The lights on the Promontory

Cliffy Island and its lighthouse, but I found out so much that Cliffy Island might have to wait a little.

There was a huge need for lighthouses in Bass Strait for many years. The Wilson Promontory light, the Cape Otway light and the Cape Wickham light on King Island were built in 1857-59, 1848 and 1861 respectively and they provided a triangle of reference points for ships.

The western entrance to Bass Strait was known as "The Eye of the Needle". If you did not bring your ship through here very carefully you stood a good chance of dying with your ship, as many did.

I was surprised to find just how many lighthouses there were around the Promontory. It follows, of course, because, as George Bass said, it is the cornerstone of this continent. Ships don't want to waste time and fuel by staying too far out as they round that great granite outcropping but there are many small islands in the Strait, and many of them are close to Wilson Promontory.

The currents here run swiftly and two main ocean currents meet here, sometimes creating mountainous waves.

Therefore more lights followed, and around the Promontory there were lights at Cape Liptrap, Citadel Island, Cliffy Island, and two more which were 'beacons' rather than lighthouses, one at Waterloo Point and one just around the southern corner of Sealers Cove. I don't know anything about those last two – yet.

I still don't know too much about the light on Citadel Island, the island is part of the Glennie Group, west of the Promontory and clearly visible as you drive down to Tidal River. The light was built in 1913, about the same time as the Cape Liptrap light, and was "the first automatic acetylene light installed by the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service".

It was one of several lights built in this very, very dangerous area for shipping. It could be seen 20 nautical miles seaward, or 37 kilometres.

In 1982 the light became solar-powered, which must have been one of the first uses of solar power in Victoria. The original light was taken apart and more or less dumped at Port Albert. Happily the Port Albert Maritime Museum somehow obtained the light and restored it for display.

This light was not on the southernmost point of Australia's mainland but close. South Point is a short way to the west but there is not much in it. Incidentally, if you stand there are look southward the islands you see are actually in Tasmania. I'm not sure of the mechanics of this but the Tasmanian border comes very close here.

The Wilsons Promontory Lighthouse and keepers' cottages were built by convicts , this being in 1857-59. It was built on a high, well-scoured granite cape, 90 metres about mean sea level. The granite was local, but I'm not sure exactly where it was cut – that would have left a decent scar. On the other hand it is hard to see all that granite being brought in by ships, especially with that huge height to deal with.

The contractor was P.S. Sinclair, from North Melbourne and two public servants, James Balmain and Charles Maplestone, of the Public Works Department, overseeing it all. I wonder about the accommodation issues, because here was more than a year of living on that great, bare rock.

The light cost 19,000 pounds so Sinclair could have profited greatly. Half the money, incidentally, was provided by the Government of New South Wales. The other half must have been difficult for Victoria to find, despite this being at the height of the Victorian gold rushes. We became a separate colony on 1 July 1851so the Victorian Legislative Council would not have had too much spare money in the tin. It is interesting that convict labour was used because by the time Victorians were very much against transportation.

There were four cottages built in the lighthouse enclosure, surrounded by very necessary stone walls. The lighthouse was a giant white finger until in 1980 the paint was stripped off it and it was left in its natural stone colour.
I found a description of the cottages.

A visitor in 1935 noted the maritime atmosphere at the lighthouse, comparing the light station to "a ship on dry land". Lorenzo Robertson commented:
"There is a man-o'-war's orderliness about it, a crack-liner spotlessness, a nautical routine, a personnel whose brown, brawny arms tattooed with anchors and ugly ladies indubitably proclaim them old sailormen. The interiors of the cottages had the unmistakeable ship-like smell of fresh paintwork and salt. There are pictures of ships on the walls, models of ships in cases over the mantlepieces, photographs framed in little cork lifebuoys, sea boots standing on sea chests, burnished copper jugs, neat coils of rope, sou'westers and oilskins on pegs…."

The granite buildings, whitewashed and red-roofed, reminded him of a Cornish fishing village.
A bushfire destroyed two of the cottages in 1952, though they should have been safe, a long way from the forest. They were rebuilt and they housed those families of the the men who took to the remote life of a light-keeper.

At one point there was even a school, of sorts.
William Fish had an appropriate name given that in 1880 he lived at the Wilson Promontory lighthouse, almost surrounded by water, water that was often very dangerous.

He and two men named Louden and Kilby, presumably assistant keepers, joined him in asking for a school to be established at the lighthouse compound. They offered to put in fourteen pounds and the Chief Harbour Master, Charles Payne, whose name was given to Paynesville, agreed and the Education Department leased a storeroom at the light. It would have been a very basic facility.

The school opened on September 13, 1880 under head teacher Mary Dwyer. She had fourteen pupils, all the children of the lighthouse keepers.
Ms Dwyer must have been a courageous person to take on the task. She came down from Melbourne on the SS Pharos, the lighthouse replenishment vessel, and was winched ashore because there was no safe landing for a ship.

Unfortunately some of the light keeping team were dismissed and when they left the school had only six pupils left. The school closed on December 31, 1880.
Much later, in 1910, there was a proposal to reopen SS 2278 Wilson Promontory half-time with SS3657, on Cliffy Island. The idea was that the teacher would spend three months at a time at each school. I doubt there would have been many teachers interested but in the end lightkeeper transfers meant the enrolments dropped to three on Wilson Promontory and none at all on Cliffy Island.

I have found several stories' worth of facts about the group of lights centred on the promontory, and I will come back to them soon.