Moreton Bay Region Gallery

Gayundah Shipwreck, Woody Point

Gayundah was built in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the 1884 for the Queensland Maritime Defence Force, commissioned to protect the many bays, inlets and estuaries along the east coast from the enemy. By 1886 it had been acquired by the fledgling Australian Navy as one of its ten ships. Up until the end of World War I she was used as a mine sweeper and sea tender ship and by 1919 had been decommissioned, sold to civilians and was thereby stripped and demoted to a gravel barge. By 1957-8 she was retired and towed to the base of Woody Point cliffs where she has since acted as a breakwater, protecting the shore not from the enemy but from erosion