THE sheer number of shipwrecks around the Newcastle coast is awesome.
That's why National Maritime Museum's curator of naval heritage and archaeology, Dr James Hunter, is fascinated by what's hidden in the ocean depths off the coastline.
For our waters contain some of the earliest, if not the earliest, wrecks in NSW, according to Hunter.
"The reason Newcastle is so important to me is the massive amount of shipwreck sites. It's absolutely enormous. We're talking about 200 to 300 wrecks in a relatively confined geographical area," he says.
"To someone like me, you can spend an entire career working here and then some, and that's awesome."
Hunter features significantly in a newly-released film focusing on the region's intriguing maritime history.
Shipwrecked Newcastle is the 20th and the longest documentary from Newcastle's Glenn Dormand (aka Chit Chat von Loopin Stab) and Tony Whittaker, the duo behind the Stories of Our Town film series.
The film is dedicated to the work of the late, great maritime artist Terry Callen, of Stockton, (whose artwork features prominently in the documentary) and in memory of the victims who lost their lives on vessels over more than 200 years, from 1800.
Besides the dramatic artworks highlighted, Shipwrecked Newcastle also showcases unusual underwater footage of Hunter wrecks and interviews with scuba divers and community historians.
The film is screening on YouTube. It highlights all the shipwreck drama from the 1866 loss of the Cawarra taking 60 lives, the 1904 wreck of the Adolphe and later amazing footage from NBN from the loss of the Sygna in a 1974 cyclonic storm, to the high drama of the Pasha Bulker stranding on Nobbys Beach in June 2007.
The wrecks range from old wooden and iron-hulled sailing ships to a dark and eerie Hexham ferry wreck, a sunken warship in Salamander Bay to the loss of an amphibious army tank, or LVT-4A, sunk in 31 metres of water in the Stockton Bight. That disastrous military exercise, when three servicemen died, was our worst peacetime tragedy.
Film director Glenn Dormand also believes there is now a strong possibility the documentary will be on permanent display at the National Maritime Museum.
Newcastle was once regarded as the fifth biggest port in the world during the 19th century. It was also one of the most dangerous to safely enter, especially during storms.
Hunter says the main factors influencing the number of shipwrecks was difficult navigation in the narrow port entrance, with captains trying to "thread the needle" in a shallow channel between hazardous rocks, shifting sandbanks and rising swells.
Our local guides on Shipwrecked Newcastle include Bob Cook, Carol Duncan, diver Tony Strazzari, Mark Rigby, Sarah Cameron and Gionni Di Gravio.
The undoubted star of the documentary is port lifeboat historian Bill Hillier. He outlines the dangers faced by crews on stricken windjammers - and their would-be rescuers, facing capsize in wooden rowing lifeboats amid mountainous seas.
Hillier reveals that one dramatic, but successful, rescue of the US crew of the vessel Alpena in a storm off Stockton in 1909 made world headlines. The US president even later awarded gold medals for bravery to the lifeboat crew.
Another highlight is the unusual, personal story of Chris Simmons, who wrote a book called The Sygna, My Story in 2016.
The Norwegian bulk carrier was driven ashore north of Stockton in May 1974 during a horrific gale, involving wind gusts up to 174 kilometres per hour, which damaged 1500 Hunter homes.
Rescue attempts failed, the ship broke in half with its 116-metre, 4000-tonne steel bow later being towed across the seas to be broken up in Taiwan.
But what remained became a tourist icon for decades, rusting away in the breakers until finally disappearing in 2016. While it lasted, it was a fisherman's paradise.
From the 1980s, Simmons and a few mates would regularly paddle out to visit the towering, tilting stern stranded in the surf, by climbing onboard its sloping deck with the help of a grappling hook to go fishing.
Simmons says the huge, decaying wreck was a perfect artificial reef. While much of the 32-kilometre beach scene around there was a barren underwater desert, the Sygna wreck was instead a magnet for fish life.
"Any travelling fish on the coast stayed there. It was like a motel to them. Everything was growing on it. The fishing was unbelievable," Simmons says.
"We decided we wouldn't tell anyone about the shipwreck location until it disappeared, otherwise everyone would have turned up. [With friends] I used to sleep and stay out there on the Sygna shipwreck and fish all day and all night.
"At night the ship took on a whole different persona," he says. "The big swell underneath would compress the air and the ship would make all these sounds, of air rushing out and being sucked in.
"We called it the Sygna Symphony. Some nights were quiet, but some nights were wild and we knew we shouldn't be there."
Besides the old hulk groaning, the fishermen were distracted on other nights by fog, mist, the cold and the umbrella of stars.
The fishing was special. Besides catching bream and mullet, the main goal was to jag the biggest jewfish imaginable.
"Stockton Beach is a breeding ground for great whites. A lot of our baits were busted off by sharks," he says. "
"You try not to think too much about that. We'd have to paddle back. Sometimes we'd leave in the middle of the night. The phosphorescence was glowing and you'd leave a turtle track behind you."
When schools of mullet were hiding under a corner of the weed-infested stern, and were startled by Simmons, the water would churn into "a frothing soup".
The most controversial part of Shipwrecked Newcastle is the amazing photograph of the Pasha Bulker on Nobbys Beach taken from the Newcastle Cathedral in 2007.
The compressed view, taken by Murray McKean, has come into criticism over the past 17 years for being photo-shopped. McKean strenuously denies the accusation.
But even he's been very surprised to discover his extraordinary picture has now been picked up by a blogger on the social platform X (formerly Twitter) and collected a staggering 53 million views in one day.
"I was gobsmacked. Then it was 66 million views. But I get no photo credit. No kudos and it's my business, my job.
"I'm a commercial photographer who broke the internet but didn't know it," McKean says.
