place
before they were wrecked.
What was the mutineers' plan?
I think what they were concerned
that the food would run out,
so they wanted to reduce
the number of people.
What happened in the beginning
is they had a lot of sick people,
and people who were weak
and not able to do anything.
They were killed and buried
rather quickly and clandestinely.
They then had another problem,
the mutineers,
is they had a group of soldiers.
And the soldiers were extremely
well organised,
they were well armed,
and they, for the mutineers,
they were a real nightmare
because, you know,
they were not likely to be able
to overpower them.
The biggest challenge
for the mutineers was their leader,
a young, determined soldier
named Wiebbe Hayes.
Our third, and final character.
With covert killings underway,
somehow, Cornelisz
manages to disarm and dispatch
Wiebbe Hayes and his soldiers
to West Wallabi Island,
ostensibly to look for water.
Was the hope that they
would actually die over there?
Yes, that was the general idea.
After that happened they then started
to openly kill people.
So people who didn't
behave themselves were killed.
In a grisly bout
of medieval Hunger Games,
throats are slit, skulls bashed in.
One hundred and fifteen people,
brutally murdered
by Cornelisz and his mutineers.
In 1994, Jeremy started excavating,
and uncovered graves.
Previous graves were found
and then we found this mass grave.
There was a pit, which I suppose...
Well, you can see
from that thing there.
This hole, here, would have been
about three metres in diameter.
Right. So, all of this
- was the mass graves, but...
- Yeah.
- ...the bodies are not here now.
- No.
This is typical
of the mass graves that you see
in Kosovo, et cetera, the kind of...
Just all the bodies
thrown in together.
This speaks very much
to that clandestine,
kind of covert burial,
lack of respect
- and probably foul play.
- Yes, exactly.
A survivor
of this orgy of rape and murder
swims over to West Wallabi Island
to alert the soldiers.
I've come to West Wallabi
with an Abrolhos local,
known as Spags,
who's going to show me
a remarkable historical site.
This is the area
where Wiebbe Hayes,
the soldier, set up his camp.
One of the survivors
from over on the other island
managed to get over here
and warn Wiebbe Hayes
what had happened.
So that's when he started
fortifying things,
so that if they were attacked
they had a chance of surviving.
- And were they attacked?
- Yes, apparently they were. Yeah.
This is an extraordinary structure,
built one and a half centuries
before the British
established a colony in Australia.
Well, it was built in 1629,
so, yeah.
It's the oldest
European building in Australia.
Wiebbe came here to find water,
- did they find any?
- Yes
Which is lucky really
otherwise they were in trouble.
Cornelisz and his gang
then launched several attacks
on Wiebbe Hayes
and his loyalist soldiers.
Just then,
what should appear over the horizon
but a rescue ship!
Having made it to Java,
Pelsaert was ordered
to return to the Abrolhos
to rescue the survivors and cargo.
Pelsaert had arrived
in the rescue vessel, the Sardam,
and appeared on the scene,
right when the battle's taking place.
And so they obviously
all looked round
"My God, Pelsaert's here,"
or "the rescue vessel's here,"
"Let's go!"
And the mutineers
wanted to capture the rescue vessel
and Wiebbe Hayes wanted
to warn Pelsaert
what had happened.
It was a desperate boat race.
Wiebbe Hayes got there first
and the story goes on from there.
If Wiebbe Hayes
hadn't have got there first
we would have had another story.
So he's the real hero of the story.
Absolutely. About the only one
in the whole story.
Gang leader Cornelisz
was executed
on the Abrolhos by hanging.
Pelsaert returned to Java,
but his reputation was damaged
for abandoning his ship,
its cargo and his passengers,
and within a year,
had died of natural causes.
As for Wiebbe Hayes,
the Dutch East India Company
sent him back to Amsterdam
a wealthy man, an officer
and standard-bearer for the army.
So this story isn't really
about a shipwreck.
It's the classic tale
of good versus evil,
of a hero versus a villain,
and it culminated in a boat race,
the outcome of which decided the fate
of 140 people,
whether they lived or died
and whether this story
was ever going to be told.
Old tales, tall and true
along the Coral Coast
of Western Australia.
Coming to wild places like this,
makes me wonder,
what kind of people are drawn
to such an isolated setting?
And does this strip
of beach and ocean,
function as much as a test of mettle
as a playground?
Novelist and long-time
local Tim Winton
has written that West Coasters
live in the teeth of the wind
and that's a sentiment
that will chime with coastal dwellers
in many different parts of the world.
But maybe there's more to it
than that,
because you can detect in his words
just the hint of a challenge.
It's a proud declaration
of humankind's ability
to adapt to
and to overcome unruly weather.
Welcome to Wedge Island.
Well, not so much an island
as the tip of an isolated peninsula.
A shack community 3 hours south
of Geraldton
and happily far away
from everywhere else.
The locals first arrived as squatters
on crown land in the '30s.
During World War II,
government policy
was to move everyone off this coast,
in case of invasion,
and the shacks were used
for target practice.
Soon after,
the fishermen and farmers returned
to slap together their fishing
and holiday shacks
out of whatever was to hand,
in the best do-it-yourself tradition.
For example, Noddy White
and his 40-year-old pad.
- My humble abode.
- I love it.
- This is the first half.
- This suits me.
- Just this room. Just this room.
- Right, so this is the first bit?
Fantastic. And like you say,
you had to bring all this stuff.
Yes. Everything on trailers
over sand track.
Back then, off the highway,
it was a hard couple of hours drive
over 36 kilometres
of very rough tracks.
Now, it's 10 minutes
on a sealed road.
It's all recycled or second-hand
when it came here 40 years ago.
And some of this tin on there
would be over 100 years old.
No. Look at the electrics!
- Yes, we've got a few of those.
- Yeah.
The community, here...
I suppose to come into it
you'd have to be the sort of person
who can muck in
and get on with people.
There's always been
that togetherness,
you know, like, community.
And kids look after other kids.
You're never worried
about your kids up here.
You know, it's...
I want to be carried out of here.
I'll spend the rest of my days here.
There's room for all sorts here
on what is still crown land.
With no running water,
no mains electricity, no shops,
it's self-sufficient. Off the grid.
Maybe an expression of Australia's
anti-authority egalitarian spirit.
Hello.
- Hey, Neil. How are you, mate?
- Hey, Neil.
The scatter of 350 shacks
squat behind
another endless windswept beach.
Great for surfing,
although some locals
earn their living here, too,
such as cray fisherman Steven Dawe.
- How are you doing, Steven?
- G'day, mate.
- Any luck?
- Not that good.
- Not that good.
- Nah.
It's the worst we've done
for a while.
Really?
But still, there's probably 2,500
dollars' worth of crayfish there
- believe it or not.
- Really? What is it about crays?
Is that just the best thing
to go for here?
We've been into it for years,
my old man was a fisherman
and my uncle's a fisherman and--
And it's always the crayfish,
that's the thing to go for?
Yeah, well,
they're worth a lot of money.
The most valuable fish on the coast
just about.
This place, Wedge,
is your livelihood?
It is.
Where I'd be without it,
I don't know.
You guys have done that before,
haven't you?
While Steve and son
head off to market,
back in the community,
well, not much is happening.
Except for Steve's wife Helen,
who's busy
with a rather unique hobby.
What you doing, Helen?
Hello, just tanning
some skins. Fish skins?
- Fish skins?
- Yeah.
So, I've just taken them
out of the bath...
- What kind of skin is that?
- This was a dhufish.
- Right.
- So, that's one side of it.
It's weird.
- It's like rubber.
- Yeah, it feels a bit like rubber,
- very strong.
- Very strange, yeah.
- And it's a big--
- So you can--
- Come off a big animal.
- Yeah.
So what do you have to do to that
before it's usable?
I have to take all the scales off
and I do that by hand.
Just flicking them off,
which is a bit messy.
What can you make
fish leather into?
I've used it
to make a dress, once.
Really?
I had, like, black suede,
and it had leather panels
- down the side of it.
- Yeah.
Handbags, wallets.
So, I use the floor
because it's old jarrah.
- It nails in well.
- Okay.
Otherwise, I'd have to have
a wooden frame.
So, this is easy.
And whose shack is this
that we're nailing fish skins onto?
This is our shack, but this
is where our daughter sleeps.
What do you think it is
about this place?
I think probably to me it's very....
It's like a romantic freedom.
We enjoy
the best things in life, I think.
