150 Years Underwater Home Hill Man Unveils Great Barrier Reef's Shipwreck Saga

A Home Hill cane farmer who was involved in the discovery of one of the Great Barrier Reef’s most horrific shipwrecks has revisited the tale almost 150 years on from her demise.

On the afternoon of Saturday, June 10, 1967, 17-year-old Peter Rubiolo joined two friends for a spot of spearfishing off Cape Upstart.

“They liked to go spearfishing so I went with them with a small dinghy so they could hop in, have a rest, take the fish off and reload the gun before going back over the side again,” Peter said.

“They were fishing along there and when the sharks would come up, they’d jump back in the dinghy until it quietened down again.

“This time around, they both got out, there were a few sharks around, and one of them had a look and spotted the clipper bow of a boat underwater.

“He went down with his spear and tapped steel on steel and heard that ringing sound, and he said, ‘Do you know there’s a wreck down there?’ and I said, ‘Not that we know of.’”

Over 18 months later, the shipwreck was identified as that of the SS Gothenburg, an iron-hulled sail- and steamship that was built in England in 1854.

The ship originally sailed between England and Sweden and then between Australia and New Zealand before she was rebuilt in 1873 and began operating in the Australian coastal trade.

The Gothenburg was chartered by the South Australian Government and regularly sailed between Adelaide and Port Darwin.

She had left Port Darwin on February 17, 1875, with a number of dignitaries and government officials onboard.

On the evening of February 24, 1875, the ship was heading south along Queensland’s east coast when it encountered cyclonic weather conditions.

The captain, Captain Robert George Augustus Pearce, altered the course of the Gothenburg when it struck a reef.

After attempts by the passengers and crew to lighten her load and float free of the reef, the ship eventually went down.

22 people survived the wreck while up to 112 are believed to have been killed.

It wasn’t until Peter and his mates went fishing that fateful day, over 92 years later, that the Gothenburg was rediscovered.

“We discovered the wreck on Saturday afternoon and on Sunday the boys went out spearfishing again, went a bit further north and found an anchor and chain with nothing on the end of it,” Peter said.

“There was no name on the bow – over a period of time, it would’ve come off – so how we identified it was by the government arrows on the porthole.”

The Member for Bowen at the time was Peter Delamothe, a history buff himself, who directed Peter and his friends to Brisbane based shipwreck historian Commander Norman Pixley.

Commander Pixley used markings on the porthole and the coordinates of where the shipwreck was found to identify it as the SS Gothenburg a year and a half after it was discovered.

“He worked it back to that era and that’s how we came up with the Gothenburg,” Peter said.

Since the discovery, Peter dived the Gothenburg himself and even still owns a porthole retrieved from the wreck.

“It was nothing out of the ordinary at the time,” Peter said.

“After that, I went and got some scuba gear and dived it myself a few times.

“We weren’t out looking for a wreck, we were just spearfishing along when we came across it.”

Today, the Gothenburg is a protected wreck and provides food and shelter for a variety of marine life including soft and hard corals, anemones, clownfish, coral trout, cods, sea perch, black tip reef sharks and other reef fish.

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Caption 1: Peter Rubiolo with a porthole retrieved from the wreck of the SS Gothenburg. Photo credit: Sam Gillespie

Caption 2: SS Gothenburg docked at Port Adelaide wharf in 1873. Photo supplied: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Caption 3: The stern of the SS Gothenburg shipwreck. Photo supplied: Dive into History – Queensland Shipwrecks, Department of Environment and Science

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