The wild weather whipped up by ex-tropical cyclone Alfred has exposed a 180-year-old shipwreck.
High seas and shifting sands have uncovered what is thought to be an 1843 schooner named the Comet near Ballina in northern NSW.
The Comet was built in the Williams River port, according to the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage.
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It was a wooden schooner weighing 34 gross tons and spanning 14.5 metres. It was owned by Hugh Brodie and Archibald Craig.
The vessel was wrecked on March 30, 1851, on the north side of the Tweed River entrance while attempting to cross the bar.
Everyone survived.
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Ron Creber, curator and manager at Ballina Naval and Maritime Museum, said part of the ship’s hull was what experts think has been exposed on Shelley Beach.
“That piece of wreckage was washed up on the beach in October,” he told 9news.
“Part of it was freshly broken so we think the wreckage is on the point between the two beaches.
“But then it got covered up as different tides, but now it’s fully exposed.
“There’s another piece there now.”
Other shipwrecks in the area include the Tomkey on Lighthouse Beach.
It was wrecked near the north wall of the Richmond River breakwater on September 13, 1907.
“Sometimes a little bit gets exposed from time to time which is the remains of the engine. I have not see it for years,” Creber said.
The Dicky, an iron-hulled steamer, which drove ashore at Caloundra during a cyclone in 1893 is also a wreck in the area.
The museum gets an influx of interest whenever old wrecks resurface.
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“Every time we get a storm and the beaches wash away we get people coming in, Creber said.
It’s an offence to disturb or damage any part of a shipwreck or take anything away.
