Cape Bruny lighthouse stairs from floor
10:00am 23 April 1987
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″
65mm Schneider Super Angulon,
f45 65 seconds,
Fujichrome 50.

Here we are looking directly up as the lighthouse pretends to be a nautilus.  The cast iron staircase was manufactured in Britain and assembled on site.  While it is bolted to the wall, it largely supports its own weight.

Although I used a tripod, I was lying on my back on the middle of the floor when I took this shot.

Cape Bruny lighthouse
1:00pm 23 April 1987
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″
65mm Schneider Super Angulon
f16 1/4 second + polariser,
Fujichrome 50.

The Cape Bruny lighthouse is on the southern tip of Bruny island and commands the D’Entrecasteau Passage on the south-western approach to Hobart.  Governor Arthur recommended a lighthouse as early as 1825 but nothing was done at that time. Then three ships went down in 1835.  One hundred and thirty-four drowned with the convict transport George III (and probably many in chains), seventeen drowned with the Enchantress and no lives were lost when the Wallace went down.  This led to the construction of the lighthouse in 1838, which was built with convict labour.

Cape Bruny lighthouse and houses
1:00pm 23 April 1987
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″
65mm Schneider Super Angulon
f16 1/4 second + polariser,
Fujichrome 50.

It is not possible to combine the two preceding images into a panorama because they were not taken precisely at the same places and the perspective is different. The second image shows the lighthouse cottages as well as the lighthouse.

One lighthouse keeper, William John Hawkins, stayed at Cape Bruny lighthouse for thirty-seven years, from 1877 to 1914, the longest duration of any lighthouse keeper.

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All these images are taken with my 1937 Rolleiflex, handheld.  Just some quick images before I had to move on.  I presume the structure above is a guard tower.  It has 1835 inscribed above the door.

There is some connection with lighthouses here, too.  If you were a very lucky prisoner in the early years you might get offered a commutation of the sentence to be a lighthouse keeper instead.  Not that there was any luxury associated with that.  One unfortunate individual was dropped on a Bass Strait island with supplies and building materials but the next night a big storm came through and washed them all away.  He led a desperate existence until the boat returned three or six months later and by that time had gone quite mad.  Whether he was a prisoner I don’t remember.

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Port Arthur became the main colonial prison in Australia and the prison for the most hardened recalcitrants.  It started operations in 1833 and the last convict transported from England was in 1837.  The prison operated until 1877.  Because it was on a peninsula with a very narrow ithmus it was very difficult to escape from and few succeeded.  One who managed to escape several times was a very colourful character called Martin Cash.  There are 1,466 convicts buried there, along with 180 staff and military personnel.

Perhaps somewhat ironically, Port Arthur also became the scene of a massacre in 1996 when the psychopathic simpleton Martin Bryant killed 35 people and injured another 23.

Tasman Island after sunset.
5:15pm 27th July 1987,
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″,
f11 6 seconds,
65mm Schneider Super Angulon,
Fujichrome 50.

Sunset was at five and I took some images then with the Rolleiflex but I don’t have those.  The first three here are successive images after sunset.

Tasman Island
5:30pm 27 July 1987
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f5.6 20 seconds, Fujichrome 50

Tasman Island, guarding the entrance to Storm Bay, was a late arrival as a lighthouse being built in 1906.  Contact with the mainland was by carrier pigeon, which could be hazardous for the birds.  Due to the exposed nature of the lighthouse, wind-generated powed was trialled in 1975 and this led to automation of the lighthouse in 1977, one of the first to be automated.

Tasman Island after sunset.
5:40pm 27th July 1987,
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″,
f6.8 25 minutes,
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon,
Fujichrome 50.

The Tasmanian Office insisted on sending a minder along “for my safety”.  My preference for the night was to sleep on the narrow path at the top of the cliffs so I could be in position at dawn but this was not to be.

