The tales of shipwrecks fascinate me. Indeed, Australia has many a ship that
lay on the sea floor. My father would tell me of mighty white capped waves
rising out of the ocean from his days in the merchant navy. It must have been
a daunting thought for the early navigators of the seas. Those watery
mountains, wreckers of ships, tearing timber to pieces, carrying lives to watery
graves.
The tragedy of the Loch Sloy wreck off the south west coast of Kangaroo Island,
was one such tale of early navigators. Only four seafarers made it from the ship,
a passenger, two able seamen and an apprentice. Not remembering how they
made it ashore the desperate men survived on dead penguins and shell fish.
The passenger, D. Kilpatrick, perished from ill health and exposure, leaving only
three survivors from an initial 34 crew and passengers. The survivors recounted
passengers and crew clinging to rigging as one by one the masts broke
throwing them to the breaking waves below.
The marble and jarrah come together in this sculpture to symbolise a shipwreck
adrift on the vast mighty waves