Like the best food,
the freshest food.
But at the same time,
life's really simple.
Retreating from the heat
of the land
or the noise of the city,
the shack-dwellers of Wedge Island,
have adapted to this magnificently
untamed strip of coast
with a loving hand
and a light footprint.
Red Bluff is a remote part
of the Coral Coast
130 kilometres north of Carnarvon.
Bizarrely, it was here
that 57 German seamen turned up
in a crowded lifeboat in 1941.
Throwing their weapons in the water,
they claimed they were responsible
for what is still
Australia's worst naval disaster.
I'm here to examine the mystery
that's shrouded those events
ever since.
1941, and Europe is consumed by war
on the ground, in the air and at sea.
In Australia, in February,
HMAS Sydney had returned a hero
after an illustrious campaign
in the Mediterranean.
Here's a story
of heroes' homecoming
after months
in the European war zone.
HMAS Sydney with her crew complete.
But in all the actions
which she fought,
not a single casualty was sudden.
The Sydney and her 645 sailors
were now to be deployed
on the seemingly safer mission
of convoy-escort and home patrol.
But already, in Australian waters,
there were suspected Nazi raiders.
German war vessels
pretending to be harmless
merchant ships.
The HSK Kormoran,
under Captain Theodor Detmers,
had been in the Indian Ocean
for months,
armed and in disguise.
On the afternoon
of 19th November,
100 nautical miles
off the Western Australian coast,
the Sydney's Captain, Joseph Burnett
sighted what appeared to be
a merchant ship.
I'm gonna meet Wes Olson,
a train driver by day
and one of the great writers
and researchers on the subject,
so I can find out exactly
what happened out there at sea
that evening of November 1941.
- Hi, Wes.
- Hi, Neil.
How you doing?
I see you've come fully armed.
So, which is which?
Well, this model
represents HMAS Sydney.
Her main role is trade protection.
To protect merchant shipping
plying these waters.
Protecting this coastline.
And this model
represents HSK Kormoran.
Kormoran's job
is to sink those merchant ships.
She's loaded with mines,
and well-armed.
But nothing like Sydney.
- She's a warship.
- Yes.
Sydney carries eight six-inch guns
mounted in the four turrets.
Kormoran's broadside
is only four 5.9-inch guns.
So, one here, one in the hold there,
another one in the hold there,
another one under this flap there.
Right, so they're in disguise.
They're--
Before the battle,
those flaps are down.
If you turn the ship over,
- the other side.
- Right.
That's how
she would have appeared to Sydney
before the Germans declared identity.
To all intents and purposes,
she looks like
a harmless merchant ship.
- But she's anything but.
- That's right.
Then, Sydney's Captain Burnett
signals the Kormoran
to identity itself.
The German ship turns away
and claims to be a merchant ship.
With no guns in sight
on the Kormoran,
Burnett is left guessing.
According to his shipping plot,
there shouldn't be any ship
in the area,
so he has to be extremely suspicious.
It appears to be a bogus ship
claiming the identity
of another ship.
It can only be two things.
A raider,
or possibly the raider's supply ship.
But Detmers
had an ace up his sleeve.
He would have known that Burnett
had to identify his vessel.
If he'd tipped his hand
by opening fire,
even at extreme range
or moderate range,
he's telling Burnett,
the enemy ship, what he is, a raider.
But he didn't do that.
He kept his nerve...
Burnett is under instruction
from Britain
to board raider or supply vessels,
so he continues to move in closer.
A fatal error of judgment.
The Kormoran is no match
for the Sydney.
Detmers knows one way or another
that he has already lost his ship.
It's life and death
for the Kormoran.
They've got 360 contact mines
on board.
Another 30 magnetic mines.
Just one shell in there,
even if it's six-inch, four-inch,
doesn't matter.
One shell and it's goodbye.
He waited until Sydney
got to such a position
that he could use all his weapons
to maximum advantage.
Do you think Burnett assumed
that the Kormoran either would not
or simply could not open fire?
We would have to assume that.
Finally, the Kormoran
raises her Nazi flag
and fires on Sydney
with everything she's got.
Critically the first hits
are on Sydney's bridge.
The director control tower,
it's the nerve centre.
Control of the gunnery.
So, everything's lost
in those first few seconds
of the battle.
Captain Burnett
and his senior officers are killed.
Are we talking minutes
before the Sydney
is so badly damaged?
We're looking
at three to four minutes.
Devastated though Sydney is,
she has nonetheless
done enough damage to Kormoran
to finish her as well?
She got in some hits,
some critical hits.
Caused a fire,
so that effectively stopped Kormoran,
but she did not get that lucky hit.
She didn't get the mines.
Detmers' tactics had won.
So, he first of all
out-thought Burnett,
- and then he out-gunned him.
- That's right.
As the Kormoran sinks,
the Germans take to the lifeboats,
and most survive.
But the Sydney goes down
with all 645 sailors lost.
And why does no-one get off
of Sydney alive?
I mean, there's lifeboats...
The upper decks have been swept
with shellfire, cannon-fire...
Most of those boats
have been damaged in the battle.
Back on the mainland,
the first people knew
of this terrible battle
was when five Germans lifeboats
were picked up at sea.
Two other lifeboats
reached this coast.
One at Red Bluff.
Three hundred and fifteen
Germans survived,
but theirs was the only account
of the battle.
The Australian government
was slow to announce the disaster
and refused to release details
of the German account
for another 16 years.
With no corroborative information,
there was a suspicion of deception...
that lingered for decades.
Conspiracy theories
and hoaxes flourished,
until 2008,
when both wrecks were discovered
and surveyed,
proving the original German story.
That's it. That's HMAS Sydney.
The wrecks lie off this coast,
80 nautical miles or so
in that direction,
and they're under two-and-a-half
kilometres of water.
No human being can dive so deep.
So the wreck site is inaccessible
to the loved ones of the lost men.
These haunting images tell
of Sydney's final moments.
While those aboard desperately fought
to save her,
her bow was hit by a torpedo
and broke off.
It was a catastrophic end.
Sydney now lies deep
on the ocean floor...
silent and alone with her ghosts.
At the western-most tip
of Shark Bay,
one island stretches out
with a curious history.
In 1616,
Dutch Captain Dirk Hartog
was the first European
to set foot in Western Australia.
He left an engraved pewter plate
on this island,
which now bears his name,
and then carried on north
to the Spice Islands.
80 years later,
Flemish Captain Willem de Vlamingh
passed by
and replaced the plate
with one of his own.
The French then annexed the island
in 1772,
marked by a couple of coins.
But for all that,
no Europeans took root
in Western Australia
until Major Edmund Lockyer
claimed it for the British in 1826.
Aboriginal history in Shark Bay
dates back 30,000 years,
but a unique life form has lived
in these waters continuously
for billions of years.
Palaeontologist
Professor Tim Flannery
investigates what makes
this World Heritage site
so very important to all of us.
It hardly ever rains,
and the summer heat can be extreme,
but Shark Bay is a site
of international historical
and ecological significance.
And it all boils down to salt.
This water's as warm as a bath.
And it's intolerably salty.
That makes it a hostile environment
for most living things,
but there's one thing
that thrives here.
These black rocks.
Well, they aren't really rocks.
They're some of the most primitive
living things on the planet.
They're called "stromatolites".
And, in effect,
they're living fossils.
I'm meeting Dave Holley,
who looks after
the Shark Bay Marine Park,
to learn more.
Well, they look a bit like a cross
between a cauliflower and a rock.
And if we have a look at one
you can see a dome
on a bit of a column, basically.
So they're quite unique-looking.
What actually creates them?
It's a really simple
life-form. It's called "archaea",
and it's been around
for billions of years.
Three-and-a-half
billion years, in fact.
Evolutionary life
began with colonies of bacteria,
like the ones
that created these stromatolites.
Basically, what happens is
this organism binds sediment
in the water and creates a mucus.
This mucus traps the sediment,
and a reaction occurs
with the super salty water
and it creates a limestone.
So, over time, it creates this layer
called a stromatolite.
And you can really see
- that algal layer there, now.
- Yeah.
- Trapping that sediment within it.
- Yes.
Binding it and creating those layers
which build up.
- Yeah.
- Over time.
So, for billions of years
these things dominated the planet,
and yet today we can only find them
in a couple of places.
So, what's so special
about Shark Bay?
Shark Bay in Hamlin Pool,
where we're standing now,
is critical because of that
super salty water.
