For more than a century, a trip to Caloundra included a walk along Dicky Beach to wander through the wreck of the SS Dicky, often as the sun sank and the shadows lengthened.The Dicky’s timber deck collapsed in the 1960s and in 2013 Cyclone Oswald reduced what was a favourite beachside adventure playground to a safety hazard.
However, after seven years of recovery and restoration, the Dicky’s story would be told on a series of displays on a “barnacle wall” on Dicky Beach’s park, with a direct line of sight to the location where the doomed ship washed ashore in February 1893.The wall includes restored wreck pieces, artefacts, a lifebuoy, replica bell, and stories told by residents inspired by the SS Dicky’s 131 years on the beach.
The bell was stripped from Dicky after it was wrecked and eventually disappeared, until a letter at the Dicky Beach Surf Club led historians to Sun Engineering’s workshops at Fortitude Valley.