The find is special for Australia, the wreck having eluded searchers for 66 years.
The ship represented both honour and tragedy for the country when she went down in November 1941. She fought a spirited action with the German cruiser Kormoron, but eventually sank with all 645 crew, after taking some 50 direct hits and being finished off by torpedoes.
The find was made by British wreck-hunter David Mearns who, funded by Britain's Channel 4, located and filmed the wrecks of the German battleship Bismarck and British battlecruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic.
This time, Mearns headed a $5 million project aboard an offshore survey vessel that departed from Geraldton, Western Australia.
Mearns was reported to have felt he could locate the Sydney after ferreting out a secret signal sent by the captain of the Kormoron, which also sank not far from the Australian ship. 317 German crew were rescued and held in Australia for the rest of the war.
Mearns first located the Kormoron from the new information he had obtained, combined with testimonies from the imprisoned German crew members. Using sophisticated deep-sea survey equipment, he went on to locate the Sydney, 12 miles from the German vessel, after three weeks at sea.
Plans are afoot to return to the site to carry out a more extensive examination and filming.
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