The view of Cape Jaffa Lighthouse from Alison Stillwell's kitchen window constantly stirs questions within her. Like how did people live there? Why did they do it?
Prized real estate now, the set of weatherboard cottages on Kingston's foreshore was once home to lighthouse keepers and their families.
By the time Alison and her husband Bruce moved to town from Adelaide in 1986 as young teachers, their cottage was owned by the education department.
Whilst she had no interest in lighthouses back then, living in a piece of its history soon captivated her.
The couple went on to buy the cottage and Alison has committed herself to learning about this "special treasure" and the people attached to it.
"I never did history at school. I was really never interested, but this has just grabbed me."
With the lighthouse built eight kilometres offshore at nearby Cape Jaffa, the cottages provided a place of respite and civilisation for the families of the keepers that managed it.
Known as the Shipwreck Coast, the rocky coastline between Adelaide and Melbourne claimed many lives and a number of large ships.
"Some of those storms would have been horrendous," Alison says.
0ne hundred and fifty years after its construction, the lighthouse continues to captivate people like Alison.
An incredible history
After a string of fatal wrecks, a lighthouse was planned and constructed in Cape Jaffa 1872.
"It was designed by George Wells in England, made at Chance Brothers out at Birmingham in a place called Smethwick … [and] then packed up and brought out to Australia where it was put together," Alison says.
After operating for 101 years it was decommissioned in 1973 and replaced with an automatic lighthouse at Robe, 40 kilometres down the coast.
And the Cape Jaffa Lighthouse?
"[It] was probably due for the scrap heap, but the National Trust got onboard," Alison says.
"They lobbied long and hard for at least part of it to be preserved and the federal government actually gifted it to the National Trust of South Australia."
Led by grazier Verne McLaren, the town rallied the funds and support to relocate the offshore lighthouse to the Kingston foreshore.
The lighthouse was dismantled, each piece meticulously numbered and it reassembled at Kingston.
"[It] was so well maintained that bolts did come apart, nuts did unscrew," Alison says.
Life for the families
For most of its life, there were three keepers tending to the lighthouse. Two on the station and one onshore to communicate back and forth.
"Their top priority was the light so if anything went wrong with the clockwork mechanism, or the mantle or the burner, anything at all, they had to fix it immediately," Alison says.
"They had to be great problem solvers and troubleshooters.
"They were always attending to the light and everything else had to take second place."
The keepers' families would stay with them in the lighthouse, an eight-room dwelling that could accommodate two families and enough stores to last several weeks.
"They were living in very close quarters. They didn't always get on with each other," Alison says.
"It would have been particularly difficult, I think, for the women looking after their children with nowhere to play.
Onshore keepers would stay in a stone cottage at Cape Jaffa, where they would hunt the scrub for wallaby, kangaroo, and snipe.
"There's some comment by a family member in the very early days that they really loved mother's snipe pies," Alison says.
The three weatherboard cottages were built in 1933 to replace the old stone building at Cape Jaffa.
"In the early days, they obviously had to communicate from the Light Station to shore. They had to have visual contact because they were using flags."
"But when the radio started coming into use, then there was not that need. So they built houses here, right on the foreshore, Kingston, and the families were able to live here.
While the families may have loved the new cottages, the public was less thrilled.
"In 1933, it was the Depression. I remember reading an article in the Naracoorte Herald about how expensive these cottages were and why they had to build them at such expense," Alison says.
"But anyway they were built and they're still here."
Keeping the history alive
Now a custodian of one of those cottages, Alison is eager to maintain some of its historical elements.
Along with the owners of the other two cottages, they try and retain the cottages' unison appeal — at least from the front.
Inside they've made some necessary changes, like insulation.
"We don't really want to be lighting three fires every night during the winter, which they would have done," Alison says.
"[But] we've tried to keep as much as we can, just so that we're reminded whenever we walk through."
The history is part of the charm.
"We share the lighthouse story with everyone, so no family members are immune to the lighthouse."
With the team at Kingston National Trust, Alison is eager to continue sharing the story of Cape Jaffa Lighthouse.
Even if they still don't know all the answers.
