SS Yongala

A 110 m steel passenger steamer that vanished in a cyclone in March 1911 with all 122 on board, now lying intact on her starboard side on a sandy bottom in the open Coral Sea, roughly 22 km east of Cape Bowling Green and 90 km southeast of Townsville. The hull rises from 30 m sand to about 16 m at the highest stanchions, isolated from any reef, which concentrates pelagic life on the wreck like nowhere else on the Great Barrier Reef. Queensland groupers the size of small cars, schooling barracuda, eagle rays, mantas, olive sea snakes, bull sharks and a resident humphead wrasse all work the structure. Penetration is illegal — it is a protected gravesite.