The Lure of the Lighthouse

In our travels around the Sapphire Coast yesterday, Nicole and I skimmed past a turn off to 'Green Cape'. This point is situated several kilometres south of Eden at the tip of the next bay and, as it's been the site of several shipwrecks over the past 150 years (leading to the aptly-named 'Disaster Bay' to the south), it bears some significant connection to the local history we had already explored. Amongst theses wrecks was the tragic destruction of the Ly-ee-moon, the second worst maritime disaster known to Australia.

The view from Disaster Bay Lookout is deceptively picturesque but these inky blue waters hold the wrecks of at least 9 ships from the mid-to-late 19th and early 20th centuries. At least one of these wrecks is of an unidentified vessel from the 1850s, the remains of which may be attributed to either of two ships lost at sea in this area around this time.

Getting to Green Cape lighthouse was a mission and a half. The road was unsealed and so it took nearly an hour for Nicole and I to drive across just 20 kilometres. The journey was definitely worth it though as I have long held a deep and unexplained fascination with lighthouses. Maybe it's attached to my fear of heights, or maybe it's attached to a beloved Doctor Who serial from the 1970s in which the Doctor travels to a 1900s lighthouse and faces off against an alien jellyfish (pictured below):

You should check it out. It's great.

The Green Cape lighthouse was built in the late 19th century and is supported by several Victorian-era houses. Despite the isolation of the lighthouse keeper and his two assistants, the houses were kept separated by fences so that a class system of sorts could be kept intact. You can now stay in these houses as they have been kept on as accommodation. Note the huge solar panel at the end of the path in the picture above, which demonstrates the changing face of lighthouse-technology.

It's quite easy to imagine the damage that these rocks could do to a ship if it ran aground near here. The Ly-ee-moon was found smashed to pieces in 1886, and 71 bodies were recovered from the water nearby. The second photograph above is taken by Nicole.

While walking back inland along the headland I stopped to take a photograph of something random. Nicole quickly grabbed me and whispered urgently, "Stop! Don't move. You scare everything off". I slowly turned around to see that she had spotted an echidna snuffling around in the dirt just a few metres from us. Its only defense its spines, the echidna tucked its little legs in and wedged itself up against some nearby sticks so that all we could see was a black ball of fur and yellow spikes. Once it thought we had gone it started moving again.

As you can see from Nicole's photograph above, the echidna lifted itself up out of its little hollow once we stopped moving. Random echidna fact: the Short-Beaked Echidna (the Australian species of echidna pictured here) has one of the shortest spinal chords of any mammal, and its entire body is covered by a large muscle just beneath the skin known as the 'panniculus carnosus'. This muscle allows the echidna to change the shape of its body to minimise vulnerability when it perceives danger to be nearby.

Our travel inland on the cape was to find the Ly-ee-moon Cemetery, which is only about half a kilometre or more from the lighthouse. The bodies that were pulled from the wreck were all buried on the cape as it wasn't possible in the late 19th century to transport them back to their families from such a remote location.

The graves of the 71 recovered travellers are unmarked but a plaque of their names was erected about 30 years ago by local historians who had pulled together available records. Sadly, some names have been lost in time, with at least three of the bodies listed as being of unknown identity (one is just described on the plaque as 'a Greek man, invited onto the ship by the cook'). Equally sad is the sign back at the lighthouse that implores visitors to pay their respects to this cemetery as "the families of the victims of this tragedy would never have been able to come visit their loved ones back in the late 19th century".

Eden: Paradise and Purgatory by the Sea

Eden perches with some degree of isolation on a clifftop, surveying a wide open expanse of ocean with a sense of ambiguity not often felt in country communities. In the 21st century Eden is known as a perfect whale-watching spot, however, it's history is also firmly entrenched in a dark whaling mythology that is so unique that the town dare not ignore it. 

Nicole and I came here because I was drawn to the bizarre story of Eden's whaling industry. We booked a room at the other end of Twofold Bay in 'Boydtown', not realising that this building - the Seahorse Inn - had its own strange past as well. 

My first stop in Eden was the above memorial to those from the town who died in service to Australia during our 20th century wars. In travelling across Australia the one thing I've noticed that consistently appears in rural and coastal communities is some kind of ANZAC memorial, evidence of a shared cultural identity that goes beyond our media. Eden's pristine monument to the soldiers sits high up on the town's summit near its churches.  

