Who We Are

Graeme John Henderson (AM, Cit WA)

In 1963 Graeme made the first discovery of a 17th century shipwreck in Australian waters. In the following year he and co-finders, brother Alan, father Jim and John Cowan, persuaded the Western Australian Museum to become responsible for historic shipwrecks with a Deed of Assignment, transferring their finder’s rights of the Gilt Dragon (Vergulde Draeck) to the Museum. Graeme joined the Museum in 1969 and worked in the field of Maritime Archaeology until 1992. From 1992-2005 he was the Inaugural Director of the Western Australian Maritime Museum. From 1993-2005 he was Delegate to the Commonwealth Minister for the Historic Shipwrecks Act.

He developed awareness of Australia’s 18th century shipwrecks, leading early expeditions to the wrecks of the Sydney Cove off Tasmania, HMS Sirius on Norfolk Island and HMS Pandora off Queensland. He escorted VIPs through the Western Australian Maritime Museum including Prince Phillip, Prince Charles, the Sultan of Brunei and Prince Willem-Alexander of Orange (now King of the Netherlands).

He jointly led a UNESCO Mission to examine the feasibility of establishing the world’s first underwater Museum at the Pharos Lighthouse at Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Australia ICOMOS invited him to establish the International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage Heritage and in that role he coordinated the development of the draft for the Annex of the UNESCO 2001 Convention for Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, now adopted by 47 countries.

Graeme arranged a partnership between the Maritime Museum and the Duyfken Replica Foundation for the construction of the replica Duyfken at the Museum. He lobbied successfully to have Australia’s Most Famous Yacht Australia II brought back to Western Australia. He is the author of 13 books and over 100 articles about the maritime heritage. Since 2009 he has been a Research Associate with the Western Australian Museum.

AWARDS
1996: State Government Award as sole Principal Discoverer Gilt Dragon (1656) wreck.
2002: Western Australian Citizen of the Year (Cit. WA): Arts, Culture, Entertainment.
2003: Centenary Medal, Commonwealth of Australia.
2012: Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Andrew Viduka (B.A., B.App.Sci., MMA)

Andrew Viduka (B.A., B.App.Sci., MMA) has been employed as an Archaeological Objects Conservator, Maritime Archaeologist and Cultural Heritage Manager. Andrew is a Research Associate of the Department of Archaeology at Flinders University, Churchill Fellow, member of Australia ICOMOS, Bureau member of the ICOMOS International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH) and Councillor of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (AIMA). He is the author of numerous scientific papers and contributed to and co-edited the 2014 Towards Ratification: Papers from the 2013 AIMA Conference Workshop. Andrew is employed as the Assistant Director of Maritime Heritage in the Australian Government Department of the Environment and administers the Commonwealth Historic Shipwrecks Act 1976 and Australia’s Historic Shipwreck Programme. Andrew led the development of the Australian National Shipwreck Database and Australia’s National Research Project on in situ preservation and reburial. Andrew’s current research foci include an underwater survey of the Larnaca District of Cyprus, searching for the Fortuyn shipwreck, shared heritage management, Australian national capacity building projects and linking community outcomes with the discovery and protection of underwater cultural heritage.

James Parkinson (B.A., Dip Grad, ADAS A.D., ADAS pt III, ADAS D.T., Dive Sup., D.M.T., Cox.)

James Parkinson completed his Archaeology Degree from La Trobe University, Melbourne, (2000) and a Graduate Diploma in Maritime Archaeology from Flinders University, Adelaide, (2009). James also holds an ADAS Advanced Diploma in Dive Project Management (2014), ADAS Part 3 diver, ADAS Dive Trainer, Dive Supervisor, Dive Medic Technician and Coxswain certifications.

James began his diving career in 1995 and commercial diving career in 1998. To date James has 5000+ commercially logged dives both onshore and offshore in Australia, the Middle East and Europe. After joining Professional Diving Services, Melbourne, Victoria in 1998 James spent 16 years working as a diver, ADAS Dive Supervisor, Project Manager, ADAS Dive trainer and Operations Manager and after leaving in 2013 continues to work for PDS in a consultancy capacity. During late 2013 James was privileged to have been asked to be involved in the diving operations salvaging the Costa Concordia on the island of Giglio, Italy. For the previous 3 years James has been working offshore in the southern sector of the North Sea for a Swedish offshore diving company Nordic Dive Enterprise contracted to provide diving services from dynamically positioned vessels during the construction phases of the offshore wind farms being built off the German coast.

