Larry,
 
We're haven't finished cataloguing the site yet, but we have a significant deposit of carbon battery/electrode rods from a site we excavated last year.  
 
The site in question is a c.1844 - c.1900 residential cottage [torn down c.1910) in the small Victorian [in both senses, I suppose] port of Port Albert.  It was lived in by one of the Port Pilots responsible for guiding ships into port.  The presence of battery rods, with their very late 19th-century TPQ, has in fact been useful in helping to separate out occupation/construction features (none) from destruction layers/features (a small quantity) and post-destruction fill (huge numbers - though the modern plastic in that fill might also be a teensy bit of a giveaway...).
 
If you're interested in more details, just e-mail me at my work address ([log in to unmask])
 
Of course, this raises the question of to what extent the US patent dates listed in previous replies are relevant to Australia specifically....  Perhaps Iain or one of the other Australia-based list members might have some thoughts on this.  
 
And because I'm too lazy to do a separate Cutty Sark reply.... apologies if this has already been posted (I get the digest version of histarch, which occasionally means I'm a little behind), but following up from Pat Reynold's reply that it doesn't seem to be as bad as first thought.... last time I checked the BBC, they were saying that only the decks had been irretrievably lost.  As Pat noted, significant parts of the ship had been removed for conservation, and this included fully 50 % of the ship's planking (along with the masts, figurehead, etc).  Of the planking that remained, it seems that they were scorched, but not destroyed.  Which isn't to downplay the significance of the damage, but fortunately the ship certainly hasn't been 'destroyed'.
 
Alasdair Brooks