Marine Life Society of South Australia Inc.

Newsletter

June 2006 No. 333

“understanding, enjoying & caring for our oceans”

Next Meeting

This will be the June General Meeting and will be held at the Conservation Centre, 120 Wakefield Street, Adelaide on Wednesday 21^stJune commencing at 7.30pm.

Our speaker will be Neville Skinner who will be speaking on Diving the East Coast. He will show a series of images (above & below water) starting at Forster, mid-NSW and travelling up to Cairns, FNQ. Lots of marine life, including many Grey Nurse Shark images.

CONTENTS

My Story on the Nasty Cuttlefish of SA (Dennis Hutson)

Old Jetties Associated With Lighthouses

(Part 1) (Steve Reynolds)

REMINDERS

Memberships are now due (overdue in fact!)

I need to know if you will be with us at the Edithburgh Hotel on the Saturday of the June Long Weekend for the table booking.

Articles are always needed for the Newsletter, and the 2006 Journal is also in need of suitable articles. At present I have only been promised one for the Journal.

The 2007 Calendar should be available now or will be very soon. We ask all members to do their utmost to sell as many as possible. This year we printed 1500 after selling out our 2006 calendar and having to beg for returns from people to fill outstanding orders.

2006 AGM

At the 2006 AGM last month the Committee was returned as follows:

President Philip Hall

Secretary Neville Skinner

Treasurer Phill McPeake

Committee David Muirhead

Committee Chris Hall

The non executive positions were filled as follows:

Auditor Phill John

Conservation Council Reps Scoresby Shepherd

Robert Browne

Editor Philip Hall

Librarian Steve Reynolds

Photo Index Officer Steve Reynolds

Reefwatch Representative Kevin Smith

SDF Representatives Neville Skinner

Steve Reynolds

Social Officer As needed

Web Master Danny Gibbins

Anniversary Trophy

by Philip Hall

Trophy time has come around again. Last year it was presented to Geoff Prince for all his behind the scenes work on our calendars. Make sure that you are present at the June Meeting to witness the presentation or perhaps to receive the trophy yourself. It will be our 30^th anniversary and worthy of a celebration.

YEAR ANNIVERSARY RECIPIENT

2001 25^th Philip Hall

2002 26^th Margaret Hall

2003 27^th Phill McPeake

2004 28^th Danny Gibbins

2005 29^th Geoff Prince

2006 30^th?

My Story on the Nasty Cuttlefish of SA

by Dennis Hutson

Location: Port Moorowie, Yorke Peninsula (Sometime in March 2006)

Geoff Prince and I were diving together in shallow water of 5m along a reef to the right of the Port Moorowie boat ramp. This is a glorious place and I recommend that you take a look at it. We plan to go there again in winter when we’re not searching for crays, so I can take my camera. I digress...I was sticking my head into holes, under ledges, etc.. looking for crayfish. I didn’t see any, but I did come across a small wobbegong about 1.2m (4 feet) in length under an overhang. I admired it for a short time and when I backed out of the overhang there was a small female cuttlefish at a range of about 2m. She approached me and was flashing her colours. I took this to be a bad sign - she was upset with me.

I have been actively attacked by cuttlefish on other occasions, so when she took what I think is the attack pose I hit her away with the wave of my hand. This attack pose is when they point straight at you and close up their tentacles. When they are only a foot from your face, they lunge at you, wrap their tentacles around your head and bite you with their very sharp and very hard beak. I have been fortunate enough to not have been bitten yet - only my equipment has been bitten to date.

Back to the story! This did not deter her, she came back even more angry. I backed away and unclipped my cray snare from my gear. I had moved a good 5m or more from the location where I had come across her and thought she might stop. Oh no.....so I hit her on the head with my snare. Well this continued to raise ire within her and she attacked again, so this time I hit her HARD. That did the trick! She took off to a ledge near the end of my vis. range. To my surprise and terror, she got a friend - a BIG MALE, and he was flashing his colours and heading straight for me with the smaller female just behind him. I wasn’t going to hang about and see if I could fend off two angry cuttlefish, especially a large male. I made a beeline straight for the boat. I swam hard and checked behind to see if they were still coming. Fortunately the male gave up the chase fairly easily.

On arriving back at the boat, my dive buddy Geoff was just getting back there himself. I told him of my saga and he laughed, offering to take me to Whyalla for the (cuttlefish) breeding season. He thinks that it would be good sport to watch the melee. I have not seen this behaviour before. What is it about me? My buddy doesn’t get troubled by cuttlefish!

Has anyone else witnessed this kind of cuttlefish behaviour before, where one cuttle will seek the assistance of another (bigger) cuttle to attack a diver?

