Big touristy day today with lots of stops.

First up was the Cape Naturaliste Lighthouse.  This was built in 1903 and is still functional today … there’s been the odd change through the years, as you’d expect.

Back in the day the lamp was fuelled by whale oil, as it was designed for that.  Whale oil burns clean and made life a little less painful for the 3 shifts of lighthouse keepers.  Later on, the fuel became Kerosene … which burns very smokily and caused plenty of hassle in other ways as well.

The 3 ton lens was originally spun around once every ten seconds by clockwork.  This meant that the clock had to be wound up for 10 minutes every 40 minutes.  Then the kero buckets needed to be lugged up the stairs since it burnt about 26 litres an hour.

Not much rest for a 4 hour shift really …

All that changed once electricity made its way out to the cape in the 70’s.  The kero lamp got replaced by a 1000W globe (plus automatic backup) and the clockwork stuff got replaced by a small electric motor (plus automatic backup) all kept cranking by a UPS.  No more shifts for the lighthouse keepers … the price of progress.

Managed to grab a geocache with Blake out on Sugarloaf Rock.  A bit of a clamber saw it quickly in hand.

Between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin lies Margaret River … apparently they make wine here … so that naturally led us to … Simmo’s Ice Creamery with 42 flavours as the next stop.  Blake got a Lemon Sorbet and Green Apple Sorbet, adventurous fellow that he is.  Hannah chose White Chocolate Malteser and Caramel Malteser because she’s always been partial to a chocolate covered ball.  Kellsie Jane picked Coffee Crunch and White Chocolate Malteser.  Being a chocoholic I grabbed a Snickers and Ferrero Rocher combo.  All enjoyed out in the glorious sunshine watching the resident emu strut his stuff.

The kids now satisfied, the adults regained control of the GPS and targeted the Bootleg Brewery.  An oasis of beer in a desert of wine.  I got a sample tray of 7 beers, but none of them really took my fancy.  Thankfully Margaret River is renowned for wine, not beer.

Kel got to choose a couple of wineries today and probably a few more tomorrow.  We stopped at Knee Deep and Cullen wineries and grabbed a couple of bottles from each.  Given we’ve got nowhere to store them, we can only take what we can drink … as dangerous a conversation as that could be, we practiced restraint and stopped at two today.

Time was running away from us and at 3pm we stopped for lunch at the picturesque Augusta pub.  Kids were only allowed if they were on a lead … oh wait, that was dogs.  Kids were only allowed if they remained seated.  No issue there as we were all a bit hungry.  Given dinner was closeish … we just got some wedges and chips to tide us over.

Last stop was the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse, to complete the educational tour.  A similar lighthouse, yet different.  Also powered by Kero and clockwork when commissioned it has now also been simplified and improved through electricity.

The lighthouse is at the South Western point of Australia where the Southern Ocean meets the Indian Ocean.  This meant that I also got the most South Western geocache as a bonus.

Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean makes a guest appearance

Attack of the killer hair continues

Sunset came and we cruised back at 110 kmh on twisty country roads in perfect safety.  I wonder why we can’t do that in Vic?

[sgpx gpx=”/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2011-07-26.gpx”]