A shipwreck off Wollongong keeps coughing up bottles of 1881 cognac
In 1881 the British clipper Queen of Nations ran aground near Wollongong carrying 24,000 bottles of Hennessy cognac. Police and customs officers saved at least 5,500; locals helped themselves to plenty more. The wreck lies only about 70 metres offshore, and when a storm uncovered it in 1991, the looting started all over again.
The Commonwealth moved quickly after that 1991 storm, protecting the site under shipwreck heritage law, and since 2018 anything older than 75 years has been covered automatically. The episode fits a city whose history is tied to its coastline. Wollongong sits on a thin strip of land between the rainforest-clad Illawarra Escarpment and a nearly unbroken chain of surf beaches, about 85 kilometres south of Sydney. Its name probably comes from the Dharawal language, with suggested meanings including five islands and sound of the sea.
The Dharawal people lived here long before George Bass and Matthew Flinders landed at Lake Illawarra in 1796. Cedar cutters came first, then graziers, and Charles Throsby Smith and Sarah Broughton Smith settled on the site in 1823. A town was laid out on the Smiths' land and gazetted in November 1834, and convicts cut the road down Bulli Pass soon after. Growth was modest: just 865 people lived there in 1856.
Coal changed everything. A horse-drawn tramway began carrying coal from Mount Keira to the harbour in 1858, steam locomotives replaced it twenty years later, and beehive coke ovens smoked beside the basin. The ready fuel drew heavy industry, and in 1928 a steelworks opened at nearby Port Kembla, later absorbed by BHP and now run by BlueScope.
By 2018 the urban population had passed 300,000, so within New South Wales only Sydney and Newcastle are bigger. It remains a working port and fishing centre, but it is also a university town and home to Nan Tien Temple alongside two cathedrals. When the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre opened in 1988, Prince Charles and Princess Diana cut the ribbon.
Source: Wollongong
