Port Fairy, the Mahogany Ship and the Lost History of the Belfast Shire
Second edition: PDF ISBN# 978-0-9875368-7-7 (10/12/2021)
Book title: 'Port Fairy, the Mahogany Ship and the Lost History of the Belfast Shire'
Sub title: 'John Ryan, Twenty Five Good Men, and the Unknown Contractor: A Story Sixty Five Years in the Telling'
Of an ongoing bloody-minded trans-generational palimpsest of epic proportions, and a historical litany of livelihoods and life's work, lost and destroyed; of wholesale murder and suicide involving a staggering level of monumental skullduggery that continues to wreak havoc to this very day:
This 350 page x 415Mb story which includes 122 historic images and maps, first started in 2009 when author Ian Geddes: a self-taught agricultural engineer and inventor, began researching a brief single page background of the history of his recently acquired vintage tractor that once belonged to the Belfast Shire in Port Fairy; having already begun the painstaking process of restoring the 'old girl', he soon found the story had other ideas.
The war was over, in late 1948: the Belfast shire had mysteriously taken delivery of a revolutionary, 65 horsepower, English, 1948 Minneapolis Moline tractor; that it was manufactured by Henry Meadows Pty Ltd, the tractor was secretly imported into Australia by an ‘unknown contractor’ in order to power the shire’s rock crushing plant in its capacity as a stationary engine.
Over the next 14 years, and employing the services of over 30 ancillary staff: in the process of producing 100,000 tonnes of crushed material for the all the region’s roads; the ‘Meadows’ quite spectacularly fulfilled a pledge made by the Belfast Shire Engineer John Ryan on the very day he first arrived in Port Fairy... 'to provide a sealed road to the front gate of every residence in the shire'.
Foreword:
Delving deeply into the historical workings and machinations of the small western district township of Port Fairy and its Shire Council (Belfast) in Victoria, Australia. As he celebrates the contributions of the charismatic, enigmatic Shire Engineer and Shire Secretary John Patrick Ryan, who served the Belfast Shire with distinction from 1941 to 1972; Ian unearths a previously untold trans-generational palimpsest of colonial Australia’s early settlement on the shipwreck coast.
A tale of truly extraordinary human endeavor, vision, individual and collective enterprise, and so much more... the story of John Ryan, is also the story of the 'Mahogany Ship' -- Australia’s oldest, unsolved maritime mystery.
As much as the 2021 revised PDF edition contains a plethora of historical maps, it is of one particular map (Fig: 8) hidden in the Public Records Office of Victoria for over 140 years that the mystery of the long ‘lost’ Mahogany Ship may very well be solved.
Because of this one particular extremely rare 1940’s vintage English Minneapolis Moline UDM tractor, and thousands of hours of research -- an historic palimpsest of systemic colonial corruption is uncovered; such was the fate of the long lost Mahogany Ship... once the vessel was out of sight and out of mind; in a trans-generational, bloody minded slight of staggering proportions... its location was historically contrived to stay that way.
In other words: the putative ‘Mahogany Ship’ has never actually been lost, as much as it was ‘simply allowed to disappear’.
Chapter 1: The Mahogany Ship (first three pages)
After 180 years: is the location of the ‘Ancient Wreck’ about to be confirmed?
Twelve years ago, when I first started researching the life and times of John Ryan in 2009, I had absolutely no idea my research would lead me to seriously investigate Australia’s oldest unsolved maritime mystery: the legendary ‘Mahogany Ship’ purportedly located ‘well inland' and 'deep in the hummocks’ somewhere between Warrnambool and Port Fairy. Like most people, I was a confirmed sceptic... if it was seen by so many people in the 1830’s (albeit almost completely covered with drift sand). Why, and how: could the historic location of such a substantial object come to be so comprehensively ‘lost’ for the next 180 years?
At this point, it is worth noting the story of a ship made of ‘mahogany’ is a complete fiction... in fact, it’s an anecdotal affectation penned by a certain ‘Julian Thomas’, a Melbourne based freelance journalist under the nom de plume ‘The Vagabond’ on the 15th of November 1884, when he published a series of ‘reader interest articles’ for the Argus newspaper positing the theory, the 'ancient wreck' (as it was described by Charles Joseph Latrobe, who visited the site in 1844) might well be a ‘Spanish Galleon’ laden with treasure. Confusingly... that myth should become legend; legend somehow became fact.