Tasman Island from Cape Pillar.
10:00pm 28th July 1987,
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″,
f11 1/25 second + polariser,
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon,
Fujichrome 50.
(This image was the frontispiece in the From Dusk Till Dawn)

My minder friend would have had conniptions if he had seen where I took this photograph at 10 AM the next morning. I was on the edge of a sheer cliff and I let myself down into a little ledge with drops of 600 or 800 feet on both sides.  The image does illustrate well some of the important characteristics of the island though and you may wish to click on it to see it larger.

You can see the small boat like a tug in the water. It’s heading towards a rock that is just before the left-hand corner of the island. From that rock there is a flying fox that goes up to a landing and a small building. You can actually see the wire on the full-sized image.  Before the advent of helicopters that was the only way on or off the island. Beyond the landing there is a way or Cornish wooden railway. At the top you can see a small white building. That was a capstan where a team of horses or bullocks dragged the cars up or down. All building materials as well as  all people got onto the island that way.

One lighthouse keeper’s wife told me of one occasion when they were slowly being dragged up and had almost got to the top until the horses or oxen got tangled up and started going the other way round. They slowly went backwards all the way down to the landing.

To get into the flying fox, you had to jump into the basket at the top of the wave and time it precisely. Another keeper’s wife told me that having got onto the island via the flying fox and the wooden railway, she vowed never to make the journey again until she came to leave. The keepers got holidays from time to time but she just stayed on the island.

Eddystone Point Lighthouse near Sunset.
5:00pm
25th July 1987,
Nagaoka Field Camera 5×4″,
f16 2.5 or 1.5 seconds plus polariser,
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon,
Fujichrome 50
(Low-res scan from book)

The Eddystone Point lighthouse was built in 1889 and like the lighthouse at Gabo Island, was constructed of red granite quarried at the site.  It is 37 metres high.

Eddystone Point at Sunset
Nagaoka 5×4″ Field Camera
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f5.6 12 seconds
Fujichrome 50

It was built after several boats were wrecked on the coast and a large rock discovered hidden under the water nearby.  The miniature white “tower” beside the lighthouse is a subsidiary light directed at a specific set of rocks that was discontinued after the electrification of the lighthouse.

Eddystone Point Lighthouse and rocks at dawn
7:20am 26 July 1987
1937 Rolleiflex twin lens reflex with 75mm Tessar
f3.5 1/10 sec
Fujichrome 50

I was told several tales of sightings of thylacines when I was both at Eddystone Point and Low Head.  One I remember was of two policemen sitting in their car beside the road when a thylacine crossed in front of them but they weren’t game to report it for fear of ridicule.  North-east Tasmania has the highest incidence of reported Thylacine sightings.  I can well believe there might still have been a few in the region at that time.

]]> http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/15/eddystone-point/feed/ 7 murrayfoote Eddystone1 Eddystone Point at Sunset Nagaoka 5x4" Field Camera 150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar f5.6 12 seconds Fujichrome 50 Eddystone-Point-Lighthouse-and-rocks-at-dusk-6x6-Edit http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/13/low-head/ http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/13/low-head/#comments Sun, 12 May 2013 15:59:11 +0000 Murray Foote http://murrayfoote.com/?p=9285 Continue reading →]]> Low Head is on the northern coast of Tasmania, near Launceston.  I visited the lighthouse on 24th and 25th July 1987.

Low Head Lighthouse
4:50pm 24 July 1987
Arca Swiss Monorail 5×4″
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon
f32 12 seconds, Fujichrome 50

The original Low Head lighthouse was built in 1832, the second lighthouse in Tasmania and the third in Australia.  However, the original lighthouse deteriorated and the current one replaced it in 1888.  The red band was added in 1926.

The building beside the tower predates the current lighthouse and probably dates from the original one.  According to my notes it was once used as a schoolhouse.

Low Head after sunset
5:40pm 24 July 1987
Nagaoka 5×4″ Field Camera
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f5.6 8 seconds, 12 seconds (two exposures)
Fujichrome 50

Here is the lighthouse and buildings after sunset.  It stands at the head of the Tamar river, the main maritime access to Launceston, the main port in northern Tasmania.