A sill or barrier in the bay,
coupled with a hot, dry climate
and shallow waters,
mean that the evaporation rate
is very high.
The resulting hypersaline water
is twice as salty as the sea.
What happens is that
predators which would normally graze
upon the organisms
within the stromatolites,
can't stand that super salty water.
So that allows the stromatolites
to grow and develop.
For three-quarters
of the earth's history,
the only creatures
that were building reefs
in the world's oceans
were the stromatolites.
And as they built,
they produced a peculiar by-product.
One that we can all be thankful for.
See the bubbles coming off it?
- Is that oxygen?
- Yeah.
That's still slimy,
so it's alive.
Yep, yep.
Three billion years ago,
the earth's atmosphere
was about one percent oxygen.
So, not much.
And they produce oxygen.
So, the air we breathe today,
which is around about 20,
21 percent oxygen,
is as a result of these structures
pumping oxygen into the atmosphere
over many millions
and billions of years.
They're sort of the model,
aren't they?
That scientists use
when they think about searching
- for life on other planets.
- Absolutely.
I mean, you know,
if the conditions were right,
such as they were here
three billion years ago,
and we found structures like this,
then there'd be a good chance life,
at some point, would follow.
Incredible to think
what a little more salt in the water
can do...
We're on the Coral Coast
of Western Australia.
900 kilometres north of Perth,
the town of Carnarvon was founded
in 1883
as the supply centre
for the Gascoyne region's
growing wool trade.
But the success
of inland pastoral stations
and the survival of communities
along this coast
was severely threatened
by extreme isolation, and huge tides.
So I'm off to find out how the locals
set about tackling this serious
coastal obstacle.
The solution was simple, but grand.
A one-mile jetty
that goes so far out to sea,
ships could berth.
Seven years in the building,
the Carnarvon Jetty
was completed in 1897
and it was an instant hit.
Heavily-laden, horse-drawn wagons
travelled up and down the length
of the jetty
to meet the waiting ships.
For a while,
they were even in the habit
of hoisting sails on the wagons
to catch the wind
and make the journey even quicker.
And then finally,
railway technology arrived,
the tracks and locomotives
to pull the wagons full of cargo.
But getting the cargo to the jetty
was another challenge
that inspired an ingenious solution.
Cameleers, mainly from Pakistan,
were the first to organize
a commercial transport system
from the sheep stations to the jetty.
Because horse and oxen
were completely unsuited
to the heat and to the terrain.
But the camels lapped it up.
Carnarvon quickly became
Australia's third biggest wool port.
By the 1920s, motorized vehicles
had replaced the Gascoyne's
camel teams,
with little trace of it
left in the town now.
But today,
it's a jaunty little tourist train
that runs the one-mile dash.
Encapsulating the jetty's stretch
of history
is lawyer, entrepreneur,
and local councillor Lex Fullerton.
Was the jetty good to your family?
Absolutely.
Legend has it
that my uncle, Burton Fitzpatrick,
had his wool going out
one way off to London,
but the return journey
brought the greatest bounty of all,
single malt Scotch whiskey.
And legend has it that he had a bath
on his veranda at Dory creek
some 100 miles east of here,
and he filled it
with single malt Scotch whiskey
- and bathed in it.
- Bathed in it.
Road transportation
killed off the jetty in 1984,
but history may repeat itself.
What I'm looking forward to
is Carnarvon continuing its place
in the maritime map
in the construction of the new jetty,
which was promised in 1946.
So, you're still holding out
for that hope.
When the new jetty is constructed,
it will put Carnarvon
back in its rightful place
of being the port for the Gascoyne.
Heading north,
the arid Cape Range National Park,
is a spectacularly-coloured vista
of rugged limestone ridges,
plateaus and canyons
that roll into the Indian Ocean.
But not all is as it seems,
as Marine Ecologist,
Dr. Emma Johnston discovers
in Yardie Creek Gorge.
Right over the dunes, here,
is the Ningaloo Marine Park,
and at my feet, a coral skeleton,
evidence of an ancient coral reef
that grew here
some 100,000 years ago.
Cape Range gorges,
like Yardie Creek,
were formed 20 million years ago
by layers of ancient marine life.
And across the sand bar,
in its more familiar
underwater setting,
is a living reef.
The magnificent Ningaloo Marine Park.
A fringing reef, which differs
from the Great Barrier Reef
in that it hugs the shoreline,
meaning you can actually
walk out to it.
The largest fringing reef
in Australia
grows right here,
literally within arm's reach.
See those dark patches in the water?
That's the growing reef.
And it stretches from here
nearly 300 kilometres to the south.
The Leeuwin Current,
a wide ribbon of warm water
from the north,
allows the coral to flourish
at Ningaloo.
And the Range's low rainfall
means little run-off
to cloud the crystal-clear water.
It's a wonderland
of tropical reef fish
and a particular giant of the ocean
that's nearly as old
as some of this coral seascape.
A fish with an ancestry
that dates back 60 million years,
which I have to travel out
a little further to see.
I'm hoping to get up close
and personal
with the largest fish in the world.
Not just the largest fish,
the largest shark,
and I'm really excited.
I've never done this before.
- Hello.
- Hi, Emma. Welcome.
- Hey, how you doing?
- Good, thank you.
I'm joining
fellow marine biologist
Dr. Mark Meekan,
who's been studying
the mysterious whale shark
for more than a decade.
- Hey, Mark.
- Hey, Em.
- How are you doing?
- Good thanks.
- Good to see you.
- Yeah, good to see you.
Whale sharks are probably
one of the better-known sharks
in the ocean,
but in fact, we know very little
about them, really.
We have no real idea
where these things are going.
We haven't closed
the migration loop yet.
So, we're gonna head over there.
What are we gonna do when we find it?
Well, we're gonna jump in the water
and the first thing, hopefully,
you're gonna do is take a photo.
Okay, what do I need
to take a photograph of?
Well, you're gonna take a photo
of the spot and stripe patterns
just behind the gills
and just forward of the dorsal.
Now, we've looked at those
over the years and we can show
that they're individual
to each animal.
So, effectively,
we can tell who's who.
They've got a fingerprint
on the outside
and I can just take a shot... Okay.
- Exactly.
- All right.
And we keep a library of those,
we compare those fingerprints later,
and we can see
if we've seen that shark before.
Do you see many of them come back?
About 25 percent of them
come back every year.
Ningaloo isn't the only place
that whale sharks
gather around the Indian Ocean.
In fact, there's aggregations
in the Maldives,
in the Seychelles,
in Mozambique, in India,
parts of Oman. Places like that.
With a whale shark spotted,
we jump in and head to our position.
And then...
out of the blue, a shadow looms.
My first sight of a whale shark,
with its retinue of remora fish,
moving languidly through its domain.
It's an incredible animal,
about eight metres long,
mouth open to feed on plankton.
There are strict rules
about how close
tourists can get to whale sharks.
As a scientist,
Mark has a special permit
to approach the shark as required.
I take some photos,
and Mark moves in
to take a skin sample.
You know, here at Ningaloo,
we treat these sharks very well
but they go into the waters
of Southeast Asia
where people see them
in a completely different light.
They don't see them
as an Eco-Tourism resource,
they see them as a meal.
So, the whale sharks
are hunted for food?
Absolutely.
In fact, they're called tofu fish.
Because they cook up
at about the consistency of tofu
believe or not.
The other thing they do with them
is they use their fins
for advertising, if you like.
They hang them outside of restaurants
as hoardings
to show that they're actually
selling shark fin soup.
And then, an incredible sight.
I watch as Mark moves right up
to the fish
and scrapes off parasitic copepods
from its lips
and catches them in his net.
Copepods are little crustacea
that attach to the shark
and chew into its skin.
The shark has no way
of ridding itself
of the painful irritants.
Mark's action is so welcome,
that the shark effectively,
stops dead
to have its lips brushed clean.
And then follows us
for more brushing.
If you had a microscope,
you could see
the little pointy, sharp legs
that basically hang, cling
to the surface of the shark.
And their mouth parts
basically chew away at the skin
and create a little bloody sore.
You'll get this sort of
irritated patch of skin on the shark,
and so it's really no surprise
that when you actually
start taking them off,
the shark likes it.
Mark takes
one final look underneath,
and we say goodbye.
