HMAS Australia (1924): Shipwreck Map, Location & Facts

Name	HMAS Australia	Wikidata label
Year lost	1924	English Wikipedia lead text (year following a loss verb, parsed)
Era	Interwar	derived from year
Ship type	battlecruiser	Wikidata P31 instance of
Cause of loss	Scuttled	Keyword match in English Wikipedia lead sentence
Nationality / flag	Australia, United Kingdom	Wikidata P137 operator → P17 country
Operator	Royal Australian Navy, Royal Navy	Wikidata P137 operator
Conflict	World War I	Wikidata P607 conflict
Sea / ocean	Tasman Sea	Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon
Nearest coast	Australia	Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 45 km from land
Position	-33.8903, 151.7681	Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0)

About the wreck

HMAS Australia was one of three Indefatigable-class battlecruisers built for the defence of the British Empire. Ordered by the Australian government in 1909, she was launched in 1911, and commissioned as flagship of the fledgling Royal Australian Navy (RAN) in 1913. Australia was the only capital ship to serve in the RAN.

At the start of World War I, Australia was tasked with finding and destroying the German East Asia Squadron, which was prompted to withdraw from the Pacific by the battlecruiser's presence. Repeated diversions to support the capture of German colonies in New Guinea and Samoa, as well as an overcautious Admiralty, prevented the battlecruiser from engaging the German squadron before the squadron's destruction. Australia was then assigned to North Sea operations, which consisted primarily of patrols and exercises, until the end of the war. During this time, Australia was involved in early attempts at naval aviation, and 11 of her personnel participated in the Zeebrugge Raid. The battlecruiser was not at the Battle of Jutland, as she was undergoing repairs following a collision with sister ship HMS New Zealand.

Location

Recorded position: -33.8903, 151.7681 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
Sea / ocean: Tasman Sea
Nearest coast: Australia

Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.

OpenStreetMap

Text adapted from the Wikipedia article HMAS Australia (1911) (revision 1380083860), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.