Interior of Low Head Lighthouse
2:30pm 24 July 1987
Arca Swiss Monorail 5×4″
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon
f32 6 minutes, Fujichrome 50

This is the spiral staircase, desk and visitors’ book at the entrance to the Low Head lighthouse.

At this time, one of the northern Tasmanian lighthouses, either Low Head or Eddystone Point (which we shall see next), had the task of recording weather readings.  These days this would be automated.  In 1987, however, this required that every three hours, day or night, the lighthouse keeper recorded a set of readings in a log book and probably radioed them to the Meteorological Office.

Deal Island lighthouse.
2:20pm 21 July 1987
Nagaoka 5×4″ Field Camera,
150mm Linhof Schneider Symmar,
f22 1/10 second + polariser,
Fujichrome 50.

The lighthouse at Deal Island was built in 1847 and the chief architect & builder was a convict, Charles Watson, who was transported to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) in 1827 for receiving stolen goods.  The lighthouse is twenty metres high and it did not need to be very tall as it is situated 280 metres above sea level and is probably the most elevated lighthouse in the southern hemisphere.   However, its very elevation meant that it was often obscured by cloud or fog.

Deal Lighthouse from ruined convict cottage
1937 Rollieflex twin lens reflex

Originally there were two cottages near the lighthouse for assistant lighthouse keepers who at least initially were likely to be convicts.  (I think the keepers explained the convict presence when I was there but this was not uncommon for the early lighthouses of Van Diemen’s Land).  So here we see the lighthouse from the window of a ruined cottage.  The alignment of the window is likely to be no accident so the keepers could look out and check  that the light was going.  Their location near the top of a hill did also make them occasionally susceptible to bush fires.

Deal Island Lighthouse and Cottages.
I must have taken this one from the plane or helicopter in the way in but I don’t know which camera or lens.
(Low res scan from book).

Originally the Head Keeper had a comfortable cottage down near the sea while the two assistant keepers stayed in the cottages near the top.  Access to the lighthouse from the Head Keeper’s cottage or the wharf was by horse and cart or by walking so would have taken a while.  Much later, access to the lighthouse by motor vehicle became possible so the second and third cottages were relocated near the Head Keeper’s cottage down below in 1936 and 1960.

]]> http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/12/deal-island/feed/ 5 murrayfoote Deal-Lighthouse Deal-Lighthouse-from-Cottage-Ruin-6x6 Deal1 http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/10/points-hicks/ http://murrayfoote.com/2013/05/10/points-hicks/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 15:40:28 +0000 Murray Foote http://murrayfoote.com/?p=9232 Continue reading →]]> I visited Point Hicks lighthouse on 25th to 26th April 1987 and again on 17 July 1987.

Point Hicks Jetty
25 April 1987
Nikon FE 35mm
28mm Vivitar Series 1?
Fujichrome 50

This is the historic lighthouse jetty for Point Hicks lighthouse, clearly no longer in use.  This was their sole lifeline in the nineteenth century and even by the 1920s it took two days by horse to reach the nearby settlement of Cann River, only 20 kilometres away.  Using the jetty may have required the high tide unless it was originally much longer.

Point Hicks lighthouse at sunset
Arca-Swiss 5×4″ monorail camera
5:10pm 26 April 1987
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon
f22 either 1 or 2 seconds plus polariser
Fujichrome 50

Sunset at Point Hicks on a calm autumn day in 1987.  Point Hicks was the first land in Australia sighted by Cook and is named after Lieutenant Zachary Hickes, who first saw land.  However, the location he gave in his log was out at sea and since no-one could determine where he had sighted land it was known as Cape Everard.  Then in the 1970s, some Melbourne schoolchildren doing a project on Cook realised his log was 24 hours out and correcting for this put Pt Hicks at what was then known as Cape Everard.  Consequently the name was restored to Pt Hicks.

It looks calm here but if it were always like this there would probably be no lighthouse.  In 1947, an assistant lighthouse keeper was taken by the sea while tending his lobster pots.

