You’d almost think you were in the Strait of Hormuz, the size of ships you see off Torquay sometimes.
I’ve spied giant container ships like islands on the horizon. Sworn there was a freakish maritime fog at play or my orbs going haywire.
Likewise, I’ve seen 13th Beach looking for all the world like a white cityscape; contemporary facades and staggered rooflines like some architect’s huge model plonked on the beachfront.
No substances at work, I’ll just say that. Was quite the mystery for some time, which kind of goes with the turf along the southwest coast.
Not odd to find cliffs collapsing, tide-stranded folks on cliff ledges, whale carcasses, fossils, wartime bunkers, shipwrecks, looping biplanes, nudists … anything from apocryphal explorers to politicians diving on wrecks illegally.
It is the Shipwreck Coast, after all. It’s where WW2 Japanese recce pilot Nobuo Fujita crossed the Torquay coast before surveying Melbourne.
Where Cristovao Mendonca’s 16th century Portuguese fleet lost its Mahogany Ship at Killarney, after summering in Corio Bay and dropping the Geelong Keys.
Where WW2 German submariners came ashore scrounging for tobacco at Warrnambool.
Strange lights were sighted above Apollo Bay before pilot Freddie Valentich reported a UFO then disappeared in 1978.
Try hard enough and you can believe the Big Kahuna surf deity and his wave-making apparatus live off Lorne.
Like any nuffie witness to the supernatural, I know what I saw and it was real.
Fata Morgana. A meteorological phenomenon. A mirage.
Named after King Arthur’s magical shape-shifting sister Morgan le Fay, it generally presents as a distorted ship on or above the horizon, greatly enlarged, duplicated or otherwise misshapen by light bending through air layers of varying temperature.
It also makes coastlines look weird, like fancy castles or towns. Precisely what I’ve spotted. Straight from the Pandora’s box that brought you the Marie Celeste, crop circles, cargo cults, Erich von Daniken.
Think the ghostly Flying Dutchman, Chile’s glowing Caleuche, Quebec’s Baie Cahleur fireship, Jack Sparrow’s Black Pearl … plenty of Morganas about when you go looking.
They’re usually full of witches, demons, drownings, wrecks, kidnappings, otherworldly visitors, horror stories, Davy Jones locker stuff.
That’s Davy Jones of deep-sea lockers and pirate superstition, by the way, not The Monkees singer.
And not Banksy the artist, born Robin Gunningham but who borrowed the name, either. Nor rock star David Bowie, who was born David Jones but didn’t want to be a US popstar mirage and adopted Ziggie Stardust instead.
All a bit like my mate Van Walker sings: “Now I can no longer believe my eyes …”
The song? The haunting Imaginary Ships, of course.
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 31 March 2026
