Cape Otway Lighthouse

A koala that we saw on our drive

Cape Otway Lighthouse

Today we continued our voyage along the Great Coastal Road (Highway 1).  We woke up in Kangaroobie, had breakfast, and hit the road.  Along the way, we stopped at the Cape Otway Lighthouse.  This lighthouse signaled the southern tip of the Australian mainland as ships crossed between Australia and King's Island (the wes tern most island of Tasmania).  In the middle and late 1800s people called this the Eye of the Needle because it was incredibly difficult to set you trajectory through the channel, called Bass Straight, with sextants and chronometers (the navigational system 150 years ago).  In fact, about 160 ships crashed along the rockey coastline, 18 right in front of where the lighthouse now stands. The lighthouse projected 45 kilometers out to sea, about half way to King's Island, with a lightbulb only about the size of a shoe, and a filament about and inch and a half long.  It did use a lens to focus the light, called a Fresnel lens.  However, when it was first put into use in 1849, it was fueled by whale oil, then kerosene, and finally electricity.  Unfortunately, in 1984, the lighthouse was decommissioned and replaced by a nearby solar powered automatic beacon.  Also, at the lighthouse site we saw a radar station used by Australian troops in WWII, to spot Japanese submarines traveling through Bass Straight.
After that, we continued driving and took a ferry across Port Phillip, where, in the north, lies Melbourne.  We landed on the Mornington Peninsula, right across the port, and drove slightly north to another camp called Camp Manyung, where we will be staying the night.