Post-Easter Break (Part Two: Merimbula, Boydstown, Davidson Whaling Station, Green Cape and Eden)

The next day we repeated the same morning walk and breakfast at the same cafe. I could get used to this.

Toasted Belgian waffles with rocky road: chocolate; coconut marshmallow; berry and almond

Hemp seed bircher muesli with blood plum and apple compote and natural yoghurt

We walked out to Short Point (not a fielding position but a headland) where surfers and pelicans plunged about in the waves, and wooden sun-loungers offered sweeping vistas of sandy beaches and sculpture - this one is apparently inspired by 'the rhythms, life forms and movement of the ocean'.

Tide Spiral by Ross Cameron

 

 

Both here and at Merimbula Point I strolled along the rocks, peering in the rock pools and enjoying the sound of the waves crashing against the shore - pleasant, I would have thought. Him Outdoors, however, pointed out, "These are the sort of rocks people stand on to fish and get swept out to sea and drown.' He's a cheery soul at times. 

 

Where there is sea and rocks, there will be a lighthouse, so we drove off to see that, encountering Boydtown on our way. Boydtown is a grand nineteenth-century dream that never came to fruition. Benjamin Boyd was a Scottish-born London stockbroker who came to Australia in 1842, set up the Sydney branch of the Royal Bank and promptly bought up as much land as he could - which was a lot. By May 1844 he had become one of the largest landholders and graziers in the country, with 426,000 acres, 20,000 sheep and 10,000 cattle in the Monaro.

Boyd chose Twofold Bay for his coastal base through which he could ship livestock, wool and tallow from the hinterland. He planned two small townships; the narcissistically-named Boydtown and East Boyd (which was to be a whaling station, adding another string to his increasingly out-of-tune bow). Boydtown was to consist of a hotel, church, houses, stores, salting and boiling-down works, jetty and lighthouse. 

Twofold Bay

Long before Benjamin Boyd began building his dream, the waters of Twofold Bay were home to the people of the dreaming. The Katungal (sea coast) group of the Thaua people lived upon this land and it was their special relationship with the killer whales (orca) of Eden that began one of the most amazing stories of a co-operative relationship between wild animals and humans. Orca would harass and herd much larger whales towards the waiting spears of the indigenous hunters.

In thanks for their help, before any feasting or ceremony, the tongue and lips of the whale were reserved for the orca or beowas (brother) to eat. Some of the orca were believed to be family members - reincarnated tribal warriors reborn to the sea from the Dreamtime - and were named after these relatives. 

When the European whalers recruited the indigenous crewmen and the Beowas sensed their friends were hunting the great whales, they kept working with the crews, and the partnership between human and wild animal continued. Known to be hard-working, skilled with the harpoon and with keen eyesight over long distances, the indigenous whale crews were involved with all tasks associated with whaling including steersman, harpooner, lookout, oarsman, flensing (slicing the skin or fat from the carcass) and the boiling down of the blubber.

Boyd's methods of financing his ventures were 'complicated and obscure'. After a long legal battle over inflated insurance claims, he metaphorically abandoned ship and headed for the Californian goldfields, leaving his brother, Mark Boyd, as manager of the Royal Bank. Bankruptcy swiftly followed and the dreams never materialized. All that remains of the grand vision is an elegant hotel (called the Seahorse Inn), church ruins, an incomplete tower, and an historic relic of an old whaling station.

The Seahorse Inn Hotel

Around 1846 Benjamin Boyd instructed his manager, Oswald Brierly, to supervise the construction of a prominent tower at Red Point. Sandstone rocks were shipped from Sydney and unloaded at East Boyd, hauled to the site by bullock teams, then worked by skilled stonemasons. Boyd's Tower was originally designed to be a lighthouse, but when the government rejected Boyd's proposal for a private lighthouse, he built the tower for whale spotting instead. 

Boyd's Tower

Boyd's Tower displaying the effect of lightning strike in the 1860s

Following the collapse of Boyd's financial empire, the tower was taken over by the Davidson family whose whaling station was based at Kiah Inlet. During the season the tower was manned daily to alert the Kiah Inlet crews to the presence of whales.

A gunshot or puff of smoke from this spot during the whaling season would trigger a flurry of activity from the crews waiting for the signal of a whale sighting. Two open whaling boats from each station would immediately be launched, with the steersman urging each crew of five or seven oarsmen to row within eight metres of the hunted whale. A harpoon attached to 100m of rope would then be thrown from the hunting boat, while the rescue boat waited in case the wounded whale thrashed or dived and emerged under the chase boat.

