I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper and Keep him Company…

“I Want to Marry a Lighthouse Keeper and Keep him Company,” goes the song��(part of the sound track for A Clockwork Orange and Frank). Well, I am not sure about that life but I did have fun visiting a lighthouse this weekend. I live less than an hour from two lighthouses and if I drive another two hours I can count a third. They were built in the late 1800s along the Shipwreck coast.

As Boy Wonder needs hours behind the wheel in his quest for driving experience, we packed a picnic and headed not so far down the road. The sun was shining from time to time and we joined the throng of international tourists who flcok to my backyard in droves. Today I heard Spanish, French, Finnish, Swedish, Ceylonese, Italian, German, Japanese, Mandarin…the list goes on :-)

We climbed the glorious spiral staircase; a little longer and prettier than the one I climb to my office and the view from the top into Bass Strait was spectacular. As I gazed down on the lighthouse keepers’ cottages, I pictured the isolation of the life of a lighthouse keeper and their family. Being a kid though, wouldl have been awesome! All that glorious beach to explore, playing in the dunes, watching the ships come past, fishing, beach combing, sigh, I want to do it!

For those of you with kids, the TV show, ‘Around the Twist’ was filmed at this lighthouse. Paul Jennings, who wrote the books, lives further along the coast.

Between Boy Wonder and DH, we have a lot of photos so I’ll let them do the talking. This is the Split Point Lighthouse and I can recoomend an overnight stay at Cape Otway Lighthouse just out of Apollo Bay on the Great Ocean Road. We did that with the kids years ago and it was fabulous.

The old lighthouse keepers’ cottages. Love the slate roof!