Point Hicks lighthouse, cottage and star trails
9:00pm 25 April 1987
Nikon FE
16mm fisheye
f3.5 25 minutes

This is a twenty five minute exposure by the light of the full moon and we are looking almost exactly south, which is why the stars are tracing circles.

Point Hicks lighthouse in early morning
Arca-Swiss 5×4″ monorail camera
6:45am 26 April 1987
65mm Schneider Super Angulon (?)
f16 either 1/2 or 4 seconds plus polariser
Fujichrome 50

Point Hicks lighthouse in the early morning light.  The lighthouse was built in 1888/89 of concrete and commenced operation in 1890.  The cottages are made of wood.  At thirty-seven metres, it is the tallest lighthouse on the Australian mainland.

Point Hicks Stairwell from below
25 April 1987
Nikon FE 35mm
16mm Fisheye
Fujichrome 50

This is a view looking straight up the lighthouse from below, with illumination by daylight (from the open door on the ground floor and a window near the top).

View through lens
25 April 1987
Nikon FE 35mm
16mm Fisheye
Fujichrome 50

Here we are standing inside the first-order lens of Point Hicks lighthouse.  As usual, the view through is upside down, with the clouds on the bottom and the sea on the top.  The glass is red over to the left because if the mariners can see that, they are on a dangerous bearing.

View of lens from top
25 April 1987
Nikon FE 35mm
16mm Fisheye
Fujichrome 50

This is looking down on the lens from above.  We are still inside the lantern room at the top of the lighthouse.

Point Hicks stairwell from below
Arca-Swiss 5×4″ monorail camera
9:00am 26 April 1987
65mm Schneider Super Angulon
f32 20 seconds
Fujichrome 50

This is another view looking straight up the stairwell of the lighthouse but the door is now closed and ground floor illumination is by artificial light.  The lighting further up is still daylight.  This is an image from a large format camera rather than the previous fisheye image on 35mm film.

S.S. Faros, sunk 1937 and wrecked on the rocks
6:00pm 26 April 1987
Arca-Swiss 5×4″ monorail camera
90mm Linhof Schneider Angulon
f6.8 25 minutes
Fujichrome 50

The remains of the bow of the S.S. Faros, which sunk nearby in 1937.  All passengers and crew were saved.  The lighthouse keeper told me the ship originally sunk in the sea and the bow we see here washed up some years later on these rocks during another storm.

This is a twenty-minute exposure.  By the time I had finished it was dark and neither of us had brought a torch.  We had to gingerly pick our way back over the rocks.

Looking down Point Hicks stairwell to Keeper on pulley
Arca-Swiss 5×4″ monorail camera
17 July 1987
90mm Schneider Super Angulon
Fujichrome 50

Finally, here is an exposure I took when I came back for the second time.  It took me quite some time to set up the view camera on my heavy Manfrotto 85B tripod, centred in the tower and with the tripod tied in place for good measure.  There was too much light coming in the window from the level just below us so the keeper hung a sheet over it.

You can see him down the bottom of the tower and his name is Chris Richter.  In the early days of the lighthouse, the light was rotated by a clockwork mechanism in turn powered by a weight that slowly dropped down the tower.  Every now and then the keepers had to wind the weight back up again from the lantern room, which may have kept them fit just doing that.  When the clockwork mechanism was converted to electric, a block and tackle was installed instead so the keepers could lift heavy weights up to the top, as we see here.

(Note of trivia:  With this post we’ve passed 100 lighthouse images and 2,000 images for the Blog).

Gabo Lighthouse
Nagaoka 5×4″ Field Camera
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f22 1/5 sec + polariser
(part of panorama now lost)
(Low-res scan from book)

Gabo Island lighthouse was built in 1862 and stood 47 metres high, the third highest in Australia.  As you can see from the colour of the rocks and the lighthouse, the source of the stone was nearby.  The tower has a subtle curve, indicating the design was based on British lighthouses that were directly exposed to the action of the sea.  Usually it would have taken a tsunami for that to apply here, but as we shall see below, there was at least one occasion when that may have come in useful.

