Summer in Australia - Day 7: The Shipwreck Coast

We began this day with a bad motel experience and ended with a great light and sound show at Flagstaff Hill, which recreates a 19th century maritime village, much like the villages that immigrants arrived to during Victoria's Gold Rush in the 1800s. During the Gold Rush, tens of thousands of immigrants left England, sailing for months across rocky seas, seeking a promising new life in Australia. More than 700 of these ships crashed and sunk on the stretch of coast preceding the Bass Strait which leads into the port at Melbourne. Incredibly, the ships kept coming! At Flagstaff Hill, we learned about the story of the Loch Ord, a ship that crashed into the rocks, losing it's entire crew save two, a sailor and a woman who ended up on the same beach. The third survivor: a giant porcelain peacock headed for the 1880 World Exhibition in the world's fastest growing and most wealthy gold city, Melbourne.