The Story Begins Before Dusk

When an Evening Stroll Became Australia's Greatest Mystery

The Walk That Changed Everything

No one could have imagined that a routine Tuesday evening stroll would mark the beginning of Australia's most baffling cold case, The Somerton Man.

On December 1st, 1948, Mr. and Mrs. John Lyons left their White Street home in Somerton for their regular walk to Broadway and back—about 3 kilometers in all, roughly 40 minutes of seaside air. On the way out, nothing seemed unusual. But on their return leg, Mr. Lyons noticed something that would haunt Australian investigators for decades: a man lying propped up against the low sea wall, close to a set of steps leading down from the Esplanade to the beach.

This discovery launched the Somerton Man Mystery.

What This Post Covers

This is the first in a series examining the physical evidence from the beach scene where the body was discovered. I'll focus on three key areas:

• The scene itself and what witnesses observed
• The photographic evidence and what it reveals about the body's position
• A critical question about timing that challenges the accepted timeline

In subsequent posts, we'll examine the inquest testimonies and explore some intriguing historical context that may or may not connect to this case.

The Scene: What We Know

The Somerton Man was found propped against a low sea wall near steps descending from the Esplanade to the beach. Nearby, though unnoticed by Mr. Lyons at the time, a young couple named Gordon Strapps and Olive Neill sat on a bench. Their testimony, along with others, would be critical at the 1949 inquest.

Reconstructing the Scene

The header image for this post is a reconstruction based on police photographs. Here's what you're looking at:

The photograph itself was taken by Detective Jimmy Durham, likely on Wednesday or Thursday of that week. I've enhanced it to show what the scene looked like, removing the large X that marked the body's location in the original police file and adding a reconstructed figure of the man in that exact spot. The sky is from a pre-dusk image I've layered in for atmosphere.

What He Was Wearing

According to police reports, the Somerton Man wore:

• A dark double-breasted jacket with a faint broad stripe
• Matching dark trousers
• A white shirt
• A red, white, and blue striped tie in a diagonal "heart-to-sword" pattern
• A pullover

Unfortunately, no clear photographs exist of some of these garments.

The Critical Detail: Body Position

The steps visible in the photograph allowed me to calculate precise measurements. Using a standard step height of 7 inches and accounting for the wood thickness, I estimate the low sea wall stood approximately 30 inches high.

This measurement is more significant than it might first appear.

The Somerton Man was 5 feet 11 inches tall. A 30-inch wall would align with his upper torso, not just his head. This matters because if only his head had been resting against the wall—as some initial reports suggested—his body would have been stretched nearly flat with his chin pressed to his chest. In that position, a cigarette could not have remained resting on his collar, as described in court documents.

Yet the cigarette was found on his collar.

This suggests the man was positioned more upright against the wall than some accounts indicate—a detail that raises questions about how he came to be in that position.

The Weather: A Crucial Context

Understanding the weather conditions helps establish the timeline and physical conditions at the scene.

November 30th, 1948 (the day before discovery): The weather reports indicate moderate temperatures and clear conditions for Adelaide.

December 1st, 1948 (discovery day): Similar conditions prevailed.

What's more interesting is what the newspaper archives reveal beyond weather. The Adelaide Advertiser's lost and found column from November 30th shows the ordinary life of the city continuing—lost bus tickets, misplaced items. Against this mundane backdrop, something extraordinary was unfolding on Somerton Beach.

The Timeline Question No One Asks

Here's where the evidence gets troubling.

The distance from the Esplanade road to the beach floor, combined with the presence of seaweed and sand mounds against the low sea wall, tells us something important: there was a spring tide on the night of November 30th.

Spring tides are significantly higher than normal tides. They would have brought water much closer to—and possibly over—the low sea wall where the body was found.

This raises a serious question: Could the Somerton Man's body have been in that position throughout the night of November 30th? Or did it arrive at the scene on the morning of December 1st?

The physical evidence of tide patterns, sand displacement, and the body's relatively dry condition suggest the timeline may not be as straightforward as initially believed. This is a thread we'll explore in depth in a future post.

A Note on Beginnings

Strictly speaking, the Somerton Man story began earlier—on the morning of November 30th, 1948, at Adelaide Railway Station, where, some weeks later, Detectives recovered a suitcase that apparently was linked to the man on the beach.

But from the perspective of public discovery, the mystery truly began when John and Margaret Lyons decided to take their evening walk.

Forty minutes. Three kilometers. The timeline starts here...

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Coming Next: The inquest testimonies—what John Lyons, Gordon Strapps, Olive Neill, and others told the court, and what their accounts reveal about those crucial hours.

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