50 Australian Geographic
PREVIOUS PAGE: ANDREW GREGORY (AG); THIS PAGE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AUSTRALIA (NAA)Emanating from Australia’s most southerly light-
house, this signal became our sole companion as our 12m
yacht speared into the gathering dusk. Nearing South
East Cape, the beam grew faint. Half an hour later it
was gone and we were alone in the Southern Ocean’s
implacable darkness.
Like the Maatsuyker light itself, this nocturnal sail was
a glimpse into another world – of lives lived in the sway
of the ocean swell, with the rush of unseen waves break-
ing astern and any number of hazards waiting in
the blackness. Two centuries ago, such gloom was all-
encompassing for ships struggling to navigate Australia’s
night-time shores. Apart from the chance of sighting a
coastal campfi re or wild blaze, the only light was the faint
glow of a coal-burning brazier hoisted on Signal Hill above
Sydney’s South Head.
By 1818 the Macquarie Lighthouse, Australia’s fi rst,
was on this same site. Its classical 26m-high tower housed
oil lanterns and refl ectors that punched a strong beam
seawards. So began the remarkable project to secure
Australia’s 35,880km maritime perimeter. Lighthouse
construction picked up from the mid-1840s as new
settlements along the underside of the continent scram-
bled to ensure the safe passage of ships to their ports.A
LTHOUGH OFTEN DISTANT from the public gaze,
these structures were among Australia’s grittiest
19th-century engineering feats. Teams of
stonemasons battled isolation and storms to erect sturdy
towers, typically hewn from cliff -top stone.
For colonies wholly dependent on maritime trade, the
lighthouses were indispensable. As well as their practical
role, they stood as resolute symbols of order in a chaotic
new world ruled by the Southern Ocean’s mood swings.
With Federation came the Lighthouses Act 1911. By then
most of the key lighthouses in southern waters were up
and shining. Responsibility for this network of state-
run landfall and coastal beacons eventually passed to
the federal government, and July 2015 marked 100
years since the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service
formally took on the role.
Yorkshire-born civil engineer Joshua Ramsbotham
was its fi rst director; appropriately tall and imperious,
he oversaw the construction of more than 40 additional
lighthouses during his 11-year term. Over its 100-year
history, the service not only expanded its coverage, it also
kept up a push to modernise light and lens technology.
Inseparable from these waves of technological change
was the march to automation. By 1991 operational dutiesON A GREY AUTUMN evening nearly 20 years ago,
I was sailing with friends off the wild south coast of
Tasmania. The only fl icker of civilisation along this
300km shoreline was behind the boat to the far west.
Every 30 seconds, two brief pulses of light winked at
us across the ocean from Maatsuyker Island.