I took this photograph because it mentions the little-spoken about Malayan War. I can't recall seeing many war monuments that make reference to this conflict and our country's involvement in it.

Mary MacKillop Hall was once a schoolhouse that was built following the death of MacKillop's mother, Flora MacKillop. Saint Mary visited the schoolhouse twice, in 1899 and 1901, out of appreciation for the care that the town of Eden demonstrated in recovering her mother's body after she was lost at sea. 

Flora MacKillop was one of 71 lives infamously lost during the wreck of the Ly-ee-Moon, a former opium transport steamship from China that broke up during a storm off nearby Green Cape in 1886.

The inside of the Hall remains a shrine to Mary MacKillop, who was canonised by the Catholic Church as Australia's first (and so far only) saint in 2010. Catholic-Australians make the pilgrimage here to pay their respects. I know this is true because I saw some.

  

The view outside of Mary MacKillop Hall is quite breathtaking.

The Eden Killer Whale Museum is one of the main attractions in Eden and features two storeys of whaling-related local history. While Nicole and I visited we saw at least 50 other people in there, making this one of the busiest 'local history' museums I have ever seen.  

The centrepiece of the museum is 'Old Tom', the alpha Killer Whale who assisted Eden whalers in their brutal hunting of baleen whale species (predominantly Southern Right and Humpback Whales, and the occasional Blue Whale) in the early 20th century. The local narrative is one of Old Tom and a pod of five other Killer Whales attaching themselves to Eden's whaling families to help them kill the bigger whales. The story says that these Orcas would round up and harry the larger baleen whales into range of the harpoons. The bigger whales would then be killed by the humans and left to Old Tom and his pod, who would rip off the whale's lips and tongue and take them deep under the surface for feasting upon (these organs are huge and are all the Killer Whales were interested in). Such was Old Tom's eagerness and intelligence that he would swim into Twofold Bay to meet the humans early in the morning and grab the ropes of their boats, dragging them out to where the baleen whales could be found.

It's the only known case of Killer Whales working with humans in this way. In 1930, Old Tom was found dead and floating in the bay - he had apparently come in to Twofold Bay to die near the human community there. His massive 7 metre-long skeleton was salvaged and preserved, and the Killer Whale Museum grew around him as the whaling industry in Eden disappeared. He remains as a terrifying ode to a dark past, the teeth on one side of his skull filed down from the wear of the rope he would grasp between his jaws.

Nicole was less interested in the museum than I was.

There is a section of the museum dedicated to Eden's original inhabitants, the Thaua people, however, I couldn't help but think a bigger acknowledgement of their history could have been made. The reason behind the extraordinary behaviour of the Killer Whales of this area is most likely tied to the Thaua, who had a special relationship with the Killer Whales that stretched back thousands of years. In the Thaua language these animals were referred to as 'beowas', which translates as 'brothers'. All of the whaling families in Eden 'employed' local Aboriginal men to work their boats in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Scrimshaw is the art of engraving objects out of ivory or whale bone. The ornate figures above demonstrate the intricacy of this disturbing art.

The parking demarcations outside of the Killer Whale Museum demonstrate the town's maritime heritage in a fun way. 

Further out of Eden, The Blue Wren Cafe sources the vast majority of its food onsite, demonstrating the 'slow food' ethos associated with lessening one's carbon footprint. This cafe is part of Potoroo Palace, an animal sanctuary located a few kilometres north of Pambula. The park is predominantly known for its care and healing of rescued Australian animals, and for a potoroo-breeding program that supplies these little macropods to wildlife parks all around the country.

This is Trevor, a rescued Brush Tail Possum who is quite happy to move around in the day if there's weetbix and carrot in it for him.

The sanctuary has a collection of Emus that have been raised from chicks. They are currently 4 years old and some of them have had to be separated because they've taken to fighting each other. The picture above shows two Emus that kept running over to the fence to kick at the bird on the other side. The solitary Emu on the right was nonchalant and calm the whole time, pretending that he wasn't fazed by the aggression of the two bullies.

Nicole and I also ducked up to Bega to check out the cheese factory. The upper floor of the Bega Heritage Centre featured a range of dairy-related historical paraphernalia and an animatronic cow that just shook loudly rather than actually moving.  

