56 Australian GeographicBass Strait’s inky waters. This is the Southern
Hemisphere’s highest located lighthouse and was report-
edly socked in by cloud 40 per cent of the time. Yet
lightkeepers maintained their vigil on this lonely citadel
until the light was finally decommissioned in 1992.
Parked at Bass Strait’s eastern entrance since 1848,
the Deal Island light was built as part of the race to
protect ships ‘threading the eye of the needle’. In the
same year, Victoria’s Cape Otway Lighthouse on the
north-western entrance was lit for the first time. Although
it was a welcome short cut for vessels making the 13,000-
nautical-mile voyage from the UK, the strait had a
fearsome reputation from day one.
More than 60 vessels were wrecked on King Island
alone, including the Cataraqui in 1845. It is among
Australia’s worst maritime disasters – of the 410 on
board, only nine survived.
By 1861 Cape Wickham at the island’s northern tip
boasted Australia’s tallest lighthouse. This massive
48m-high structure includes 11 flights of stairs and walls
3.4m thick at the base. Yet, incredibly, even this lofty
warning beam wasn’t enough. Several mistook this for
the Cape Otway light and, sailing on to the south,
slammed into the island’s west coast. The confusion
finally ended when the island’s second lighthouse was
built at Currie Harbour in 1880.
Further west, South Australia’s first lighthouse fired
up in 1852 atop the granite bluffs of Cape Willoughby.
On the eastern nubbin of Kangaroo Island, it marks
the entrance to Backstairs Passage, the skinny, 13km gap
separating the island from the mainland. Reefs
and strong currents notwithstanding, this is the main
shipping channel for vessels heading to Port Adelaide
from the east.M
Y FIRST SIGHT of Cape Willoughby was in 1971,
while I was on holiday on Kangaroo Island with
my dad. As our car swooped down the rough
limestone track to the Cape, the tower popped into view.
Although that vision made a big impression on my
schoolboy imagination, there was no inkling that 40
years later I would be living nearby and working at the
lighthouse as a guide.High beams. Completed in 1896, the Wadjemup Lighthouse (above) on
Rottnest Island, WA, was the first Australian beacon to feature a rotating beam;
at 38.7m it’s almost twice the height of the first tower built here in 1851. The
140m-high Smoky Cape Lighthouse (below) at South West Rocks, NSW, is the
state’s loftiest. It overlooks the splendour of Hat Head NP and helps to mark
the entrance to the Macleay River, as well as guide shipping traffic plying the
east coast. With an elegant octagonal tower and pavilion entrance – plus spiral
staircase and gunmetal balustrade – it’s among the last creations of
James Barnet, the most revered lighthouse architect of the colonial era.This massive 48m-high
structure includes 11 flights of
stairs and walls 3.4m thick at
the base... yet it wasn’t enough.
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