Raby Bay Harbour at Cleveland was in the spotlight again on Monday morning as celebrity spotters crowded around the marina hoping for a glimpse of Hollywood stars Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp.
But onlookers had to be content with watching film crews and deck hands peel off plastic scaffolding which had been hiding the dark hull of the ghostly looking Dying Gull.
The single-mast ship, believed to be former The Rainbow Gypsy from Bundaberg, will play a lead role in Depp’s fifth instalment in the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
Film crew overhauled the boat, painting it to look like the ghost ship which was sinking when Johnny Depp’s character, Captain Jack Sparrow, emerged in the first movie.
The replica of an 1897 Scottish trawler motored into Raby Bay late Friday night with its hull still under wraps. It will be one of up to 12 different boats used in the latest instalment.
The Hollywood heartthrobs are halfway through filming the fifth in the popular Pirates series.
Although the majority of filming is on the Gold Coast, insiders from the Village Roadshow set told The Bulletin, the pair was likely to make a brief appearance at the Cleveland address.
Screen Queensland chief executive Tracey Vieira was tight-lipped about Redlands' role in filming.
However, insiders said producer Jerry Bruckheimer decided on Raby Bay so filming could be in calmer waters after some crew got seasick at the Gold Coast.
Depp, 51, is believed to be in the US for daughter Lily-Rose’s16th birthday but Bloom, 38, was spotted at Brisbane airport picking up his four-year-old son Flynn on Sunday.
Bloom will reprise his role as blacksmith-turned-pirate Will Turner in Dead Men Tell No Tales now just over midway through filming.
The Dying Gull sailed into Raby Bay Harbour a week after Depp hired a charter plane to fly two of his Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, back to the US because they allegedly had been brought into the country illegally.
Raby Bay has hosted A-list Hollywood celebrities twice before.
Angelina Jolie’s film “Unbroken” and “The Chronicles of Narnia” were previously filmed in Cleveland and Raby Bay.
The federal government spent $21.6 million to secure the production with the state offering an incentive package that included payroll tax concessions.
Pirates of the Caribbean 5 is slated for worldwide cinema release in July 2017.
A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a ship with no living crew aboard; it may be a ghostly vessel in folklore or fiction, such as the Flying Dutchman, or a real derelict found adrift with its crew missing or dead, like the Mary Celeste.
