Up West

It's Anzac Day, Australia's (and New Zealand's) Memorial Day. On April 25, 1915 the Australian New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at Galipoli with the aim of taking Istanbul to knock Turkey out of the War. Australia had only been a proper country since 1901 and losing 8,000 men (and New Zealand 2,700 men (I'm not meaning to slight New Zealand parenthetically, it's just that I'm in Australia)) on the World's Stage at that age was unfathomably brave. Australians are about as patriotic as Americans and this is quite a day!

ANZAC Day typically starts with ceremony at dawn followed by a gunfire breakfast and beers at 8am. I didn't know all that, I woke up at 8:30 and missed it all so I just drove to Augusta.

In Maine, the further you go North East, the further "Down East" you go. This is confusing to me because I always picture North up except for those times when I picture standing on the corner I grew up on looking down Cottage Street knowing that's the direction of the North End so the South End must be behind me and the sun rises to my right so that's East. Had I not been squeezed out of the "learn to tie your shoes" lesson in pre-school, I'd probably still be talking about a rabbit running around a tree every morning.

The English sailed far and wide and named a whole bunch of towns after their towns. There is a Perth, Australia (roughly right about here) a Perth, Tasmania and a Perth, Great Britain (as I found out just now on Ticketmaster trying to find tickets to Elton John next weekend). There is also an Augusta, GB, ME, aaand WA. So, here I wake up in Margaret River, Western Australia, about to head to Augusta, WA, about as Up West as you can get at the edge of the world, to see a lighthouse. If I just looked at the thermometer I'd think I really was in Maine until I remember it's in Celsius. It was about (21C*9/5+32 =) 72F. Reaaal nice Clark, reaaaal nice.

Lighthouses are pretty amazing things. They are big, they are old, they are monuments to mariners who sailed the seas hundreds of years ago before GPS and radar and motors. (I forgot another Melville connection: I gave a reading in my Sister's wedding from the Seamen's Bethel's (Whalemen's Bethel of Chapter 7) bow shaped pulpit (The Pulpit Chapter 8) that Father Mapple delivered the sermon Jonah and the Whale in Chapter 9. I was a little disappointed that it didn't have the rope ladder to haul up.) I was as interested to hear the history of the lighthouse as to see the sight, and gladly paid the $12 for the tour.

As I mentioned briefly, there are some 35 documented shipwrecks at Leeuwin and only 1 since the lighthouse was erected! That one wreck was actually at 3pm on a clear day when the lighthouse would have not been in use.

The lighthouse was first conceived in 1880 but it took 15 years, when gold was discovered in WA, to fund the project. Once funded, in December 1895, it was completed in just 10 months.

The first order of business, apart from excavation of the sight I'm sure, was the construction of the water wheel. Water from a natural spring was diverted down a trough into a water wheel which powered a pump which delivered water up to the construction site for mixing mortar made with local quarried lime. After construction the water was used for drinking and washing by the lightkeepers and their families. The water wheel still exists though calcified into stone.


The turret was made from solid cut, locally quarried ironstone which was lifted by horse drawn block and tackle until it towered 29 meters (95 feet) over it's foundation. A 3.5 metric ton (7700 lbs) lens, made by the Chance Brothers in England and costing 1/3 of the total cost of the project, floats on a frictionless mercury bearing (that'd be about 68 gallons of liquid mercury). If the motor were turned off, our guide tells us, the lens would continue to rotate on the bearing for over an hour.

The lens turns at 4 RPM driven by an electric motor which replaced the grandfather clock-like counterweight system in 1982. With 2 1000x magnification lenses at 180 degrees from each other on the foundation, a mariner up to 24NM away would see a flash of light every 7.5 seconds, look up in his table of lights to see that frequency corresponds to Leeuwin which is 56 meters above Mean Sea Level, measure the elevation to the light and determine the vessel's distance using the resulting triangle.

Here's a video of a similar light in the Fremantle Maritime Museum. This was also designed and manufactured by the Chance Brothers in England. This light gives 3 quick flashes ever 15 seconds to identify it as the Cape Leveque Lighthouse. Also note the New Bedford connection!



New Bedford digression:
Lewis Temple, an escaped slave who made his living as a blacksmith in New Bedford, invented the (Temple) Toggle Harpoon greatly improving the chances of a harpoon holding in a whale. There is no mention of the Temple Toggle which is on display, I'm going to see if I can help them identify the artifact. A bronze statue of Lewis Temple was sculpted by Jim Toatley, the father of my childhood friends Peter and Jameliah. I read today that Bill Cosby has some of his work!

http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?MarkerID=1616&

The light at Leeuwin was tended by 3 lightkeepers who lived with their families on the site. They were solely responsible for all aspects of the light - cut their own firewood from forests in Albany, purchased and delivered kerosene for the mantle which used 16L a night (until it too was replaced by electric light in 1982), wound up the 150 kg counterweights that drove the rotation. The lightkeeper housing was fully occupied until 1988 with the last lightkeeper remaining until 1998. The light now rotates 24 hours a day; if it were allowed to idle the sun could be magnified by the lens and cause heat damage or even fire.


For 12 bucks Barry will give you and 10 of the people who happen to be standing near you a guided tour of the lighthouse including the ascent of the 176 stairs to the cantilevered walkway. (I still don't have the software to stitch together my panorama photos but one day...) The Edge of the Earth from 184 feet is quite a sight. No I couldn't see Antarctica.


Jewel Cave, one of the most popular tourist caves in Margaret River is just up the road. It used to be called the "Windy Hole": there was a small opening to the surface of the Earth and picnickers would gather and look down the hole to have their hat's blown off. It wasn't even explored until 1957 and was opened as a tourist cave in 1960. $20 is all it takes to get inside for a well organized 1 hour tour that brought about 25 of us 1 km into the cave (and back).

I booked a wine tour for the following day and headed up to Surfer's Point to watch the sunset.


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Surfer's Point is a natural sunset spot. I thought it was just my idea but there must have been 100 people there watching 40 surfers fighting to catch the last wave of the day. Elevated high above the beach, the lookout provides an incredible view. The sea is vast and the tall waves reduce the surfers to the stature of mere ducks in a pond and the sun the yolk of an egg poaching in the tumultuous water. There is no twighlight, the sun just plummets below the horizon. I ask a surfer coming out of the water what he reckons the swell is. "Six foot, mate. Cheers." he says. These guys gotta learn how to exaggerate, I was going to call it 12. I mean, you can see the waves from the Google Maps satellite views. Come on!



The town was remarkably quiet. I had forgettable dinner (really, no idea what it was, but I remember I was really hungry) and went to The Tav for a night of live rock and bought a bouncy ball after hours which provided seemingly endless entertainment during my walk back to the car at Surfer's Point for the night. Gotta rest up, big day coming.