It’s a popular headline beloved of newspaper and magazine sub-editors, except on this specific occasion it’s a very appropriate tag, not just a tease.

For this particular Hexham wharf (pictured, but now long gone) once hid a mystery wreck of a large vessel which only surfaced when the coal jetties were demolished revealing the 40-year-old secret in the mud beneath it.

The old wharf features today in a colour picture of one of the famous, former ‘sixty-miler’ ships that regularly sailed between the port of Hexham on the Hunter River and Sydney gas works hauling coal cargoes.

The moored vessel is the MV Stephen Brown. It’s also one of the very best colour photographs I have seen of such a former Hunter River workhorse before it sailed the 60 nautical miles to its Sydney destination.

The picture was generously supplied by Hunter Valley coal/rail/pub authority Ed Tonks, who dated his snap October 29, 1979.

Tonks recently posted it and other rare colour pictures he’d taken almost 40 years ago on Facebook’s Lost Newcastle page.

The vessel Stephen Brown is pictured at the giant R&W Miller shiploader which once existed in the shadow of our first Hexham bridge, with its centre-lift span.

When the picture was posted it sparked interest in what was still sunk in the water there; a long, low outline visible sometimes at low tide.

Unlikely as it may seem, it is the rusted remains of the old Manly ferry, the historic SS Kuring-gai (or KuringGai). Rather surprisingly, the old ferry was once capable of carrying 1221 passengers on the popular Sydney seaside run.

Once measuring more than 170ft  (51.5m) long and weighing 497 gross tons, the Kuring-gai was built in a Balmain, Sydney, shipyard and launched in 1901.

After a long and useful life, the double-ended steel ferry came to Newcastle in 1928 to be used as a ferry on the then Walsh Island (Kooragang) but was later tied up and hulked in 1934.

The two-tiered wooden superstructure was demolished and in World War II, US forces used her in New Guinea as a storage barge. After WWII, the vessel was towed back to Newcastle, moored at Hexham and finally sank in the mud.

Later, the R&W Miller coal wharf was built over it, hiding it completely until the site was completely cleared (including jetties) in the late 1980s. For ages there was a buoy bobbing about, marking the old ferry’s position, but it appears to have now gone.

And just as surprising to many people people is that the remains of another old Manly ferry, once capable of carrying 600 passengers, also lies nearby. She’s the former Goolwa built in England in 1864, then hulked and abandoned at Hexham around 1919.

Strictly speaking, the Goolwa was really a steam-powered iron tug probably pressed into service on the Manly run on Sundays. There’s nothing much left of the 130ft (38m), 191 gross ton vessel now, except for her prominent boiler sticking out of the water where she was run aground downstream of the old Hexham bridge.

Coal loading on the Hunter River at Hexham probably began about 1850 and is usually best remembered because of the old railway across the Hexham swamps to Minmi township and beyond, to Kurri Kurri.

But three coal companies once operated wharves at Hexham itself back when the Hunter River was a vital cog in the growth of the coal trade and also developing historic Morpeth upstream.

The small colliers sailing to Sydney from Hexham down the Hunter River to Sydney were known as the ‘sixty-milers’.

Towards the end, 28 years ago, the collier MV Stephen Brown was among the most familiar. Other earlier vessels included the Hexham Bank, Pelton Bank, Mortlake Bank and Birchgrove Park (sunk 1956).

Times were changing. When the Stockton Bridge opened in 1971 it was deliberately built tall to accommodate the funnels of ships going up to Hexham. That trade gradually died.

And every picture sometimes reveals more of the past than we realise. Take the 1979 Ed Tonks picture today. Look closer at top right and there is a big vessel being built.

The famous Newcastle shipbuilding firm of Carrington Slipways moved from Newcastle to its new Tomago yard in September 1972. This made me suspect the big vessel being built might be the Australian icebreaker Aurora Australis, but I was wrong. That was built in launched in 1989, many years later. So, perhaps the vessel in the background might instead be HMAS Tobruk, launched in 1980?

And this point, I could delve into the past of nearby Ash Island where 55 families once lived (in the late 1800s), most of them involved with 17 dairy farms there. Floods in 1897 and especially the disasterous1955 flood destroyed their livelihoods.

Instead, let’s explore what seems to be a myth. It’s a truly forgotten coal mine around Hexham, which may have opened and closed twice. It’s really at Tomago though, and the pit top intriguingly features in the distant background of at least one historic Hexham photograph.

 In a May 1860 newspaper cutting, it’s referred to being as “Captain Williamson’s colliery”. It’s described as being on the northern side of the Hunter River nearly opposite Hexham. Here, the pit began about 1855. It was about a kilometre from the river in present day terms and was said to be our first long wall operation.

Coal was finally found at a depth of 400 ft (121m) and carried in four-ton coal wagons along a small railway down to the river to be loaded onto barges.

About 100 tons a day or coal was produced daily.

Then in 1921, plans were afoot to reopen what was described as the old Tomago colliery. Today, no trace seems to remain.

But occasionally, some reminders of the past do survive, despite the odds. Take the case of the 77m-long collier, the MV Stephen Brown, featured today.

Built in 1954, you might have expected it to be long gone for its scrap metal value. Happily, it survives to continue to serve a useful life in faraway Tasmania. Bought in 1984 by the Australian Maritime College, it was converted there into a training ship.

It’s widely said to have been bought for a $1, but don’t quote me on that.

 mikescanlon.history@hotmail.com