Cape Otway

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cape Otway Lightstation

Location:	Victoria, Australia
Year first lit:	1848
Deactivated:	1994
Height:	20 metres
Elevation:	52 Metres
Intensity:	White 1,000,000 cd; Red 4,000 cd
Range:	26 nautical miles (48 km)

Cape Otway is a cape in south Victoria, Australia on the Great Ocean Road; much of the area is enclosed in the Otway National Park.

Cape Otway was originally inhabited by the Katabanut people; evidence of their campsites is contained in the middens throughout the region. The Cape was discovered by Europeans when Lieutenant James Grant surveyed the Victorian coast in the Lady Nelson. The government reserved the tip of the cape as the site for a lighthouse. Access to the site was difficult, it was eventually reached overland and construction of the Cape Otway Lightstation began in 1846 from stone quarried at the Parker River.

The light was first lit in 1848; it was the second lighthouse completed on mainland Australia and it remains the oldest surviving lighthouse in mainland Australia.^[1]^[2] A telegraph station was added to the site when Tasmania was connected to the mainland by a submarine telegraph line from Cape Otway to Launceston in 1859. Parts of the Cape were also open to free settlers.

Eight ships were wrecked along the coast of Cape Otway.^[3] These inclused the Marie (1851), Sacramento (1853), Shomberg (1856), Loch Ard (1878), Joseph H. Scammell (May 1891), Fiji (September 1891) and the Casino in 1932. The first American vessel sunk during World War II, the SS City of Rayville, was also sunk off the Cape by a German mine. Following this, the Americans built a radar bunker on the cape in 1942; it is now open to the public.

The lightstation was decommissioned in January 1994 after being the longest continuous operating light on the Australian mainland. It has been replaced by a low powered solar light in front of the original tower.^[1]