Skin samples, electronic tags
and photo identification
will improve our knowledge
of whale shark movements
so that we can engage
the relevant governments
around the world
with the long term aim
of protecting this mysterious giant
of the ocean.
While whale sharks
wander the world's oceans,
some other senior nomads
prefer more terrestrial adventures.
We've been coming here for 22 years.
When autumn leaves turn gold
in the southern half of Australia,
caravans are dusted off,
fishing rods are loaded up
and so begins
the annual pilgrimage north
for some senior adventurers.
Brendan Moar drops in
on Australia's peripatetic
Grey Nomads
basking in the Coral Coast's
winter sun.
You know, a funny thing
about the Australian coastline,
no matter how remote
or how isolated it is,
there is something you can count on.
There will always be
a caravan park there.
Yes, even out here,
on the tip of the North West Cape
near the town of Exmouth,
which itself
is 1,200 kilometres north of Perth
and 3,000 kilometres from Darwin.
Where the desert crashes
into the sea,
tucked below the
Vlamingh Head lighthouse,
is the ultimate escape
from the big smoke
to the red dust.
Natasha Tate
and her husband run the place.
So, who was rolling up
in 1984 and staying here?
Well, I think that's when
our little secret started to get out,
that this was a magical piece
of the coastline
that people could come and hide on
for a few months of the year
and get away from it all.
So, we've had a few grey nomads
that started then
that are still coming today.
We're John and Leslie
and we've been coming here
about nine years, since I retired.
I'll say who we are,
where we're from.
You can say why you come here.
I'm John. My wife Dorothy,
and we've been coming up here
since 1998.
- My name's Chris.
- I'm Bill.
We've been coming here for 22 years.
- And we come from Perth.
- Perth.
- Every year.
- Every year.
We're that isolated
that we don't get any TV,
we don't get any telephone,
internet services,
or even mobile services.
Power comes
17 kilometres down the road
from Exmouth.
With just five inches of rain a year,
all water has to be pumped
from the artesian basin below,
desalinated, and filtered clean
of iron and calcium.
Grey Nomads have been in my life
for as long as I can remember.
I've been bought up
on caravan parks, obviously,
so from when I was two years old,
you know,
you'd still find grey nomads around
that would remember me
in a nappy.
Unfortunately.
Such as the park's
veteran guests,
Norm and Jean Beauchamp,
from Busselton south of Perth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home?
Yeah, come in
if you're good looking.
Well, I am.
They've been coming here
for 30 years.
- How do you do?
- Man, you guys have got
the life of Riley, here, haven't you?
Yeah, well, somebody's gotta do it,
haven't they?
We were going to Darwin.
And we come to the crossroads.
"Either come back here
or go to Darwin."
I said to Jean,
"Do you really want to go to Darwin?"
She said, "No, I don't."
I said, "Good."
- Go back to Exmouth.
- We came back here.
And done some more fishing.
That's the first time we'd seen...
They were catching queenies,
because there was a lot of baitfish.
And it's the first time
we had seen big fish
caught off the beach.
So, that's what brought us here.
Just over the dunes
from the caravan park,
the beach stretches forever.
But Norm and Jean
have their secret spots.
- Yeah.
- I take it
- I go in the middle?
- Yeah.
Yeah?
So, without saying a word,
they know exactly what to do.
Where their spot is
and I'm just following in behind.
Through the wide part
of their legs.
Right through the...
So, you're ready to go with that one.
- Yeah, I'm ready to go.
- Reckon you can cast out?
It's been a while.
It's been a while.
A lot to learn.
Norm began working
as a teenager in the mining industry,
then a shearer,
and finally as a shire foreman.
Jean was a private secretary
for a mining CEO.
They have four children
and have been married for 60 years.
After just 10 minutes,
Norm hooks
a stunning fish of the day.
- This is a Bluebone.
- It's a Bluebone?
Yeah.
Gosh, it's a beautiful fish.
Well done.
It's just a little bit of paradise
that we enjoy
for six months of the year.
Fishing, relaxed atmosphere
and good friends.
Yes. Right.
Knock, knock.
the fish is going in?
Yes, right now.
This is a great little set up,
isn't it?
- Does us.
- Could you have imagined,
when you visited here
for the first time,
that you'd still be coming here
in 30 years' time?
No, we never thought
about getting old.
You just live the good life
every day.
It's that kind of place
where even time takes a break
and age is relative.
We still don't think we're old.
We'll say, "Who is that old person?"
We forget that we are.
You know, after spending
a day with the grey nomads,
I think I'm starting to get it.
Retirement, plus the open road,
plus this coast...
Well, it all adds up to a good life.
150 kilometres
south of Cape Range,
near the middle of Ningaloo Reef,
Coral Bay
is a blissfully peaceful stopover
along the wilder reaches
of this isolated coastline.
Now, I'm a stranger
in a strange land.
You might have noticed.
So, I can hardly come
all the way to Coral Bay
without having a wee nosey
at the coral.
But I'll admit
to a reticence about my venturing
beyond the golden sand,
into the crystal waters.
It's obvious, really. The wildlife.
A power-walking Perentie
sharing the beach is all right,
but beneath the waves,
the natives can be
a little more unfriendly.
- Hi.
- How are you going?
I'm just wondering,
is there anything out there
with big teeth?
No, no big teeth out there,
I'm afraid.
Look, the biggest species of shark
don't come in here.
You're saying the S-word.
I know, but they're not dangerous.
They're like big puppy dogs.
- Just like puppy dogs?
- Just like puppy dogs.
- I'll hold that thought.
- You'll be fine.
- You have fun.
- Bye.
So, this
is what I've been missing.
Australia at its wonderland best.
A kaleidoscope of reef fish,
coral, turtles
and who knows what lurking
in the blue beyond.
The Coral Coast is quite literally
the western frontier
of this continent.
And it's that sense of remoteness
that's the attraction for the people
who seek this area out.
And also, about the sheer scale
of the place.
You feel as if you can't
even scratch the surface,
because every corner you go round,
every bay you enter
seems to offer something
more fascinating,
more spectacular, more immense.
It's been a truly stunning
and memorable adventure,
yet I feel we've only just begun
to experience
this distinctive island nation.
To meet its people,
discover their history and stories
about living along a vast, ancient
and diverse coastline.
How they've shaped each other
into this great southern land...
called Australia.
biggest expedition ever.
We've come to Australia.
A country so dramatically defined
by its ancient and diverse coastline.
With stories of a resourceful people
shaped by the tyranny of distance
and the extremes of climate
and scale.
There's been a rich
coastal culture here
for at least the last 50,000 years.
The true marvel of this coast
is its power to inspire
the imagination.
Any wonder that most Australians
choose to live along
their dazzling coastline
and revel in its infinite horizons.
I'm on the cusp
of West Australia's wild,
remote, and famously wind-ruled
coral coast.
It's a coastline that's blessed
with outrageously beautiful
natural wonders
but peel beneath
the picture-perfect façade,
and I'm told it also harbours
some very dark secrets.
Joining me
on this splendid adventure,
Dr. Xanthe Mallet investigates
the first European tragedy
on Australian soil in 1629.
So all of this was the mass grave.
3-billion-year old life
with Professor Tim Flannery.
These black rocks,
they're not just rocks.
They're some of the oldest
living things on our planet.
Dr. Emma Johnston,
up close
with a 60-million-year-old fish.
And I'm tracing the mystery
of a lost Australian battleship.
And why does no-one
get off of Sydney alive?
This is Coast Australia.
In this episode,
our journey runs
from Wedge Island in the south,
across to the
Houtman Abrolhos Islands,
up to Shark Bay, Carnarvon,
and the remote North West Cape.
Sixty kilometres off the coast
of Geraldton,
the Houtman Abrolhos
are a cluster of 122 islands.
Named after a 17th Century
Dutch explorer, Frederick de Houtman,
their featureless isolation
has deterred all
but a hardy community
of cray fishermen,
and the occasional yachting tourist.
Historically, though,
the Abrolhos are known
for a bizarre tale
of murder and madness.
- Jeff. Hello.
- Hi, Xanthe. Welcome.
Anthropologist
Dr. Xanthe Mallet
is starting out from Geraldton
to investigate a macabre tale
of three men and a bloodbath,
that took place 140 years
before Captain Cook first set eyes
on Australia.
400 years ago,
the spice trade
was the resources boom of the time.
The Dutch East India Company,
was the most wealthy and powerful
institution in the world.
Thanks to its control
of the legendary Spice Islands,
in modern day Indonesia.