There was also this weird eight-legged cow. The cheese of the future? I'm thinking this genetically-modified monstrosity could be called 'the Bovine Centipede'.

I have to say that I wasn't completely sold on the Bega cheese experience. It's not like they have an amazingly large range - they know what they do well and they've stuck to it, growing a nationally-recognised brand and no doubt boosting the economy of the surrounding town - but I'm just not a huge fan of their cheese. That said, they did have some canned cheese that they use for international export, which was mildly interesting. 

Another view of Twofold Bay. Note the mountains and forest in the distance - this area is not very densely populated at all. 

The pictures above show Seahorse Inn, our accommodation. This elaborate castle-like building was constructed in 1843 just a few kilometres south of Eden in 'Boydtown'. It was envisioned by British stockbroker Benjamin Boyd as the first part of a whole new town and business empire, which he dreamt would become the future capital of the New South Wales colony. He built the Seahorse Inn, a nearby church (which burned down 50 years later in a bushfire) and a privately-owned lighthouse a few more kilometres south (modestly called 'Boyd Tower'). 

To get to Boyd Tower you need to drive another twenty minutes south and then access the coastline via an unsealed road. From here it's a short walk out onto the escarpment. On our way out we saw a shy and diminutive Swamp Wallaby watching us from between two trees; evidence of how forgotten this part of the world seems. As we got closer to the end of the bluff we spotted the tower rising up out of the bushland like some ancient, half-hidden ruin. 

Boyd wanted his tower to serve as a lighthouse, but the government wouldn't sign off on its use so it became a lookout to assist in spotting whales for the local whaling industry.  

Like the Seahorse Inn and much else of the would-be capital city, Boyd's Tower was built from an expensive form of sandstone that was brought all the way down from Sydney rather than sourced more locally. Boyd also resorted to using slave labour via the highly dubious practise of 'blackbirding', in which Islanders were kidnapped and brought to Australia as indentured workers. Despite his ambition and apparent ruthlessness, Boyd's empire collapsed in financial ruin and failure before he could attract settlers. By the late 1840s he had run off to California to try and make his fortune in the great American gold rush. 

The tower remains as a sign of his folly.

Ironically though, just a few hundred metres from the Seahorse Inn, a collection of 15 upmarket coastal houses have sprung up in a little estate that started just a year ago. It's taken nearly 180 years but it looks like Boydtown is finally happening for real, complete with the name of the entrepreneur still attached.

Eden has a population of just over 3000 people and it's busiest time of year is the end of winter when whales can be regularly seen. The town has a siren that it sounds whenever these mighty creatures are spotted so that any locals or visitors can quickly get to a lookout or the beach. It's a curiously benign industry for a place that once teamed up with one of nature's most notorious predators to drive some of the world's biggest animals to the brink of extinction, and the community's rich history of ambition, shipwrecks, and whaling makes it a uniquely intriguing and vaguely macabre destination for the curious.

Of Tumut, Tiny Frogs, Trout, and a Terrifying Lack of Bookstores

This pic was taken by my wife, Nicole. She took a few of the pictures below (the better ones)

Ever since I was a little boy I have been drawn to the idea of exploring the map. This was no doubt influenced by my idle plotting of imagined adventures across my father's globe, the random flipping of pages in a big leather-bound atlas, and our family's annual journeys to Queensland to visit my grandparents. 

By the time I was 22 I was cut adrift from everything that had been stable in my life - I hadn't lived with my parents for a couple of years, my first university degree was done and dusted and quietly filed away in a random drawer, and I quit work at Target three weeks before Christmas in order to avoid serving the rabid blood-eyed masses as they poured forth into Westfield shopping centre like the 11th Biblical Plague of Egypt. 

I unfolded my dog-eared map of Australia and looked at where I had been. Canberra; cold and educational. Queensland; I had travelled from the Tweedy border-part right up to the Daintree. Melbourne; a cool city with cool trams. Where could I go next? My finger trailed south, along the NSW coast, and landed at the coastal settlement closest to the border: Eden. 

I had never heard of it. I looked it up and learned that it had once been associated with whaling; a taboo and arcane industry that Australia has long since distanced itself from. Eden may as well have been the end of the Earth. I've always felt attracted to such places, the ends of the Earth - the barnacles beyond the outstretched fingers, the frayed edges of the map. I vowed to go there.

