5 Feb Part 1: The Light

 

Early morning, Apollo Bay.

 

Back in the early 1800s, ships sailing from England to Australia often spent the whole journey without sight of land until they had to 'thread the needle', ie navigate the treacherous 90km gap through Bass Strait, between King Island to the south and Cape Otway to the north.  Given that navigation at that time was via sextant and chronometer using the sun, moon, and stars, the cloudy/fog bound waters of the Southern Ocean and Bass Strait were not conducive to accuracy when threading needles.  This led to many shipwrecks and much loss of life until, after a particularly bad wreck (The Cataraqui) the Government of the time decided to build a light house at Cape Otway.

Cape Otway lighthouse.

 

This was easier said than done, but long story short the lamp was lit on August 29, 1848, and many ships' Captains and seasick immigrants heaved a sigh of relief.  Well, kind of.  Things were better, but if it was cloudy no-one quite knew where King Island was and some ships got a little misplaced when heading south of Cape Otway and ended up bumping into King Island, which was not conducive to successful voyage completion.  Everybody heaved a sigh of relief when a light house was built on Cape Wickham, King Island, because now all they had to do was aim between the two lights and everything was hunky dory.

The light house keeper's residence/telegraph office.  Light keepers were provided with rations for themselves only, but usually brought their family with them and kept adding to the family all the while.  The Mrs Light Keepers, of whom not much is said, ran the family and kept a small farm to feed said family. 

 

Layers of paint tell of many years in the light keeper's house.

Well, kind of.  You see, some bright spark set the pattern of both light houses the same, and a brighter spark (or the same one, I don't know) didn't bother to let the Captains of the ships know.  Several unpleasant shipwrecks and an unacceptable loss of life later the pattern of the King Island light was altered, everybody who needed to know was told, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Again.

The Cape Otway lighthouse still stands, so we went to visit it from Apollo Bay and did so in far greater comfort and with more ease than the original parties who were sent out to hack their way through the forest to the Cape Otway site.  In fact, they pretty much gave up and shipped everything they needed in by sea to Parks River, and quarried the sandstone locally.  Even so, the 5km between Parks River and the lighthouse was pretty grueling without the benefits of bitumen roads and internal combustion engines.

During the Victorian gold rush in the mid 1800s up to 100 ships/day sailed through Bass Strait and past the light house.  This caused some problems for the light, as the poorly paid assistant light keepers developed a distressing tendency to want to jump ship land and take off to find their fortune rather than stick around spending half the night trimming wicks and polishing lamps while being bossed around by cranky light keepers.

From the top.

The modern light: nowhere near as interesting.  Or high maintenance.

The stone masons can apparently be identified by the chisel marks in the stone, each on having his own unique style.

The lighthouse shares the top of the cliffs with a WWII bunker which was part of a secret radar installation to keep a good eye on who was going through Bass Strait by air or sea.  The installation was so secret that none of the light house staff were allowed to fraternise with the secret radar staff, but allegedly this rule was severely bent by the light house children who pretty much ran between the two at will.  I was surprised to learn that during WWII 42 boats were sunk in/near to Australian waters by German raiders and Japanese submarines, and a cheeky German boat actually sailed through Bass Strait, dropping mines along the way. 

The things you learn.

One of the amenities not available to light keepers of yore was a decent cafe where one could partake of tea and scones. Lucky for us those hardships were long over and we relaxed with tea and scones overlooking the light before declaring the morning a success and heading for the hills for an afternoon adventure. 

But that's another story.

Some more light station information.