On the edge ... the dramatic coastline at Green Cape Lighthouse.Credit:Ben Stubbs
Ben Stubbs traces stories of shipwrecks and whalers on a weekend trek in Ben Boyd National Park.
We're running late. It's not a deadline we're chasing,or a missed appointment. I'm not even wearing a watch. Our timepiece is the sun and it's dipping low in the sky like a coin already half in the slot. We put our heads down and shuffle across the black rock cliffs,hopeful we'll find a place to shelter before dark.
My father and I are out for a trekking weekend on the NSW far south coast,at the mercy of the"Nature Coast",as it has been labelled,retracing the trail of shipwrecks and stories along the Light to Light Walk. The path stretches 31 kilometres,from Green Cape Lighthouse,at the southern end of Ben Boyd National Park,to Boyd's Tower in the north.
It does not start well. We grip the rails tightly as 140 km/h winds funnel up from Antarctica and threaten to tip us off the edge of the 29-metre-high Green Cape Lighthouse into the boiling sea below. Trees and shrubs are prostrate in the wind. We watch seals surfing in and out of channels on the waves,oblivious to the bucking swell,and a humpback whale shoots a spout of water just beyond the breakers. We spend the night by the fire in one of the lighthouse cabins while the storm passes. We've left our car at Boyd's Tower after getting a lift with a park ranger. During the night we decide we will make a move the next morning no matter what the weather suggests.
Yet as we head off into the scrub,I see that even the wildlife is avoiding the elements. Our backpacks are heavy with gear;we hope to camp at Saltwater Creek tonight,17.5 kilometres north.
The destructive nature of this coastline is displayed within a few hundred metres of the trailhead at the Ly-ee-Moon cemetery. On May 30,1886,the passenger steamer Ly-ee-Moon was on its way from Melbourne to Sydney when it struck a reef in the dark and"within 10 minutes had split in two". Seventy-one people drowned off Green Cape,including Flora MacKillop,the mother of the Australian saint Mary MacKillop. It is just one of many tragic stories of shipwrecks off this coastline.
The wind gradually blows the storm out to sea and we keep walking.
We stop briefly on a curl of sand at Bittangabee Bay and then follow the trail the lighthouse keepers blazed along the coast after construction of the Green Cape lighthouse in 1883. This sheltered cove,seven kilometres north of the lighthouse,was used as a storage depot for supplies that were then taken by horse to the cottages for the keepers and their families.
We pass the yellowed ruins of a hut that was built by the Imlay brothers in the 1830s when the calm waters were used to herd and kill whales for their oil and blubber. There are still a few killers in the area,we're told - national park rangers have seen packs of orcas hunting seals recently off the coast of Bittangabee.