Bart Bear's Blog

Dad had to go down to Merimbula last week, to give a public talk on astronomy. Naturally, the rest of the crew (Mum, Scruffy, Blu, Milkshake and I) went too. We took a couple of extra days and made a road trip out of it. One of the places we went to was Green Cape lighthouse. Mum needed photos of it to add to her collection of lighthouses of Australia. Green Cape was built in 1883. It is the first concrete lighthouse tower in Australia and is the second tallest and most southerly lighthouse in New South Wales. These days the light does not shine, even though all the mechanism is there. In 1998 it was replaced by an automatic solar-powered light on the lattice tower. I don't think these modern lights are anywhere near as beautiful as the towers they are replacing. The thing we will always remember about Green Cape is that last week it at was at the end of what seemed like the most pot-holed road in Australia. Our little Mazda 3 had a tough job picking its way between holes that were deeper than our ground clearance and covered almost all of the road. It took us 45 minutes to drive the 23 kilometres of dirt road. So bad that the Oldies said that if the photos weren't good enough it was just too bad; they won't go out there again until the road is remade. No doubt about it, lighthouse visits take you to all sorts of out-of-the-way places.

Labels: lighthouse, New South Wales, south coast