Giant Cuttlefish, Port Hughes Jetty, David Muirhead

Old Jetties Associated With Lighthouses (Part 1)

by Steve Reynolds

Photographs: NR - Noeleen Reynolds, PH - Philip Hall, SR - Steve Reynolds

Kangaroo Island

There are several old jetties on Kangaroo Island associated with lighthouses. These are at, or near to, Cape Borda, Cape du Couedic and Cape Willoughby.

Cape Borda lighthouse

Cape Borda is on the NW cape of Kangaroo Island, at the NW corner of the 73,662 hectares Flinders Chase National Park. This NW part of the park is the Ravine des Casoars Wilderness Protection Area. The ravine itself is nearby, just south of Cape Borda. It is the spot where the French explorer Nicolas Baudin found Kangaroo Island emu, Dromaius novaehollandiae in 1803 (although some sources say that it was in 1802). Baudin thought that the emus were cassowary and named the spot Ravine des Casoars after them. The emu became extinct within the next 24 years. There is a short but challenging hike down the ravine to a small sandy beach. There are large caverns at the beach end of the ravine which can be explored at low tide. Penguins may be seen in this area.

Baudin’s ships, the Geographe and the Casuarina, rounded Kangaroo Island’s NW cape on 4^th January 1803. The French named the spot Cape Borda after Jean Charles de Borda, a celebrated French mathematician, navigator and nautical astronomer (1733-1799).

The square-shaped Cape Borda lighthouse was commissioned on 13^th July 1858. (Several heights have been given for the lighthouse, from 6m to 10m. I have read that it was 9m high when it was first built and that another metre was added to the height of the stone tower in 1912.)

Cape Borda Lighthouse and Signal Gun (PH)

The signal gun in front of the lighthouse was used to alert ships that came too close and to give the 1o’clock time signal for the adjusting of their chronometers.

There are several buildings which housed the lighthouse keepers and their families. Three of these buildings are now available to tourists for short-term accommodation. The lighthouse keeper’s building is now known as the Flinders Light Lodge (The lighthouse is also known as the Flinders Light). The relieving keeper’s building is now known as Hartley Hut. A former storeroom for lighthouse supplies is now known as Woodward Hut.

The lighthouse keepers’ buildings at Cape Borda (PH)

There were four keepers and their families, plus three telegraph operators and their families during the early years. The lighthouse was connected by cable telegraph and served as a Lloyds signal station for many years. The lighthouse was manned until 1989 but it has been automatic ever since.

Harvey’s Return

Harvey’s Return is a small rocky cove about 4kms east of the Cape Borda lighthouse.

Harveys Return (SR)

According to Rodney Cockburn’s book “South Australia – What’s in a Name? Historically significant place names” the name for Harvey’s Return comes from the surname of a sealer on the island in 1834. He is said to have lived with his mate Whalley at what is now known as Kingscote.

In 1834 Whalley kept watch for Harvey’s boat whilst Harvey went out to sea on a sealing expedition. Whalley walked to Cape Borda where Harvey tried to land his boat. The cliffs at Cape Borda are 400 feet high and landing there was impossible. The two men searched the coastline for a spot where Harvey could land his boat. They found a cove 2½ miles east of Cape Borda where Harvey managed to land. Although the cove had already been known as Murrell’s Bay, after a seal hunter named James Murrell, it now became known as “Harvey’s Return”. One of the passengers on the Africaine when it brought settlers to Kangaroo Island in 1836, a Michael Calnan, claimed to have landed at Harvey’s Return.

According to “A Cruising Guide to Historic Gulf Ports – Vol.2” by Graham Scarce, “The cove (at Harvey’s Return) was the landing place for the construction workers who built the Cape Borda Lighthouse”. The first thing that the workers built though was a small jetty at the cove. A double trackway (double set of rails) was then built up the incline from the jetty and a pathway was built between the cove and the proposed site of the lighthouse. The trackway up the incline ran up to a level site close to the top.

Storage Hut and Capstan sites (PH)

A stone storage hut was built there on the level area and a capstan (horse-drawn winch) was also installed there. It seems that the capstan was powered by just one horse. Horses were used to haul small rail cars laden with stores and equipment to the top of the tracks. The jetty at Harvey’s Return was used for the landing of supplies for the lighthouse. A 2-foot tramway was constructed along the pathway to Cape Borda and an engine-operated crane replaced the horse-drawn capstan in 1923. The crane was built on a ledge 215m away. In 1926, however, the embankment below the stone storage hut began to crack and the engine-operated crane was badly affected by salt spray.

Hillside track (PH)

Stores were landed at Harvey’s Return every three months until it was abandoned in 1928 when the road from Kingscote to Cape Borda was completed.

