The biggest star failed to shine but another bright one emerged to provide the highlight of Australia's modest diving campaign in London.
While an injury-marred preparation took its toll on defending 10m platform champion Matthew Mitcham, 16-year-old Brittany Broben ensured Australia didn't leave empty handed by claiming a surprise silver medal in the women's event.
As the youngest member of Australia's Olympic team, Broben showed mental strength beyond her years to secure a medal with her final dive and signal exciting potential for the future.
While Australia missed out on a third successive platform diving gold following Chantelle Newbery (2004) and Mitcham (2008), the wait for another may not be long based on Broben's performance.
She will be 20 at the 2016 Games in Rio but, in a further sign of her maturity, Broben is not getting ahead of herself.
"I'm just thinking about junior worlds (in October) at the moment," Broben said, when asked about her prospects for Rio.
"I have no idea what the future holds but this will be pretty hard to top."
While Mitcham had planned on retirement after London, he indicated he would keep diving after failing to qualifying for the platform final in London.
On the back of a preparation hampered by a troublesome abdominal muscle injury, Mitcham suggested he could make a full time switch to springboard diving to ease the load on his body.
Melissa Wu also came to London with recent injury woes and fell just short of adding a second medal for Australia in an encouraging return to form.
She was fourth by just 1.1 points in the 10m platform final while veteran Loudy Wiggins and Rachel Bugg attained the same result in the synchronised platform.
Sharleen Stratton was a solid performer as she finished fifth in both the individual 3m springboard and the synchro event along with Anabelle Smith.
Ethan Warren, 20, showed encouraging signs as he finished seventh in the men's springboard final but James Connor failed to progress from the platform preliminaries.
Despite some promising signs, it was Australia's lowest number of diving medals collected since Atlanta 1996.
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