Port Campbell Ocean house, Victoria, Australia

This photograph, scanned from an original negative, shows a group of children at play on the beach in Port Campbell, Victoria, circa 1918.

Behind them stands the prominent Ocean House, a two storey timber guesthouse built that same year. With its wide verandahs and elevated position overlooking the shore, Ocean House was one of the town’s earliest and most notable accommodation houses.

The image captures a candid moment of seaside leisure, with children in sun hats. It is set against the backdrop of a building that embodied the growth of early coastal tourism along Victoria’s Shipwreck Coast.

Today, Ocean House exists only in photographs and memory, making this negative a rare visual record of a structure long lost to time.