Tim the Yowie Man discovers the relics from the 1870 wreck of the Walter Hood near North Bendalong, NSW.
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00:00 [Music]
00:03 Back in April 1870, during a terrible storm,
00:07 the Walter Hood was wrecked on rocks not far behind me.
00:12 Sadly, 13 people lost their lives.
00:16 Ever since then, which is over 150 years ago,
00:19 beachcombers who have walked along the beach here and up through the sand
00:24 have uncovered artefacts from the wreck.
00:26 Artefacts such as bolts, slivers of wood and even bottles.
00:31 Now, one man who's become quite obsessed with the wreck of the Walter Hood is Alan Moore.
00:36 He's got a beach home not far from here
00:39 and he loves to come out and see what he can find in the sand.
00:42 He's even written a book on the wreck of the Walter Hood.
00:46 But not only has he written a book, he also has a gallery.
00:49 Yes, a gallery in his own beach home here,
00:52 in the stairwell and crammed into cupboards.
00:54 Lots of items that he managed to find on the beach here from the Walter Hood.
01:00 Amongst those, not on display, but out the back,
01:03 is a big bucket of literally hundreds of tiles
01:07 that he's uncovered while walking along the beach here.
01:10 While he's got some of the tiles in his cabinet as part of the gallery,
01:14 these tiles in the bucket, they number the hundreds
01:16 and they're believed to actually have been on their way on the Walter Hood to Sydney
01:22 and they were intended for the floor of St Mary's Cathedral.
01:26 Or were they?
01:27 So, Alan, how long have you been collecting these tiles?
01:31 30 plus years.
01:33 30 plus years. How many are there?
01:35 Don't ask me. A lot.
01:37 And why were there tiles on the Walter Hood?
01:40 Well, it's thought that they were intended for St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney,
01:44 but I don't think that's true.
01:47 They were probably intended for where you can still see some in St Mary's,
01:53 that's on the vestry or one of the associated buildings,
01:55 not the floor of the cathedral itself.
01:58 And so if you just go walking on the beach here,
02:01 every time you go on the beach, you can find a tile?
02:03 Or is it like after a big storm?
02:05 No, tiles are fairly rare.
02:07 An awful lot of glass and a lot of ginger beer bottle.
02:10 Fairly rare? You've got a few hundred there.
02:13 30 years.
02:14 30 years, okay.
02:16 [Music ends]
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