Bart Bear's Blog

Here's one of the lighthouses that we walked to in Sydney. It is Hornby lighthouse on the cliffs at South Head. The entrance to Sydney Harbour is between North and South Heads and is nearly a mile wide. You would think that ships would have no problem finding their way through a gap like that, but back in 1857 there were two shipwrecks, one on each side of the heads, and 142 people were killed. The "Dunbar" was caught in a gale in August 1857 and hit the cliffs at the Gap near Watson's Bay and there was only 1 survivor of the 122 people on board. Two months later the "Catherine Adamson" was wrecked off North Head and 21 sailors died. Obviously, a lighthouse at the entrance was needed so Hornby was built in 1858. It is a really pretty lighthouse, not very tall but painted in red and white stripes. As usual, I climbed up the steps and tried the door and, as usual, it was locked. Sometimes you can find lighthouses that you go up inside, but Hornby is not one of them. The little square gazebo thingy at the base of the lighthouse is the remains of a searchlight station from World War Two. The searchlight used to light up ships coming into harbour so that they could be identified and if they were baddies the guns mounted on the clifftop could zap them. The guns were only ever fired for practice because the only baddies that got through the Heads were some Japanese midget submarines, but that's another story that I will show and tell another time.

Labels: lighthouse, New South Wales, Sydney