This event has ended.
The WA Museum Lectures returns this October with Aurora Philpin.
Aurora Philpin is currently the Assistant Curator, Department of Maritime Heritage, Western Australia Museum.
Wadjemup Kepawirn/The Rottnest Deepwater Scuttle Ground, is a collective archaeological site and home to many unwanted and unseaworthy vessels, scuttled there from the early 1900s. Vessels in the scuttling ground can be thematically grouped into the categories of coal hulks, steamships fisheries vessels, dredges, barges and defence. WA Museum maritime archaeologists have studied this site by both identifying the wrecks, and looking at the broader relevance of vessels in the scuttle ground in the context of the development of Fremantle and Western Australia.
Following reports of possible shipwrecks in the area from the 1980s, the first survey work of the scuttle ground was carried out by the WA Museum in the early 2000s. The initial magnetometer survey identified ten magnetic targets which were confirmed to be iron shipwrecks by the first team of technical divers. From the early 2000s, to today, new sites are still being identified thanks to the contribution of many different parties.
Located between 5 and 20 kilometres off the southwest of Rottnest Island, water depths in the scuttle ground range between 60m and 200m deep, well outside the limits of recreational diving. Due to the depth of the wrecks, a collaborative, multi-method approach is required to identify them. This approach requires remote sensing to find potential sites for technical diving group WreckSploration to dive and 3D model for their identification.
Doors open: 5PM
Talk starts: 6PM
Event concludes: 7PM
Free for LF Members, public $15.
Join us in Luis’ for a drink beforehand, and stay for dinner afterward—book a table HERE.