In 1628, the Company's
newly-commissioned Batavia
set sail from Holland
to its eastern headquarters in Java.
By June 1629,
it was sailing off the coast
of Western Australia
when disaster struck.
The Batavia hit a reef
and was wrecked with 40 lives lost.
Another 280 made it to land,
mostly here,
on the Abrolhos's Beacon Island.
Enter our first character,
Commodore Francisco Pelsaert.
Having survived the loss of his ship,
Pelsaert now faces the grim reality
of a barren outcrop
with no fresh water
for his marooned charge
of soldiers, men, women and children.
He had to act quickly.
Cast off forward.
Let's have the jib up.
Okay, we've just got a gentle breeze.
With 48 desperate passengers
in a longboat exactly like this one,
Pelsaert heads out
in search of water,
or so he claims.
I'm with modern day
mariner, Jeff Brooks,
a Geraldton local and guardian
of this historical replica.
You know the story
of Pelsaert as well as anybody.
What do you think his thoughts were
as he rowed off, you know,
into the distance
leaving all of those people?
On that island?
There's a lot written about it.
They were saving their skins.
They were.
- Do you think?
- Absolutely.
If you're going sailing
to the mainland to look for water
which is what they were doing,
why would you take 48 people.
The boat was already overloaded.
Be that as it may,
they make an epic
1700-kilometre journey to Java
in terrible conditions.
They were at sea
for quite a long time.
Yeah, 30 days roughly.
That's a long time to be here,
isn't it?
Yes, not a lot of privacy.
Not a lot of comfort,
a lot of salt water boils,
and the boat would have leaked,
because all boats
at that time leaked.
But that was nothing
compared to what was happening
back on the islands.
With no water and little food,
the second man in this story,
Jeronimus Cornelisz,
steps up
and begins a reign of terror.
I've come to Beacon Island
to piece together a gruesome jigsaw
with the help of Jeremy Green,
a leading Maritime Archaeologist
who pioneered excavations
of the Batavia wreck,
and has been studying its history
for 40 years.
Jeronimus Cornelisz,
who is the really baddie,
baddie person in this whole story,
came late off the vessel.
And he was then
the most senior person.
And he had been involved
in this fomenting mutiny
that was taking place
before they were wrecked.
What was the mutineers' plan?
I think what they were concerned
that the food would run out,
so they wanted to reduce
the number of people.
What happened in the beginning
is they had a lot of sick people,
and people who were weak
and not able to do anything.
They were killed and buried
rather quickly and clandestinely.
They then had another problem,
the mutineers,
is they had a group of soldiers.
And the soldiers were extremely
well organised,
they were well armed,
and they, for the mutineers,
they were a real nightmare
because, you know,
they were not likely to be able
to overpower them.
The biggest challenge
for the mutineers was their leader,
a young, determined soldier
named Wiebbe Hayes.
Our third, and final character.
With covert killings underway,
somehow, Cornelisz
manages to disarm and dispatch
Wiebbe Hayes and his soldiers
to West Wallabi Island,
ostensibly to look for water.
Was the hope that they
would actually die over there?
Yes, that was the general idea.
After that happened they then started
to openly kill people.
So people who didn't
behave themselves were killed.
In a grisly bout
of medieval Hunger Games,
throats are slit, skulls bashed in.
One hundred and fifteen people,
brutally murdered
by Cornelisz and his mutineers.
In 1994, Jeremy started excavating,
and uncovered graves.
Previous graves were found
and then we found this mass grave.
There was a pit, which I suppose...
Well, you can see
from that thing there.
This hole, here, would have been
about three metres in diameter.
Right. So, all of this
- was the mass graves, but...
- Yeah.
- ...the bodies are not here now.
- No.
This is typical
of the mass graves that you see
in Kosovo, et cetera, the kind of...
Just all the bodies
thrown in together.
This speaks very much
to that clandestine,
kind of covert burial,
lack of respect
- and probably foul play.
- Yes, exactly.
A survivor
of this orgy of rape and murder
swims over to West Wallabi Island
to alert the soldiers.
I've come to West Wallabi
with an Abrolhos local,
known as Spags,
who's going to show me
a remarkable historical site.
This is the area
where Wiebbe Hayes,
the soldier, set up his camp.
One of the survivors
from over on the other island
managed to get over here
and warn Wiebbe Hayes
what had happened.
So that's when he started
fortifying things,
so that if they were attacked
they had a chance of surviving.
- And were they attacked?
- Yes, apparently they were. Yeah.
This is an extraordinary structure,
built one and a half centuries
before the British
established a colony in Australia.
Well, it was built in 1629,
so, yeah.
It's the oldest
European building in Australia.
Wiebbe came here to find water,
- did they find any?
- Yes
Which is lucky really
otherwise they were in trouble.
Cornelisz and his gang
then launched several attacks
on Wiebbe Hayes
and his loyalist soldiers.
Just then,
what should appear over the horizon
but a rescue ship!
Having made it to Java,
Pelsaert was ordered
to return to the Abrolhos
to rescue the survivors and cargo.
Pelsaert had arrived
in the rescue vessel, the Sardam,
and appeared on the scene,
right when the battle's taking place.
And so they obviously
all looked round
"My God, Pelsaert's here,"
or "the rescue vessel's here,"
"Let's go!"
And the mutineers
wanted to capture the rescue vessel
and Wiebbe Hayes wanted
to warn Pelsaert
what had happened.
It was a desperate boat race.
Wiebbe Hayes got there first
and the story goes on from there.
If Wiebbe Hayes
hadn't have got there first
we would have had another story.
So he's the real hero of the story.
Absolutely. About the only one
in the whole story.
Gang leader Cornelisz
was executed
on the Abrolhos by hanging.
Pelsaert returned to Java,
but his reputation was damaged
for abandoning his ship,
its cargo and his passengers,
and within a year,
had died of natural causes.
As for Wiebbe Hayes,
the Dutch East India Company
sent him back to Amsterdam
a wealthy man, an officer
and standard-bearer for the army.
So this story isn't really
about a shipwreck.
It's the classic tale
of good versus evil,
of a hero versus a villain,
and it culminated in a boat race,
the outcome of which decided the fate
of 140 people,
whether they lived or died
and whether this story
was ever going to be told.
Old tales, tall and true
along the Coral Coast
of Western Australia.
Coming to wild places like this,
makes me wonder,
what kind of people are drawn
to such an isolated setting?
And does this strip
of beach and ocean,
function as much as a test of mettle
as a playground?
Novelist and long-time
local Tim Winton
has written that West Coasters
live in the teeth of the wind
and that's a sentiment
that will chime with coastal dwellers
in many different parts of the world.
But maybe there's more to it
than that,
because you can detect in his words
just the hint of a challenge.
It's a proud declaration
of humankind's ability
to adapt to
and to overcome unruly weather.
Welcome to Wedge Island.
Well, not so much an island
as the tip of an isolated peninsula.
A shack community 3 hours south
of Geraldton
and happily far away
from everywhere else.
The locals first arrived as squatters
on crown land in the '30s.
During World War II,
government policy
was to move everyone off this coast,
in case of invasion,
and the shacks were used
for target practice.
Soon after,
the fishermen and farmers returned
to slap together their fishing
and holiday shacks
out of whatever was to hand,
in the best do-it-yourself tradition.
For example, Noddy White
and his 40-year-old pad.
- My humble abode.
- I love it.
- This is the first half.
- This suits me.
- Just this room. Just this room.
- Right, so this is the first bit?
Fantastic. And like you say,
you had to bring all this stuff.
Yes. Everything on trailers
over sand track.
Back then, off the highway,
it was a hard couple of hours drive
over 36 kilometres
of very rough tracks.
Now, it's 10 minutes
on a sealed road.
It's all recycled or second-hand
when it came here 40 years ago.
And some of this tin on there
would be over 100 years old.
No. Look at the electrics!
- Yes, we've got a few of those.
- Yeah.
The community, here...
I suppose to come into it
you'd have to be the sort of person
who can muck in
and get on with people.
There's always been
that togetherness,
you know, like, community.
And kids look after other kids.
You're never worried
about your kids up here.
You know, it's...
I want to be carried out of here.
I'll spend the rest of my days here.
There's room for all sorts here
on what is still crown land.
With no running water,
no mains electricity, no shops,
it's self-sufficient. Off the grid.
Maybe an expression of Australia's
anti-authority egalitarian spirit.
