North of Moreton Island lies the Aarhus, a 50 metre iron barque. The three-mast sail ship sank in 1894 after a 122-day sail from New York, and is considered one of Australia’s first major oil spills.
The Aarhus carried a cargo of kerosene, glassware, wire bails and alarm clocks, with some of those timber artifacts under the sand still preserved by the kerosene they were drenched in.
Only accessible with a permit, this is a site for advanced divers – but is worth the extra effort, with a lot of colourful pufferfish, sweetlips, wobbegongs, stingrays, lionfish, gropers and schools of cardinalfish waiting to greet you.
