Buried treasure and the sands of time: shipwreck found on Victorian beach may have lain unseen for a century

Shipwreck on the beach between the Victorian towns of Point Lonsdale and Ocean Grove. Photograph: Rodney Nicholson

Mark Longden and his wife, Lucy, have been walking the ocean beach between the Victorian towns of Ocean Grove and Point Lonsdale for 30 years. Sometimes they pick up shells and sea glass, pieces of pottery, scraps of flotsam and jetsam. Once, they found a tiny, headless porcelain figurine of a woman in an old-fashioned dress.

Then one Friday morning in early October, they found a shipwreck.