While continuing to pursue a career as a commercial diver James has been heavily involved in a numerous maritime archaeological projects in his career both in a voluntary and professional capacity including but not limited to;

• ‘Finding the Fortuyn Project’ Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Indian Ocean (2015)
• Excavation and in-situ preservation project carried out on the Clarence by Australian Historic Shipwreck Preservation Project (2012-2014).
• NT Heritage Department’s expeditions to Sanyo Maru (2012) and the Florence D (2011)
• Port of Melbourne Channel Deepening Heritage Monitoring (2009-2011)
• Cosmos Archaeology’s, Lombok Tourism and Mixed-Use Project, Lombok, Indonesia, (2008)
• Former Hovell Pile Light excavation and reburial. Cosmos Archaeology and the Port of Melbourne Corporation. (2008)
City of Launceston project for Heritage Victoria. (1998-2002)

Alex Moss (B.A., B.Sc., M.Sc.)

Alex Moss is principal consultant for Maritime Heritage Surveys, and principal investigator for ShipShapeSearchers, a non-profit organisation with the research purpose of obtaining and using non-archaeological remote sensing datasets for maritime archaeological purposes.

Alex has worked as a contracting archaeologist in the UK and Australia, after gaining his Msc in maritime archaeology (2006) from the University of Southampton, Bsc in archaeology from the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (2005) and BA in archaeology at Flinders University (1993).

Alex gained the part III certificate from the Nautical Archaeology Society, BSAC Sports Diver and ADAS part I commercial diving qualifications.

In addition to Wreck Check’s Closing in On The Fortuyn Project, Alex has participated in numerous fieldwork projects including:

Bouldner Cliff Excavation and Survey (2007).

Cyprus Maritime Archeology Project (2006)

Zea Harbour Project (2005)

Alcoa Jetty Wreck Survey (2005)

Barcombe Roman Villa Excavation (2003)

Andrew Hutchison

Andrew Hutchison is a currently a researcher in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Andrew’s research area is the study of how emerging technology impacts on society, especially the way in which digital technologies have changed the way stories are communicated. He has worked in many aspects of the media industry, and has been an early adopter of successive generations of technological change.

Andrew’s experience with interactive media began in the mid-1990s, and has included award winning and internationally exhibited experimental interactive works, as well as conventional TV documentaries. He is especially interested in communicating cultural heritage/history topics to younger audiences, utilizing their experiences with social media, movies, games and the Internet.

Andrew’s most notable activity in Maritime Archaeology to date has been the Sydney-Kormoran Project. Five years in the planning, the project undertook a high resolution photographic survey of the wrecks of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran, Australian and German warships that sank each other during 1941 in one of the most unusual sea battles in history. The wrecks were located in a previous mission in 2008, organised by The Finding Sydney Foundation, with the offshore search led by David Mearns. The 2008 mission not only located both wrecks, but also answered the major questions about the circumstances of the battle. Building on this work, Andrew conceived of a further project to communicate this remarkable story to a broad audience.

Andrew initiated the project, bringing together the stakeholder groups and funding, developing and proving techniques, integrating the science and cultural heritage aspects, planning the underwater tasks, and was one of the directors of subsea operations during the five day expedition in April 2015. Additionally, he conducted lengthy “end of life” interviews with some of the last living crewmen who had served on HMAS Sydney, yielding rich first hand knowledge to help humanise the story.

The project produced hundreds of hours of video footage and hundreds of thousands of still images of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran and their debris fields, and edited video footage from the project is now on public display. Andrew is currently working on further aspects of the interpretation of this database.

His broader practice also includes visualisation of land based archaeology and cultural heritage. His practice crosses the divide between traditional disciplines, and is focused in the communication of cultural heritage narratives via a range of established and emerging digital/virtual technologies.