Red Point

Nearby Davidson Whaling Station was the longest-operating shore-based whaling station in Australia and the last of its type to close down. For more than three generations the Davidson family occupied Loch Garra Homestead and built the try works on the beach below to process the carcasses of the baleen whales.

Loch Garra

The Davidsons subsidised their income by growing most of their own food and running livestock. Evidence of vegetable beds and fruit trees are maintained as part of the protected historic site. The buildings themselves are all locked up, but tours can be booked to look around them; I'm sure they are most educational. There was one family trailing desultorily around the site when we were there and the young lad confided that he found the whole thing really creepy. I found it fascinating, and was also interested to note how silence and manual endeavour is thus interpreted by the young, or maybe they are just more attuned to the presence of ghosts.

This is the very beautiful Kiah Inlet, just a short walk down some steps from the homestead. Dead whales were towed across the bar at the entrance to the Kiah Inlet at high-tide to the front of the try-work. Here the capstan was used to winch them into the shallow water just out from the station. At the try-works the whale oil was distilled from blubber cut from the whale's body. Here inside a 10m-long shed were located the cutting tables, brick furnaces with try-pots, and storage tanks which held the whale oil as it cooled.

A good season would see around eight whales caught with the help of wild orca, and processed on shore for their oil, baleen and bone. The trying-out process was arduous work performed amidst the constant stench of boiling oil. This left the whalers coated with grease, refuse, and a persistent smell. While the area is beautiful now, it certainly wouldn't have been back then.

At the Whaling Station, Twofold Bay - Photo circa 1900

Twofold Bay now

The New South Wales coast and waterways are littered with thousands of shipwrecks. Apparently there are 27 recorded as lost from Merimbula to Disaster Bay. Obviously the weather and the lack of navigational aids were contributing factors, because on a day like today it doesn't look at all deserving of its name. 

Disaster Bay

At the northernmost tip of Disaster Bay is a headland called Green Cape, and on the headland sits the Green Cape Lighthouse - the southernmost lighthouse in New South Wales. Other credits include the fact it is the second tallest lighthouse in NSW and the first one to be built in concrete. The lamp was first lit in 1883.

Green Cape lighthouse and cottages

Green Cape

In 1992 a solar-powered lens on a modern lattice skeletal steel tower was constructed right next to the historic tower, and the light was officially turned off on 17 March 1992. In February 2011 the lighthouse was recognised as an 'Engineering Heritage National Landmark'. The solar-powered one is undoubtedly heaps more efficient, but is somewhat lacking in romance. 

Despite the erection of the lighthouse, there were still maritime disasters in the region. On 30th May 1886 the steamer Ly-ee-moon, belonging to the Australasian Steam Navigation Company (ASN), was sailing from Melbourne to Sydney and travelling at a speed of 11.5 knots rounding Green Cape. Captain Arthur Wynne Webber had left the ship in command of Third Officer James Fotheringham and asked to be called as they neared the Cape. At about 9pm Captain Webber appeared unannounced on the deck and saw that the ship was steaming directly towards the rocks at the foot of the lighthouse. He put the engines into reverse but the ship was stuck fast and soon broke apart. 

While the lighthouse keeper and assistant rescued 16 people from the sea, 71 passengers and crew lost their lives. Those bodies that could be recovered were buried in a small cemetery away from the lighthouse as they could not wait for transportation to Sydney. The cemetery is reached by a short bath through a stand of melaleuca which muffles the sounds of the wind and waves to provide a peaceful resting place. 

Melaleuca trees

Ly-ee-Moon Cemetery

The white stones and single cross mark the positions of the unnamed graves. The nearby plaque names the people who lost their lives. Some of these are unknown such as those among the steerage passengers marked as, 'an unknown Greek, given passage at the request of the cook', and 'two others unknown, one of which had a German accent'.

The catastrophe aroused strong emotions: families and friends gathered at the ASN's offices demanding to know the fate of the passengers and how such loss of life could happen. Money was raised to assist orphans and widows. Captain Webber and Third Officer Fotheringham faced an inquest in which each blamed the other. As both the lookout and the helmsman had drowned, there was no further evidence available from the crew, and the jury could not decide culpability.

Our final stop was the Port of Eden at Snug Bay. This is the largest fishing port in New South Wales. That should mean it has some of the freshest fish and chips, so naturally we had to try some before our drive home. And they were good. 

Port of Eden at Snug Cove

Top quality fish and calamari