Fast-forward to now and it's 15 years later. Life intervened and I never travelled there in my supposedly adventurous youth. I'm married now, working as a teacher, and I have a nice place of my own. Things are relatively stable in comparison to the headier days of my early 20s. And so, today, I finally got to my end of the Earth. I currently write this blog entry from Eden. 

Here are some photographs of our journey, in which Nicole and I travelled across the Snowy Mountains.

The town of Tumut is at the north-western edge of the Snowy Mountains. Some of the back-areas of the town have really cool street art created by the Tumut Youth Council in collaboration with the Snowy Valleys Council. I really wish my home town, Penrith, would do something like this. This artwork was easily the highlight of the town (in other words, there wasn't much else to see there).

The Southern Corroboree Frog is a species endemic to the Snowy Mountains. The Information Centre in Tumut has a tank with 8 of these unique frogs in it, designed to help raise awareness and funding for their conservation. There are thought to only be about 200 left in the wild, which is quite appalling! 

The Corroboree Frog is:

• Poisonous, and could be lethal to other animals if they ingest it. They are the only vertebrate known to science to produce their own poison (as opposed to generating it via diet).
• Not a hopper! They actually crawl in a weird side-to-side fashion (see the first of the two photos above for what I mean). 
• A tiny little guy. They grow to just 3 cm.

Adaminaby is a small town of about 300 residents, situated at one of the highest and more remote parts of the Snowy Mountains. During summer it seems incredibly quiet, however, in winter it accommodates tourists attracted to the area for horse-riding, skiing, and trout-fishing. The last of these is what Adaminaby is best-known for, hence the Big Trout pictured above. 

The construction of the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme in 1949 led to severe flooding of the township's original location, and so the residents were re-located to the current locale. In 2007, the water levels of Lake Eucumbene dropped enough to reveal the ruins of the original town beneath the surface, leading to significant media interest.

As we travelled across the Snowy Mountains I made use of the internet to look up bookstores we could visit. It turns out that bookstores are quite scant in this part of NSW. In Tumut, we looked for the Between the Lines Bookstore and The Night Owl Book Shop, both of which no longer exist. When we got to the next major town, Cooma, we made our way to Pages of Life, but alas, this also seems to have shut forever as there was nothing in the spot indicated by Google Maps. 

Eventually I found Dorothy Dickens' Books and Music in Cooma, and it was a lovely secondhand bookstore with good range in general fiction, locally-based authors, and sci-fi/fantasy.

Sugar Gliders live in the Snowy Mountains. We didn't see any, of course, but we did see an echidna, some kangaroos, eagles, lots of livestock, wild rabbit, wild brumbies, and an emu.

Brumbies have been a staple of the Snowy Mountains for over 150 years and, thanks to the romance of the Australian Bush Legend, they're probably one of the most respected kinds of feral wildlife found in this country. In fact, the attachment of the brumby to Australian folklore (IE. The Man From Snowy River) means that attempts to cull these horses in this region have run afoul of the State government, and there are currently significant problems relating to overbreeding and the ecosystem.

Our final stop along the way was in Candelo, where we ate at the riverside pub seen above. We also pulled over to look at some ponies grazing on the side of the road, and I wandered off under a bridge to find some strange artwork featuring a centaur and what I imagine to be the troll from the Three Billy Goats Gruff story.

About an hour later we pulled in to Eden and found our accommodation. The drive here was quiet but dotted with several interesting townships, and the everchanging scenery reflected dramatic shifts in altitude. The winding view of the high country, with thousands of bone-white gum tree-skeletons clustered together like a giant graveyard of antlers, had a strangely ominous effect on us as we drove through the State National Park.

Each town felt remote and cloistered in its own pocket of history, something that was most evident in the ghost gold-mining town of Kiandra - once Australia's highest settlement but now just a sparse collection of frost-beaten ruins with a bristling but under-used potential for tourism and historical preservation. 

The loneliness of today's drive appealed to me in much the same way as this journey across Nevada's desert, taken exactly two years ago with Nicole. Perhaps this solitude is down to the Snowy Mountains being with snow at this time of year but, really, it was this eeriness that probably spoke to me most as it made the day feel exactly as it should - like a drive to the end of the Earth.