Some of my references say that the beach and rocks are still littered with the rusty remnants of the rails laid up the track. We found a few small pieces on the track itself, but not very much. There are interpretive signs about the tramway in the area. The following photograph shows one of the signs (“Bringing up supplies”) with a photo of the hillside tramway circa 1933.

“Bringing up supplies” sign showing the hillside tramway at Harvey’s Return (PH)

One of my references says that “A crane was erected at the side of the cove to allow supplies to be unloaded from a boat without a hazardous journey through the breaking waves” and “the crane pedestal still sits atop a rock in the cove”. Horses were used to haul the lighthouse keepers’ stores on small rail cars up the hillside tramway with the help of a winch, a capstan at the top of the hillside track where the ground was flatter. A ‘flying fox’ was then used for transporting the supplies from the jetty to the lighthouse. Part of the horse capstan can still be seen hidden in the bushes at the top of the track. Remains of the machinery can apparently still be found scattered around the cove.

There is a cemetery nearby where many lighthouse keepers and their families were buried, including Captain Woodward, the first lighthouse keeper. Woodward Hut is, no doubt, named after him.

The Cemetery at Harvey’s Return (PH)

Cape du Couedic

The 25m high Cape du Couedic lighthouse was opened in 1909 (although some sources give other years, such as 1906 and 1908. The following photograph of the doorway to the lighthouse shows a sign above the doors with the year 1909 clearly displayed.

Lighthouse keepers’ accommodation is also available for short-term use by tourists at Cape du Couedic. There are three buildings which were all built in 1907 from local limestone. These are all large and roomy. They have been named Parndana, Karatta and Troubridge.

The Cape du Couedic lighthouse

(with ‘1909’ sign above the doors) (PH)

Weirs Cove

In 1907 a cast-iron screw pile jetty was built at the bottom of the cliffs at nearby Weirs Cove. A storeroom was built at the top of the 75 to 90m high cliffs. A ‘flying fox’ once hoisted building materials and supplies from the jetty to the storeroom. A funnel-way leading to the flying fox is located at the top of the cliffs. The flying fox has since been dismantled but the remains of the jetty, funnel-way, storeroom and the water tank can still be seen at Weirs Cove. The now unsafe jetty was 58.8m long. Cape du Couedic was named during Nicolas Baudin’s expedition early in 1803. They named the cape after Le Chevalier du Couedic, a French Navy Captain (1739-1780).

Storeroom (Left) & 2 living rooms (PH)

Flying fox cut to jetty (PH)

Remains of the jetty (PH)

I don’t yet know the origins of the name for Weirs Cove but I see that a Captain Weir of the government vessel Governor Musgrave was in a position to suggest suitable sites for jetty locations in the early 1900s. The Governor Musgrave was an iron single screw steamship built in Sydney in 1874. She had been built to the order of the Marine Board of SA and was intended mainly to serve the lighthouses and navigational aids along the coast. This work included the annual inspection of jetties and anchorages at outports. Ronald Parsons gives a detailed history of the Governor Musgrave in his book “The Navy in South Australia”.

Cape Willoughby

Cape Willoughby lighthouse (NR)

Cape Willoughby is on the easternmost point of KI, overlooking Backstairs Passage. Both Cape Willoughby and Backstairs Passage were named by Matthew Flinders in 1802. He is thought to have named the cape after a parish in his native county of Lincolnshire in England. Baudin’s expedition would have named the cape ‘Cape Sane’. The 27m (or 28m) high Cape Willoughby lighthouse was opened in 1852, making it SA’s first lighthouse. It was constructed from granite and limestone quarried from an adjacent crevice. It was first called the Sturt Light in honour of Captain Charles Sturt. The light first shone in January 1852. The original keepers settlement was in a valley ½ mile from the light. It was close to the beach where supplies were landed and a jetty was built there. Apart from the jetty, the small settlement consisted of a boat ramp, a boat shed, stores building, butchery, blacksmith’s building and two assistant keepers' cottages. The light keepers would have to walk the ½ mile from the stone cottages to the lighthouse to work. The head keeper’s stone cottage, however, was near the light.

A report in 1882 suggested that there was difficulty walking the ½ mile hill from the cottages to the lighthouse with the head winds and rain. As a result of the report, new light keepers’ cottages were built close to the lighthouse in 1912. According to “A Cruising Guide to Historic Gulf Ports – Vol.2” by Graham Scarce, however, the keepers’ stone cottages were replaced with timber and fibro ones in 1927. The ruins of the original lighthouse keepers’ cottages and jetty can apparently still be seen.

Three cottages are said to have been built in 1927 and two are available for short-term use by tourists. It seems that the cottages are called the Seymour and Thomas Cottages.

The lighthouse became fully automated in 1974.

To be continued