Hello.
- Hey, Neil. How are you, mate?
- Hey, Neil.
The scatter of 350 shacks
squat behind
another endless windswept beach.
Great for surfing,
although some locals
earn their living here, too,
such as cray fisherman Steven Dawe.
- How are you doing, Steven?
- G'day, mate.
- Any luck?
- Not that good.
- Not that good.
- Nah.
It's the worst we've done
for a while.
Really?
But still, there's probably 2,500
dollars' worth of crayfish there
- believe it or not.
- Really? What is it about crays?
Is that just the best thing
to go for here?
We've been into it for years,
my old man was a fisherman
and my uncle's a fisherman and--
And it's always the crayfish,
that's the thing to go for?
Yeah, well,
they're worth a lot of money.
The most valuable fish on the coast
just about.
This place, Wedge,
is your livelihood?
It is.
Where I'd be without it,
I don't know.
You guys have done that before,
haven't you?
While Steve and son
head off to market,
back in the community,
well, not much is happening.
Except for Steve's wife Helen,
who's busy
with a rather unique hobby.
What you doing, Helen?
Hello, just tanning
some skins. Fish skins?
- Fish skins?
- Yeah.
So, I've just taken them
out of the bath...
- What kind of skin is that?
- This was a dhufish.
- Right.
- So, that's one side of it.
It's weird.
- It's like rubber.
- Yeah, it feels a bit like rubber,
- very strong.
- Very strange, yeah.
- And it's a big--
- So you can--
- Come off a big animal.
- Yeah.
So what do you have to do to that
before it's usable?
I have to take all the scales off
and I do that by hand.
Just flicking them off,
which is a bit messy.
What can you make
fish leather into?
I've used it
to make a dress, once.
Really?
I had, like, black suede,
and it had leather panels
- down the side of it.
- Yeah.
Handbags, wallets.
So, I use the floor
because it's old jarrah.
- It nails in well.
- Okay.
Otherwise, I'd have to have
a wooden frame.
So, this is easy.
And whose shack is this
that we're nailing fish skins onto?
This is our shack, but this
is where our daughter sleeps.
What do you think it is
about this place?
I think probably to me it's very....
It's like a romantic freedom.
We enjoy
the best things in life, I think.
Like the best food,
the freshest food.
But at the same time,
life's really simple.
Retreating from the heat
of the land
or the noise of the city,
the shack-dwellers of Wedge Island,
have adapted to this magnificently
untamed strip of coast
with a loving hand
and a light footprint.
Red Bluff is a remote part
of the Coral Coast
130 kilometres north of Carnarvon.
Bizarrely, it was here
that 57 German seamen turned up
in a crowded lifeboat in 1941.
Throwing their weapons in the water,
they claimed they were responsible
for what is still
Australia's worst naval disaster.
I'm here to examine the mystery
that's shrouded those events
ever since.
1941, and Europe is consumed by war
on the ground, in the air and at sea.
In Australia, in February,
HMAS Sydney had returned a hero
after an illustrious campaign
in the Mediterranean.
Here's a story
of heroes' homecoming
after months
in the European war zone.
HMAS Sydney with her crew complete.
But in all the actions
which she fought,
not a single casualty was sudden.
The Sydney and her 645 sailors
were now to be deployed
on the seemingly safer mission
of convoy-escort and home patrol.
But already, in Australian waters,
there were suspected Nazi raiders.
German war vessels
pretending to be harmless
merchant ships.
The HSK Kormoran,
under Captain Theodor Detmers,
had been in the Indian Ocean
for months,
armed and in disguise.
On the afternoon
of 19th November,
100 nautical miles
off the Western Australian coast,
the Sydney's Captain, Joseph Burnett
sighted what appeared to be
a merchant ship.
I'm gonna meet Wes Olson,
a train driver by day
and one of the great writers
and researchers on the subject,
so I can find out exactly
what happened out there at sea
that evening of November 1941.
- Hi, Wes.
- Hi, Neil.
How you doing?
I see you've come fully armed.
So, which is which?
Well, this model
represents HMAS Sydney.
Her main role is trade protection.
To protect merchant shipping
plying these waters.
Protecting this coastline.
And this model
represents HSK Kormoran.
Kormoran's job
is to sink those merchant ships.
She's loaded with mines,
and well-armed.
But nothing like Sydney.
- She's a warship.
- Yes.
Sydney carries eight six-inch guns
mounted in the four turrets.
Kormoran's broadside
is only four 5.9-inch guns.
So, one here, one in the hold there,
another one in the hold there,
another one under this flap there.
Right, so they're in disguise.
They're--
Before the battle,
those flaps are down.
If you turn the ship over,
- the other side.
- Right.
That's how
she would have appeared to Sydney
before the Germans declared identity.
To all intents and purposes,
she looks like
a harmless merchant ship.
- But she's anything but.
- That's right.
Then, Sydney's Captain Burnett
signals the Kormoran
to identity itself.
The German ship turns away
and claims to be a merchant ship.
With no guns in sight
on the Kormoran,
Burnett is left guessing.
According to his shipping plot,
there shouldn't be any ship
in the area,
so he has to be extremely suspicious.
It appears to be a bogus ship
claiming the identity
of another ship.
It can only be two things.
A raider,
or possibly the raider's supply ship.
But Detmers
had an ace up his sleeve.
He would have known that Burnett
had to identify his vessel.
If he'd tipped his hand
by opening fire,
even at extreme range
or moderate range,
he's telling Burnett,
the enemy ship, what he is, a raider.
But he didn't do that.
He kept his nerve...
Burnett is under instruction
from Britain
to board raider or supply vessels,
so he continues to move in closer.
A fatal error of judgment.
The Kormoran is no match
for the Sydney.
Detmers knows one way or another
that he has already lost his ship.
It's life and death
for the Kormoran.
They've got 360 contact mines
on board.
Another 30 magnetic mines.
Just one shell in there,
even if it's six-inch, four-inch,
doesn't matter.
One shell and it's goodbye.
He waited until Sydney
got to such a position
that he could use all his weapons
to maximum advantage.
Do you think Burnett assumed
that the Kormoran either would not
or simply could not open fire?
We would have to assume that.
Finally, the Kormoran
raises her Nazi flag
and fires on Sydney
with everything she's got.
Critically the first hits
are on Sydney's bridge.
The director control tower,
it's the nerve centre.
Control of the gunnery.
So, everything's lost
in those first few seconds
of the battle.
Captain Burnett
and his senior officers are killed.
Are we talking minutes
before the Sydney
is so badly damaged?
We're looking
at three to four minutes.
Devastated though Sydney is,
she has nonetheless
done enough damage to Kormoran
to finish her as well?
She got in some hits,
some critical hits.
Caused a fire,
so that effectively stopped Kormoran,
but she did not get that lucky hit.
She didn't get the mines.
Detmers' tactics had won.
So, he first of all
out-thought Burnett,
- and then he out-gunned him.
- That's right.
As the Kormoran sinks,
the Germans take to the lifeboats,
and most survive.
But the Sydney goes down
with all 645 sailors lost.
And why does no-one get off
of Sydney alive?
I mean, there's lifeboats...
The upper decks have been swept
with shellfire, cannon-fire...
Most of those boats
have been damaged in the battle.
Back on the mainland,
the first people knew
of this terrible battle
was when five Germans lifeboats
were picked up at sea.
Two other lifeboats
reached this coast.
One at Red Bluff.
Three hundred and fifteen
Germans survived,
but theirs was the only account
of the battle.
The Australian government
was slow to announce the disaster
and refused to release details
of the German account
for another 16 years.
With no corroborative information,
there was a suspicion of deception...
that lingered for decades.
Conspiracy theories
and hoaxes flourished,
until 2008,
when both wrecks were discovered
and surveyed,
proving the original German story.
That's it. That's HMAS Sydney.
The wrecks lie off this coast,
80 nautical miles or so
in that direction,
and they're under two-and-a-half
kilometres of water.
No human being can dive so deep.
So the wreck site is inaccessible
to the loved ones of the lost men.
These haunting images tell
of Sydney's final moments.
While those aboard desperately fought
to save her,
her bow was hit by a torpedo
and broke off.
It was a catastrophic end.
Sydney now lies deep
on the ocean floor...
silent and alone with her ghosts.
At the western-most tip
of Shark Bay,
one island stretches out
with a curious history.
