Apollo Stories
HISTORY AND ENVIRONMENT
Apollo Marine Park isn’t just a bit of water in the Bass Strait, it has a rich cultural history that is thousands of years old and supports the lives of countless animals!
In its ancient past, it connected Victoria and Tasmania as a land bridge and home to Aboriginal people. Now it hosts diverse sponge garden ecosystems.
We hope you enjoy learning about this extraordinary place by exploring Apollo Stories.
City of Rayville Wreck
The SS City of Rayville was the first American ship destroyed by Nazi activity during WWII, resulting in one death by drowning, the first US maritime casualty of the war.
The Rayville was a steel hulled cargo ship - 122.5 metres in length - built as part of the US Shipping Board’s effort to bolster their wartime merchant fleet. On route from Adelaide to Melbourne carrying mainly lead, wool and other cargo, the Rayville entered what is now the Apollo Marine Park, on Friday evening, the 8th November, 1940. For most Victorians at the time, the war was a long way off; Pearl Harbour would not be attacked for more than another year.
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Local residents could not have known that around one month earlier, Nazis had hijacked the Norwegian fuel freighter, the Storstad, renaming her the Passat, and converting her to an auxiliary mineship. Retaining some of her original Norwegian crew, the Passat pretended to be an allied vessel and snuck into Victorian waters, proceeding to lay 110 sea mines around Bass Strait. Coastal residents were shocked when they witnessed “the flames and the glow” of the explosion as the Rayville ran into a mine around ten kilometres off Cape Otway, tearing off her front mast. Commander of the ship for over 20 years, Captain A. Cronin, said “it seemed as if she had run up against a brick wall”, listing (tilting) dangerously to the starboard (right), before sinking bow-(front)-first in just half an hour.
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Most of the crew managed to escape in two lifeboats, although two crew were plucked from the water when the Captain returned to search for survivors. Fishing boats from Apollo Bay were alerted by the Cape Otway lighthouse keeper and sent into rough seas to rescue the seamen. The ocean was too rough, however, and it was dawn before the Rayville crew could be safely towed into Apollo Bay. In 2009 the wreck of the SS City of Rayville was rediscovered in Apollo Marine Park by Dr Dan Ierodiaconou with marine sonar equipment used for mapping the seabed.
Busch-Sulzer (German designed but US built) diesel engine retrofitted to SS City of Rayville in 1930 (originally steam propelled).
Promotional image of SS City of Rayville, launched in 1920
Footage and content by David Tipping
Occy the Seal
Scientists tracked Occy the Australian Fur Seal spending plenty of time in and around Apollo Marine Park.
In 2012, scientists from Phillip Island Nature Parks and Macquarie University put a GPS tracker on a young juvenile seal they named Occy and tracked his movements for several months. Despite being only 2-3 years old, Occy travelled hundreds of kilometres over those few months.
Every seal has unique foraging patterns. They each choose to visit different areas to forage for food. During his travels, Occy was tracked regularly visiting Apollo Marine Park. As an Australian Fur Seal, Occy is a benthic feeder meaning he finds his food on the bottom of the sea floor. It’s likely that when Occy was travelling to Apollo Marine Park he was attracted to the rich reef ecosystems including sponge gardens. In Apollo Marine Park, Occy would have been diving as deep as 50-80 metres to find food.
Between periods of feeding, Occy was hauling out on the rocks at Marengo Reef near Apollo Bay. To retrieve the data from Occy’s GPS tracker the scientists needed to collect the GPS device from him.
Phillip Island Nature Park kindly shared Occy’s tracking data (see map image). This data helps show how connected Victorian marine ecosystems are. A diverse range of local and transitory species rely on the environments of the Great Southern Reef. ​
Tracking data for Occy the Seal (visualised via Google Earth)
via Wikimedia
