Turning the Corner: Gabo Island

Gabo Island, Mallacoota, Victoria

 

 

Spurred on by the discovery of goldfields, settlements in Victoria and New South Wales were growing rapidly in the 1850s. The American steam ship SS Monumental City, the first steam passenger ship to cross the Pacific, was sent to Australia to provide a transport link for passengers travelling between the burgeoning cities of Melbourne and Sydney.

 

The Monumental City undertook its maiden Australian voyage, leaving Sydney in May 1853, to transport passengers to the Victorian goldfields. But it was the be the ship's only successful Australian Voyage. The return trip, which left Melbourne on May 13, ran aground on Tullaberga Island, between Mallacoota Inlet and Gabo Island, off the coast of East Gippsland.

The weather turned bad and the ship began to break up, claiming the lives of an estimated 37 passengers and crew.

The tragic event caused a public outcry and much pressure was put on the Government of the day to reignite plans to build a lighthouse on Gabo Island.

The island is only 5 kms in circumference and the light tower is in the top left hand corner in this picture. It is practically solid pink granite with a heavy covering of sand and native flora.

"That (the wreck of the Monumental City) really pushed things along. They put a temporary lighthouse up which ran for about six or eight years and while that was running they constructed this new tower that's the existing one we look at today - the iconic Gabo Island granite lighthouse," Mr op den Brouw says.  "It is a stunningly beautiful tower, really graceful curves.  Many consider it to be Australia's most graceful tower.  The pink granite looks great, especially on a sunny, red sunrise or a red sunset; it's just stunning."
 

For almost 150 years, the lighthouse has played a crucial navigational role for vessels travelling Australia's east coast.

"The vision was that the coastline be like a series of streetlights, that any vessels following the coastline could follow the streetlights from one safe shelter to another," says Mr op den Brouw.

"It's quite a critical part of the coastline. Certainly in the early days of sail ships, when there weren't too many lights around, there were quite a lot of wrecks on the coastline here and if were to go back and look at the archives we'd find there would be over 100 various sized vessels that have been lost in this area - some simply due to storms , but others to navigational errors.
 

It's the point on the coastline, if you are travelling from Melbourne to Sydney, it's the corner of the continent where if you are travelling north-east you turn and head north to get to Sydney, quite often boats would turn north a little bit too soon and run into something very hard. It's played a very important role. It's on that juncture of the continent."

 

Petra, Jordan - photo swiped from Dr. Luis Barrera who

has asteroid 19395 named after him.