In 1616,
Dutch Captain Dirk Hartog
was the first European
to set foot in Western Australia.
He left an engraved pewter plate
on this island,
which now bears his name,
and then carried on north
to the Spice Islands.
80 years later,
Flemish Captain Willem de Vlamingh
passed by
and replaced the plate
with one of his own.
The French then annexed the island
in 1772,
marked by a couple of coins.
But for all that,
no Europeans took root
in Western Australia
until Major Edmund Lockyer
claimed it for the British in 1826.
Aboriginal history in Shark Bay
dates back 30,000 years,
but a unique life form has lived
in these waters continuously
for billions of years.
Palaeontologist
Professor Tim Flannery
investigates what makes
this World Heritage site
so very important to all of us.
It hardly ever rains,
and the summer heat can be extreme,
but Shark Bay is a site
of international historical
and ecological significance.
And it all boils down to salt.
This water's as warm as a bath.
And it's intolerably salty.
That makes it a hostile environment
for most living things,
but there's one thing
that thrives here.
These black rocks.
Well, they aren't really rocks.
They're some of the most primitive
living things on the planet.
They're called "stromatolites".
And, in effect,
they're living fossils.
I'm meeting Dave Holley,
who looks after
the Shark Bay Marine Park,
to learn more.
Well, they look a bit like a cross
between a cauliflower and a rock.
And if we have a look at one
you can see a dome
on a bit of a column, basically.
So they're quite unique-looking.
What actually creates them?
It's a really simple
life-form. It's called "archaea",
and it's been around
for billions of years.
Three-and-a-half
billion years, in fact.
Evolutionary life
began with colonies of bacteria,
like the ones
that created these stromatolites.
Basically, what happens is
this organism binds sediment
in the water and creates a mucus.
This mucus traps the sediment,
and a reaction occurs
with the super salty water
and it creates a limestone.
So, over time, it creates this layer
called a stromatolite.
And you can really see
- that algal layer there, now.
- Yeah.
- Trapping that sediment within it.
- Yes.
Binding it and creating those layers
which build up.
- Yeah.
- Over time.
So, for billions of years
these things dominated the planet,
and yet today we can only find them
in a couple of places.
So, what's so special
about Shark Bay?
Shark Bay in Hamlin Pool,
where we're standing now,
is critical because of that
super salty water.
A sill or barrier in the bay,
coupled with a hot, dry climate
and shallow waters,
mean that the evaporation rate
is very high.
The resulting hypersaline water
is twice as salty as the sea.
What happens is that
predators which would normally graze
upon the organisms
within the stromatolites,
can't stand that super salty water.
So that allows the stromatolites
to grow and develop.
For three-quarters
of the earth's history,
the only creatures
that were building reefs
in the world's oceans
were the stromatolites.
And as they built,
they produced a peculiar by-product.
One that we can all be thankful for.
See the bubbles coming off it?
- Is that oxygen?
- Yeah.
That's still slimy,
so it's alive.
Yep, yep.
Three billion years ago,
the earth's atmosphere
was about one percent oxygen.
So, not much.
And they produce oxygen.
So, the air we breathe today,
which is around about 20,
21 percent oxygen,
is as a result of these structures
pumping oxygen into the atmosphere
over many millions
and billions of years.
They're sort of the model,
aren't they?
That scientists use
when they think about searching
- for life on other planets.
- Absolutely.
I mean, you know,
if the conditions were right,
such as they were here
three billion years ago,
and we found structures like this,
then there'd be a good chance life,
at some point, would follow.
Incredible to think
what a little more salt in the water
can do...
We're on the Coral Coast
of Western Australia.
900 kilometres north of Perth,
the town of Carnarvon was founded
in 1883
as the supply centre
for the Gascoyne region's
growing wool trade.
But the success
of inland pastoral stations
and the survival of communities
along this coast
was severely threatened
by extreme isolation, and huge tides.
So I'm off to find out how the locals
set about tackling this serious
coastal obstacle.
The solution was simple, but grand.
A one-mile jetty
that goes so far out to sea,
ships could berth.
Seven years in the building,
the Carnarvon Jetty
was completed in 1897
and it was an instant hit.
Heavily-laden, horse-drawn wagons
travelled up and down the length
of the jetty
to meet the waiting ships.
For a while,
they were even in the habit
of hoisting sails on the wagons
to catch the wind
and make the journey even quicker.
And then finally,
railway technology arrived,
the tracks and locomotives
to pull the wagons full of cargo.
But getting the cargo to the jetty
was another challenge
that inspired an ingenious solution.
Cameleers, mainly from Pakistan,
were the first to organize
a commercial transport system
from the sheep stations to the jetty.
Because horse and oxen
were completely unsuited
to the heat and to the terrain.
But the camels lapped it up.
Carnarvon quickly became
Australia's third biggest wool port.
By the 1920s, motorized vehicles
had replaced the Gascoyne's
camel teams,
with little trace of it
left in the town now.
But today,
it's a jaunty little tourist train
that runs the one-mile dash.
Encapsulating the jetty's stretch
of history
is lawyer, entrepreneur,
and local councillor Lex Fullerton.
Was the jetty good to your family?
Absolutely.
Legend has it
that my uncle, Burton Fitzpatrick,
had his wool going out
one way off to London,
but the return journey
brought the greatest bounty of all,
single malt Scotch whiskey.
And legend has it that he had a bath
on his veranda at Dory creek
some 100 miles east of here,
and he filled it
with single malt Scotch whiskey
- and bathed in it.
- Bathed in it.
Road transportation
killed off the jetty in 1984,
but history may repeat itself.
What I'm looking forward to
is Carnarvon continuing its place
in the maritime map
in the construction of the new jetty,
which was promised in 1946.
So, you're still holding out
for that hope.
When the new jetty is constructed,
it will put Carnarvon
back in its rightful place
of being the port for the Gascoyne.
Heading north,
the arid Cape Range National Park,
is a spectacularly-coloured vista
of rugged limestone ridges,
plateaus and canyons
that roll into the Indian Ocean.
But not all is as it seems,
as Marine Ecologist,
Dr. Emma Johnston discovers
in Yardie Creek Gorge.
Right over the dunes, here,
is the Ningaloo Marine Park,
and at my feet, a coral skeleton,
evidence of an ancient coral reef
that grew here
some 100,000 years ago.
Cape Range gorges,
like Yardie Creek,
were formed 20 million years ago
by layers of ancient marine life.
And across the sand bar,
in its more familiar
underwater setting,
is a living reef.
The magnificent Ningaloo Marine Park.
A fringing reef, which differs
from the Great Barrier Reef
in that it hugs the shoreline,
meaning you can actually
walk out to it.
The largest fringing reef
in Australia
grows right here,
literally within arm's reach.
See those dark patches in the water?
That's the growing reef.
And it stretches from here
nearly 300 kilometres to the south.
The Leeuwin Current,
a wide ribbon of warm water
from the north,
allows the coral to flourish
at Ningaloo.
And the Range's low rainfall
means little run-off
to cloud the crystal-clear water.
It's a wonderland
of tropical reef fish
and a particular giant of the ocean
that's nearly as old
as some of this coral seascape.
A fish with an ancestry
that dates back 60 million years,
which I have to travel out
a little further to see.
I'm hoping to get up close
and personal
with the largest fish in the world.
Not just the largest fish,
the largest shark,
and I'm really excited.
I've never done this before.
- Hello.
- Hi, Emma. Welcome.
- Hey, how you doing?
- Good, thank you.
I'm joining
fellow marine biologist
Dr. Mark Meekan,
who's been studying
the mysterious whale shark
for more than a decade.
- Hey, Mark.
- Hey, Em.
- How are you doing?
- Good thanks.
- Good to see you.
- Yeah, good to see you.
Whale sharks are probably
one of the better-known sharks
in the ocean,
but in fact, we know very little
about them, really.
We have no real idea
where these things are going.
We haven't closed
the migration loop yet.
So, we're gonna head over there.
What are we gonna do when we find it?
Well, we're gonna jump in the water
and the first thing, hopefully,
you're gonna do is take a photo.
Okay, what do I need
to take a photograph of?
Well, you're gonna take a photo
of the spot and stripe patterns
just behind the gills
and just forward of the dorsal.
Now, we've looked at those
over the years and we can show
that they're individual
to each animal.
So, effectively,
we can tell who's who.
They've got a fingerprint
on the outside
and I can just take a shot... Okay.
- Exactly.