The wreck and its position was first recorded in 1836 by Captain John Mills and several associates who described the vessel as: ‘well inland, and high in the hummocks’, and ‘set in the side of a hummock almost completely covered in sand’. At the time... Mills described the position of the wreck thus: “a line drawn from Tower Hill through the ‘spires’ of the Iron Church will exactly intersect the position of the wreck.” While a single land based bearing from a ship’s captain of some 30 years experience is significant, the only way such a line of sight reference can possibly work, is from both directions.
Given there have been dozens, if not hundreds of sightings of wrecks, and parts thereof along the shoreline of that part of the southern coast in the last 180 years. That none of these sightings can lay claim to being as far inland as Kelly’s Swamp, or the ‘Merri Swamp’ (as it was known in the day), and as much as the line of sight bearing quite plainly indicates the 'ancient wreck' is situated on the northern side of the hummocks and the southern boundary of Kelly’s Swamp... from 1851 onward: neither Mills, or Latrobe would ever again be drawn into the ongoing media speculation of what had already become myth.
Amidst much disinformation... persuasive and conclusive evidence has now been uncovered as to why the ‘ancient wreck’ as it was described by Charles Joseph Latrobe in his diary in the 1840’s, has never been rediscovered after permanently disappearing from sight ‘under the shifting sands’ shortly after his visit to Warrnambool and Port Fairy at the time.
True facts of the matter be known... the precise location of the ‘ancient wreck’ is the Australian Freemason Society’s oldest, and most fiercely guarded secret which goes right back to the very day Charles Joseph Latrobe was appointed the first Lieutenant Governor of the Colony of Victoria in 1851.
Saul's Fence: As far back as the 1850’s... anecdotal local legend routinely spoke of a fence (Saul’s fence) that came within a ‘stones throw of where the lost ship lay'.
With all records of the original location of this fence ‘lost to time’ by the 1880’s, insofar as anomalous historical events are concerned... it very much beggars belief that such a fence specifically built to exclude livestock from a fragile, deteriorating, and constantly changing 'dunal', positively lunar landscape: would not appear on every, single, consecutive survey map of the day. This is especially the case, when the landscape in question was proclaimed a Gazetted ‘Permanent Reserve’ in 1873 and the ‘Belfast Coastal Reserve’ as we know it today.
Throughout the process of researching the life and times of John Ryan involving thousands of hours searching every public archive medium imaginable; it became abundantly clear, the provenance of the ‘Belfast Coastal Reserve’ had been much brushed over and altered in the 1890’s, and the 1900’s.
Author's note: From the 1880's to the present day, it is noteworthy that every single attempt to locate the historical position of the now legendary shipwreck has collectively, if not spectacularly failed to take into account, let alone use John Mill's original line of sight bearing calculation from Tower Hill through the ‘Iron Church’.
While the location of the 'ancient wreck' is revealed by way of one single caption attached to a Google Earth image (Fig 10), and an application with Parks Victoria for a permit to search for the wreck using the longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates revealed in this book has been pending for over 4 years... it is highly notable that several applications which completely ignore John Mills' original line of sight bearing, have been approved in as little as six weeks.
That Chapter 11 (49 pages) contains every transcript, email, and every correspondence with Parks Victoria including the permit application itself, and the cover up has been ongoing for almost 180 years; given the human race is only where it is in spite of itself... this 345 page book is not so much concerned about how the historical coverup occurred, as much as it is concerned with the reasons why the cover up is still happening.
(Closing paragraphs: Chapter 3)
George Santayana: (born 16 December 1863, died 26 September 1952) famously wrote, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Winston Churchill is credited with the variation, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
George Orwell, in his novel 1984, written in 1947 and first published in 1949 the year of his death wrote: “All history was palimpsest: And if all others accepted the lie which the party imposed and if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past”.
“Day by day, and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a ‘palimpsest’ scraped clean and re-inscribed exactly as often as was necessary”.
Palimpsest: An historic document or manuscript, completely materially erased, rewritten, or meaningfully altered.
Has the mystery finally been solved?
Time will tell.
Enjoy...