Macquarie Lighthouse

Australia's first lighthouse, and it was designed by the same convicted forger who built Hyde Park Barracks. Francis Greenway really did design his way through the colony's major projects. Governor Macquarie ordered the lighthouse built in eighteen-sixteen, and Greenway drew up the plans while still technically a convict. The man could not stop building things.

Here is the problem. The sandstone was quarried on-site, and it turned out to be terrible stone. So soft and crumbly that the lighthouse literally fell apart bit by bit over the next fifty years. They kept patching it, propping it up, slapping on more mortar, but it was like trying to repair a sandcastle. Eventually they gave up and built the replacement you see now in eighteen eighty-three. The current tower is a near-exact copy of Greenway's original design -- they just used better stone this time.

The original lantern used whale oil lamps and mirrors to throw a beam visible thirty-five kilometres out to sea. But the lighthouse served a dual purpose beyond navigation. When a supply ship appeared on the horizon, the lighthouse keeper would signal the colony. In the early years of settlement, supply ships were the difference between survival and starvation. Seeing the lighthouse signal must have been one of the most relieving sights in the colony.

The lighthouse was automated in nineteen seventy-six, and the last staff left in nineteen eighty-nine. It remains fully operational under the Australian Maritime Safety Authority -- still guiding ships into Sydney Harbour after more than two hundred years of continuous operation on this site.

The headland views are stunning. You can see right across the harbour mouth to North Head, and on a clear day the Pacific stretches out forever. Hardly anyone comes out here compared to the harbour foreshore. It is a quiet spot with a long memory.