- All right.
And we keep a library of those,
we compare those fingerprints later,
and we can see
if we've seen that shark before.
Do you see many of them come back?
About 25 percent of them
come back every year.
Ningaloo isn't the only place
that whale sharks
gather around the Indian Ocean.
In fact, there's aggregations
in the Maldives,
in the Seychelles,
in Mozambique, in India,
parts of Oman. Places like that.
With a whale shark spotted,
we jump in and head to our position.
And then...
out of the blue, a shadow looms.
My first sight of a whale shark,
with its retinue of remora fish,
moving languidly through its domain.
It's an incredible animal,
about eight metres long,
mouth open to feed on plankton.
There are strict rules
about how close
tourists can get to whale sharks.
As a scientist,
Mark has a special permit
to approach the shark as required.
I take some photos,
and Mark moves in
to take a skin sample.
You know, here at Ningaloo,
we treat these sharks very well
but they go into the waters
of Southeast Asia
where people see them
in a completely different light.
They don't see them
as an Eco-Tourism resource,
they see them as a meal.
So, the whale sharks
are hunted for food?
Absolutely.
In fact, they're called tofu fish.
Because they cook up
at about the consistency of tofu
believe or not.
The other thing they do with them
is they use their fins
for advertising, if you like.
They hang them outside of restaurants
as hoardings
to show that they're actually
selling shark fin soup.
And then, an incredible sight.
I watch as Mark moves right up
to the fish
and scrapes off parasitic copepods
from its lips
and catches them in his net.
Copepods are little crustacea
that attach to the shark
and chew into its skin.
The shark has no way
of ridding itself
of the painful irritants.
Mark's action is so welcome,
that the shark effectively,
stops dead
to have its lips brushed clean.
And then follows us
for more brushing.
If you had a microscope,
you could see
the little pointy, sharp legs
that basically hang, cling
to the surface of the shark.
And their mouth parts
basically chew away at the skin
and create a little bloody sore.
You'll get this sort of
irritated patch of skin on the shark,
and so it's really no surprise
that when you actually
start taking them off,
the shark likes it.
Mark takes
one final look underneath,
and we say goodbye.
Skin samples, electronic tags
and photo identification
will improve our knowledge
of whale shark movements
so that we can engage
the relevant governments
around the world
with the long term aim
of protecting this mysterious giant
of the ocean.
While whale sharks
wander the world's oceans,
some other senior nomads
prefer more terrestrial adventures.
We've been coming here for 22 years.
When autumn leaves turn gold
in the southern half of Australia,
caravans are dusted off,
fishing rods are loaded up
and so begins
the annual pilgrimage north
for some senior adventurers.
Brendan Moar drops in
on Australia's peripatetic
Grey Nomads
basking in the Coral Coast's
winter sun.
You know, a funny thing
about the Australian coastline,
no matter how remote
or how isolated it is,
there is something you can count on.
There will always be
a caravan park there.
Yes, even out here,
on the tip of the North West Cape
near the town of Exmouth,
which itself
is 1,200 kilometres north of Perth
and 3,000 kilometres from Darwin.
Where the desert crashes
into the sea,
tucked below the
Vlamingh Head lighthouse,
is the ultimate escape
from the big smoke
to the red dust.
Natasha Tate
and her husband run the place.
So, who was rolling up
in 1984 and staying here?
Well, I think that's when
our little secret started to get out,
that this was a magical piece
of the coastline
that people could come and hide on
for a few months of the year
and get away from it all.
So, we've had a few grey nomads
that started then
that are still coming today.
We're John and Leslie
and we've been coming here
about nine years, since I retired.
I'll say who we are,
where we're from.
You can say why you come here.
I'm John. My wife Dorothy,
and we've been coming up here
since 1998.
- My name's Chris.
- I'm Bill.
We've been coming here for 22 years.
- And we come from Perth.
- Perth.
- Every year.
- Every year.
We're that isolated
that we don't get any TV,
we don't get any telephone,
internet services,
or even mobile services.
Power comes
17 kilometres down the road
from Exmouth.
With just five inches of rain a year,
all water has to be pumped
from the artesian basin below,
desalinated, and filtered clean
of iron and calcium.
Grey Nomads have been in my life
for as long as I can remember.
I've been bought up
on caravan parks, obviously,
so from when I was two years old,
you know,
you'd still find grey nomads around
that would remember me
in a nappy.
Unfortunately.
Such as the park's
veteran guests,
Norm and Jean Beauchamp,
from Busselton south of Perth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home?
Yeah, come in
if you're good looking.
Well, I am.
They've been coming here
for 30 years.
- How do you do?
- Man, you guys have got
the life of Riley, here, haven't you?
Yeah, well, somebody's gotta do it,
haven't they?
We were going to Darwin.
And we come to the crossroads.
"Either come back here
or go to Darwin."
I said to Jean,
"Do you really want to go to Darwin?"
She said, "No, I don't."
I said, "Good."
- Go back to Exmouth.
- We came back here.
And done some more fishing.
That's the first time we'd seen...
They were catching queenies,
because there was a lot of baitfish.
And it's the first time
we had seen big fish
caught off the beach.
So, that's what brought us here.
Just over the dunes
from the caravan park,
the beach stretches forever.
But Norm and Jean
have their secret spots.
- Yeah.
- I take it
- I go in the middle?
- Yeah.
Yeah?
So, without saying a word,
they know exactly what to do.
Where their spot is
and I'm just following in behind.
Through the wide part
of their legs.
Right through the...
So, you're ready to go with that one.
- Yeah, I'm ready to go.
- Reckon you can cast out?
It's been a while.
It's been a while.
A lot to learn.
Norm began working
as a teenager in the mining industry,
then a shearer,
and finally as a shire foreman.
Jean was a private secretary
for a mining CEO.
They have four children
and have been married for 60 years.
After just 10 minutes,
Norm hooks
a stunning fish of the day.
- This is a Bluebone.
- It's a Bluebone?
Yeah.
Gosh, it's a beautiful fish.
Well done.
It's just a little bit of paradise
that we enjoy
for six months of the year.
Fishing, relaxed atmosphere
and good friends.
Yes. Right.
Knock, knock.
the fish is going in?
Yes, right now.
This is a great little set up,
isn't it?
- Does us.
- Could you have imagined,
when you visited here
for the first time,
that you'd still be coming here
in 30 years' time?
No, we never thought
about getting old.
You just live the good life
every day.
It's that kind of place
where even time takes a break
and age is relative.
We still don't think we're old.
We'll say, "Who is that old person?"
We forget that we are.
You know, after spending
a day with the grey nomads,
I think I'm starting to get it.
Retirement, plus the open road,
plus this coast...
Well, it all adds up to a good life.
150 kilometres
south of Cape Range,
near the middle of Ningaloo Reef,
Coral Bay
is a blissfully peaceful stopover
along the wilder reaches
of this isolated coastline.
Now, I'm a stranger
in a strange land.
You might have noticed.
So, I can hardly come
all the way to Coral Bay
without having a wee nosey
at the coral.
But I'll admit
to a reticence about my venturing
beyond the golden sand,
into the crystal waters.
It's obvious, really. The wildlife.
A power-walking Perentie
sharing the beach is all right,
but beneath the waves,
the natives can be
a little more unfriendly.
- Hi.
- How are you going?
I'm just wondering,
is there anything out there
with big teeth?
No, no big teeth out there,
I'm afraid.
Look, the biggest species of shark
don't come in here.
You're saying the S-word.
I know, but they're not dangerous.
They're like big puppy dogs.
- Just like puppy dogs?
- Just like puppy dogs.
- I'll hold that thought.
- You'll be fine.
- You have fun.
- Bye.
So, this
is what I've been missing.
Australia at its wonderland best.
A kaleidoscope of reef fish,
coral, turtles
and who knows what lurking
in the blue beyond.
The Coral Coast is quite literally
the western frontier
of this continent.
And it's that sense of remoteness
that's the attraction for the people
who seek this area out.
And also, about the sheer scale
of the place.
You feel as if you can't
even scratch the surface,
because every corner you go round,
every bay you enter
seems to offer something
more fascinating,
more spectacular, more immense.
It's been a truly stunning
and memorable adventure,
yet I feel we've only just begun
to experience
this distinctive island nation.
To meet its people,
discover their history and stories
about living along a vast, ancient
and diverse coastline.
How they've shaped each other
into this great southern land...
called Australia.