Dear List Members: A few weeks back I promised you a story on lighthouses. Now that this has been published in "The Mallacoota Mouth" I can send it to you all. Maria GABO ISLAND LIGHTHOUSE © 1999 Maria Brandl Other Australians may not have heard of our little town of Mallacoota, but almost everyone has heard of Gabo Island and knows of its lighthouse. But what do we know of it? Here is what a quick research turned up for me. I am sure others in town can add to this. A few years ago lighthouses were very common motifs in popular culture, just as owls and shells had been some years before. Lighthouses turned up on teatowels and coffee mugs, bed linen and greeting cards, a universal message that the owner was "in fashion". Lighthouses seem to provide more justification for such attention and more food for thought than a lot of the passing popular motifs. Lighthouses are like that candle in "The Merchant of Venice," about which one of Shakespeare's characters says, "So shines a good deed in a naughty world." This play appropriately relates the fortunes of the unlucky Antonio whose hopes foundered with his ships when lighthouses failed them. No doubt the popularity of these beacons in recent times has had much to do with their being a symbol of hope in darkness. The first recorded lighthouse in the world appears to have been on the promontory of Sigaeum near the Hellespont and the Sea of Marmora, in 660 B.C. not far from Gallipoli. The most enduring lighthouse would have to be the Pharos of Alexandria built around 261 B.C. and shining until it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 13th century. Of some 50,000 existing lighthouses world-wide 600 or so are to be found in Australia but many of these are no longer staffed. None of them are wave-tossed either as many depicted in the art illustrations that spark public imagination. When the fashion in lighthouses was at its peak I was also spending a lot of time near one of Australia's most famous, the light on Gabo Island. Australians hear that name repeatedly every year at the time of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race between Christmas and New Year. It is a name that strikes fear not hope into the heart of the experienced mariner who remembers the ships that have been wrecked there in living and recorded memory. Gabo Island was not always an island since in 1846 it was reported to be joined to the mainland near Cape Howe by a narrow sand spit but today it is about one kilometre from the coast due one supposes to the shifting sand deposits on this south-eastern tip of the Australian continent, looking for all the world like a heel or an elbow. Aborigines used the resources of the island in times past as their middens testify. They also gave its name to posterity for "Gabo" is an Aboriginalisation of the English name "Cape Howe" bestowed by Cook in 1770. Gabo Island sits about sixteen kilometres to the north-north-east of the small township of Mallacoota at the eastern entrance of treacherous Bass Strait, the strip of water that separates the large island continent of Australia from its smaller island state, Tasmania. Its light is not the oldest on our coast for the first was Macquarie Light in Sydney in 1817 but it is almost the highest at forty-seven or so metres. Victoria's first light was at Gellibrand, Williamstown in 1840 and today the existing light at Cape Otway is older. The Gabo Island site was proposed in 1845 by a Select Committee of Legislative Council of NSW and in 1846 a site was selected by C.J. Tyers on top of one of the highest of the sandy hummocks in the centre of the island. A Mr John Morris commenced the excavations for foundations for a lighthouse in that year and by 1847 £1350 (pounds) had been spent and excavations made to a depth of 66 feet. Then work stopped because the costs were so high. The real victim of this decision not to construct the light was the "Monumental City", a new barque-rigged steamship on a historic voyage as the first steamer to cross the Pacific (65 days from California to Sydney), for it was wrecked near Gabo, with a loss of 33 lives on 15 May 1853. As a consequence it was decided to erect a temporary light at Gabo immediately. Incidentally the "Monumental City" had been built in Baltimore in 1850 and had brought passengers to the Victorian gold diggings on its historic crossing of the Pacific. At the time she was wrecked the ship was returning to Sydney from Melbourne. When work on the lighthouse re-commenced the highest point was again chosen and by December 1853 a fixed white light shone from a six metre high timber tower. The instructions read: "Whenever a dense fog should occur the Superintendent will cause a gong to be sounded every minute, whether by day or night." Inevitably the wooden tower burned down and only then was a permanent lighthouse built on the site on the southeastern point of the island originally recommended by Captain Owen Stanley several years previously. Gabo Light stands today at latitude 37 degrees 34.4 minutes South and longitude 149 degrees 55.2 minutes East. For many years it was known as the Flinders Light since Matthew Flinders was one of the two navigators who established the existence of Bass Strait named for the other, George Bass. Of red granite quarried on the island, the masonry work in the tower is very fine indeed and retains the natural colour of the stone, never having been painted as many of our coastal beacons have. The two oldest of the light keepers' quarters built in 1860 are constructed of the same stone, but undressed. The same quarry on the island has provided red granite for a number of buildings in Sydney and Melbourne, for example the Melbourne Post Office and some was specially sent to London for use in constructing Australia House in the Strand. It has also been used in the construction of Mirabooka House, one of Mallacooota's heritage houses. The lantern from the 1853 temporary light was not transferred to the new lighthouse, for which a new lantern was specially brought from England. The light is still in service today, but with its original wick lamp replaced by an incandescent kerosene mantel burner in 1909, by an acetylene burner in 1917, and by a 120 volt tungsten halogen lamp when converted to electricity in 1935. In 1993 the light has been converted to solar power and the old prisms replaced. Its beam reaches just as far some say but others think it is not as bright as formerly. The change has meant that lighthouse keepers are no longer needed and the last ones left the 150 hectare island in 1995. The facility is now leased by a couple who have 80% occupancy for holiday-makers who like to go somewhere different. The island has many penguin and mutton-bird rookeries in its sand-dunes and snakes and ticks are said to be unknown. Access to it is by boat, or by light aircraft to a small grass strip built in 1973-4. On Gabo Island's western side stands a monument of granite to the memory of those who drowned in the wreck of the "Monumental City". In the local Mallacoota paper recently an abalone fisherman who has been in those waters for over thirty years said the seas in the area are safe for a boat to enter on an average of only two days per week. Gabo Light seems more to me than a landmark in my north-east. Through all the storms and turbulence that surround it Gabo Light shines on announcing to all that a safe course can be charted when times are difficult and visibility low, if one keeps the lamp burning and the signals consistent. I guess it also helps to know where you are going! If you are interested in lightouses and shipwrecks you might like to visit these sites: <http://www.lighthouse.net.au/lights/VIC/Index%20Vic.htm#EastGippslandCoast> and a good one on Gabo Island Lighthouse at: <http://www.lighthouse.net.au/lights/VIC/Gabo%20Island/Gabo%20Island.htm> Scuttled and Abandoned Ships in Australian Waters - Introduction (1 of 8) is at:<http://www.environment.gov.au/epg/pubs/boats_intro.html> Queen of Nations- AU Shipwreck is at: <http://www.1earth.net/~srk/queenofnations/> Yahoo! Social Science:Anthropology and Archaeology:Archaeology:Marine Archaeology:Shipwrecks is at: <http://dir.yahoo.com/Social_Science/Anthropology_and_Archaeology/Archaeology/Marine_Archaeology/Shipwrecks/> © 1999 Maria Brandl Note that a number of the statistics in this piece came from the book by Dacre Smyth: "The Lighthouses of Victoria, a second book of paintings, poetry and prose," published by Dacre Smyth, printed by Crystal Offset Printers. -- MMB marmarbrandl@trump.net.au Hobart - Tasmania - Australia