Strange things have happened in the patch of water between Victoria and Tasmania
For more than 150 years, strange things have happened in the patch of water between Victoria and Tasmania.
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For more than 150 years, strange things have happened in Bass Strait.
Aeroplanes have flown in and never flown out.
Rumours have swirled of a captain going insane before his ship disappeared without a trace.
Other ships simply vanished without explanation.
And theories still persist about alien intervention when a pilot disappeared from radio contact and, seemingly, from the planet.
The patch of water between Victoria and Tasmania, for its numerous unexplained incidents and disappearances, has earned the nickname the Bass Strait Triangle.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SAPPHO
One of the first strange incidents in the strait happened to the sailing ship Sappho in 1858.
Formerly used to arrest ships involved in the slave trade, she was ordered to sail to Australia, but never arrived.
Word came from Cape Bridgewater near Portland in Victoria where the Sappho had been sighted entering Bass Strait.
That was the last time she was seen. The ship disappeared with all hands, without a trace.
Dozens of vessels had gone missing in Bass Strait, especially after the foundation of Melbourne in the 1830s when the shipping traffic increased and the strait had not been properly charted.
But the disappearances of the Sappho caused a stir.
Rumours reached England that something sinister had happened on the ship; the captain Fairfax Moresby had gone mad shortly before the ship disappeared.
The rumours persisted for months but they were ultimately baseless and the true fate of the Sappho has never been known.
Over the coming decades the eerily similar disappearances continued.
WITHOUT A TRACE
One of the eeriest disappearances in Bass Strait was that of the coal shop SS Amelia J, which was sailing from northern Australia to Tasmania in September 1920.
After being seen by a naval ship heading towards the strait on September 5, Amelia J vanished.
A huge search effort was organised and the public keenly awaited news, but when a military Airco DH.9 biplane flew over Bass Strait to survey the area, it too disappeared without a trace.
The search was eventually extended to include the biplane and another doomed ship, SS Southern Cross, that vanished on September 10 en route to Hobart and the searchers encountered rough weather and fog.
Pieces of Southern Cross wreckage were eventually found, but nothing of the Amelia J or the biplane ever showed up.
Similar incidents continued in the 20th Century. In 1935 an airliner crashed near Flinders Island and no bodies were ever found.
During WWII there were several incidents of RAAF bombers lost over the strait during exercises.
In 1972 a Tigermoth flown by environmental protesters on their way to Canberra from Hobart also disappeared.
And in perhaps the most notable case, young pilot Frederick Valentich was on a training flight over Bass Strait one evening in October 1978 when he reported via radio being shadowed by a strange aircraft.
He said the engine had started to falter before declaring “it’s not an aircraft” before contact was lost and the plane disappeared.
A sea search of more than 1000 square miles found no trace of the plane or Valentich.
NASTY WEATHER
Prior to the disappearance of Valentich, the disappearances of aeroplanes and ships, although eerie and subject to rumour, were not attributed to anything as supernatural as aliens.
It is believed that the high volume of shipping traffic through the strait, and the unusual geographic conditions make it more likely for ships to become confused and overcome by bad weather.
The strait is shallower than many other patches of sea, making it more likely for ships to strike hidden reefs and, according to some, also making the waves taller.
Strong winds from the south can cause currents reflecting off the Australian mainland to the north, making the weather notoriously changeable and sometimes impossible to predict.
Seafarers from the 1800s and Sydney to Hobart yacht racers of modern times have contended with the strait’s weird but natural weather, most notably in the doomed 1998 race that left six people dead and five yachts wrecked.
The loss of WWII planes was put down to dangerous low-altitude bombing practice and it has been theorised that Frederick Valentich had not seen an alien, but had become disoriented and saw his own plane’s lights reflecting in the water.
Although most believe the logic of Bass Strait’s difficult and changeable conditions, it will probably never shake its reputation as a hotspot for the strange and mysterious.
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