Mutton Bird Island

Our next stop was Loch Ard Gorge. The shipwreck coast didn’t get its name for nothing. So many lives have lost when ships crashed amidst the wretched waves. The most famous story of all is perhaps the one when an iron-hulled clipper ship was lost in 1878 while sailing from England to Melbourne.

The ship has been caught in continuous fogs that left the captain thinking that he was some 50 miles out from the treacherous rocks and cliff along the southern Australian coast. He couldn’t be more wrong. The Loch Ard was dangerously close to those perilous rocks and it crashed Mutton Bird Island to the east of Port Campbell.