Andrew is also very interested in using his expertise to enable archaeologists and other researchers to affordably use the latest visualisation techniques in their daily practice.

Matt Carter (B.A., Grad Dip., M.A.)

Matt Carter is the leading technical diving maritime archaeologist in Australasia and is passionate about furthering the links between academic archaeological research and the technical diving community to explore shipwrecks outside of recreational diving limits. Matt

In 2009 Matt was awarded the Our World-Underwater Scholarship Society’s (OWUSS) Australasian Rolex Scholarship – the first New Zealander, and maritime archaeologist, to receive this prestigious award. Since then Matt has combined his archaeological training with his growing interest in technical diving, undertaking his CCR trimix certification in 2010. Utilising this and his commercial diving qualifications Matt has now worked in 12 different countries on maritime archaeological projects ranging from the excavation of a 2800-year-old Phoenician shipwreck in Spain, mapping ancient Mayan skeletons in sacred cenotes in Mexico, to 3D modelling WWII wrecks in Palau.

Matt is currently completing a PhD, where he is the lead investigator for ‘The First Ships Project’, investigating the archaeology of the earliest ships built in New Zealand. He is also leading a project to work collaboratively with technical divers to 3D map deep shipwrecks around Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.

He is an International Fellow of the Explorers Club, the New Zealand representative on the ICOMOS International Committee on Underwater Cultural Heritage (ICUCH) and a member of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology (AIMA).

Most recently, Matt was a specialist presenter on the television series ‘Coast: New Zealand’, a spin-off from the BBC-produced UK series ‘Coast’.

Ian Macleod (Ph.D., D Sc, fellow of: FRACI, FTSE, FRSC FIIC and FSA Scotland)

Ian D. MacLeod completed his studies at the University of Melbourne in 1974 and did post-doctoral work at the University of Glasgow (Scotland) and Murdoch University (Perth, Australia). From 1978 he worked for the conservation department at the Western Australian Museum and developed in-situ corrosion monitoring of historic shipwrecks and the application of sacrificial anodes to the treatment of corroded iron anchors, cannon and hull structures. He retired from the Western Australian Museum in May 2016 where he is now a Fellow. He runs Heritage Conservation Solutions which provides custom solutions to complex decay issues of cultural materials. He was the corrosion consultant on the conservation assessment and management of the WWI submarine HMAS AE2 which sank in Turkey after penetrating the Dardanelles on 25^th April 1915.

He has authored more than 200 papers on the study of decay mechanisms of artifacts and development of new treatment methods to preserve cultural materials. He has a Ph D in electrochemistry and a D Sc in Materials Conservation from the University of Melbourne. He is a fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (FRACI), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (FTSE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and of the International Institute for the Conservation and Restoration of Historic and Artistic Works (FIIC) and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (FSA Scot).

Craig Forrest (B.Comm, LLB, LLM, PGCE, PhD)

Craig is the Director of the Marine and Shipping Law Unit and Professor in the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. Craig teaches and undertakes research in maritime law, private international law and cultural heritage law, with a particular interest in wreck law.

Craig was a member of the South African delegation to UNESCO to negotiate the 2001 Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention and has subsequently supported UNESCO in regional meetings on the Convention. In 2013 he assisted UNESCO in drafting a Model Law for the implementation for the Caribbean States and co-chaired the intergovernmental meeting in St.Kitts and Nevis. He is currently engaged in a UNESCO project, with Dr Bill Jeffery (University of Guam), on the protection on underwater cultural heritage in Micronesia.

Craig is the general editor of the Australian and New Zealand Maritime Law Journal, associate editor of the Australian International Law Journal and on the editorial boards of the World Maritime University Journal of Maritime Affairs and the International Maritime and Commercial Law Yearbook. He is an Australian representative on the International Law Association’s Committee on Governance in Global Cultural Heritage Governance.

He has held visiting research and teaching positions at Cambridge University, National University of South Korea, City University of Hong Kong, Dalhousie University Canada and University of Nottingham (as a Universitas 21 Fellow). Before turning to the law, Craig served as a naval officer in the South African Navy.

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