Gabo Wharf & Storehouse
Nagaoka 5×4″ Field Camera
Schneider Xenar 240mm
f22 1/10 sec + polariser
(low res scan from book).

This is the wharf and the storehouse for the island and I presume is where I arrived at and left the island (it was definitely by sea).  These predate even the temporary lighthouse and were built in the 1830s for whaling operations.  The first effort to build a lighthouse was in 1846 but failed because they were expecting to find bedrock for foundations at eight feet but encountered it only at sixty-eight feet.

Then in 1853 the steamship Monumental City sank near Gabo Island with the loss of thirty-three lives. Consequently, the first lighthouse, a temporary wooden structure, was erected near here in late 1853 and the keepers camped in the whalers’ hut which at that time had no roof.  One of the legs of this tower was damaged when brought ashore so the builders adapted the keel of a nearby sunken ship.  They were also left only one-third of the promised rations and had to mainly survive for the first three months on shark meat acquired by fishing.  The keepers again ran very low on supplies in 1854.

Gabo Island lighthouse pano from south
(in rain and spray and haste)
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f22 1sec + polariser

This is the only image of the three for which I have a scan of a slide, or in this case, three slides which I digitally combined.  My notes indicate that it was starting to rain and I had to complete the exposures in some haste.  Large format lenses have open shutters that do not like rain.  The old lenses I was using were also uncoated and the middle exposure had considerable flare and fogging.  Fortunately I was able to largely recover from this in digital post-processing.

After a huge storm in 1884, the high-water mark was recorded above and behind the keepers’ cottages.  That there was no loss of life would have been because all families took shelter in the lighthouse.  After the same storm at Iron Pot lighthouse, in the harbour outside Hobart, the keepers had to remove kelp from the railing outside the lighthouse lantern room.

Green Cape Lighthouse
6 April 1987
Arca Swiss Monorail 5×4″
150mm Linhof Schneider Technika Symmar
f11 30 seconds, Fujichrome 50

Green Cape lighthouse was constructed in 1883 and is made of concrete.  It has an octagonal structure on a square base which made it easier to pour the concrete.  It stands thirty metres high.

The bay to the south of the lighthouse is called Disaster Bay and there were many wrecks here before the lighthouse was built, perhaps because the point stands out a bit from the sweeping line of the coast.  There was also a famous wreck in 1886 when the steamer Ly-ee-moon foundered on the rocks just below the lighthouse.  The bosun and three seamen made it to shore as the ship broke in two.  A keeper and some seamen managed to get a line to the fore section and rescued the fifteen people there but heavy seas prevented them reaching the aft section and it sunk overnight so that all seventy-one people on it drowned.

Ben Boyd lighthouse.
10.30am 7th April 1987.
Arca-Swiss monorail 5×4″,
65mm Schneider Super Angulon,
f32 1/2 second + polariser,
Fujichrome 50.

It’s a tall square tower twenty metres high, quite unlike any other Australian lighthouse.  If you click on it to enlarge it, you should be able to see the name “BOYD” engraved at the top. It was built by Ben Boyd during the 1840s and either never lit or only lit a few times.  Its use was never approved by the New South Wales Government.  Originally there were wooden floors and stairs inside the lighthouse but these were gone by 1987 and I would think it most unlikely that they were subsequently replaced.

Ben Boyd was a Scottish entrepreneur (originally based in London) and a founder of the Royal Bank of Australia in the late 1830s.  He came to Australia with £200,000 of debentures and proceeded to purchase extensive agricultural land, set up a steamship service between Melbourne and Sydney, and build a port (Boydtown) at Twofold Bay in Southern NSW to transport his farming produce.  The lighthouse was built on the southern point of Twofold Bay for the benefit of his nacscent township.

Ben Boyd came to financial grief through labour shortages, unwillingness to pay “fair” wages, attempted exploitation of Pacific labour, a failed insurance claim for a ship and general overambition.  The bank failed in 1847 and Boyd headed off to California to try his hand at the gold rush.  He also failed at that and headed back off across the Pacific to New Guinea to try another scheme but appears to have been killed in the Solomon Islands en route.