Cafe Jaffa lighthouse a National Trust of South Australia museum after century on reef hit by 'Margaret Brock', 1852
The state-heritage-listed former Cape Jaffa lighthouse on South Australia's southest coast (see map) became a National Trust museum onshore at Kingston from 1976. The lighthouse was previously sited out to sea on the reef named after the wrecking of the Margaret Brock (at right) in 1852.
Images courtesy National trist of South Australia and Wikipedia
Built eight kilometres out to sea on the Margaret Brock reef on South Australia’s southeast coast and opened in 1872, the Cape Jaffa lighthouse was moved 100 years later to the foreshore at Kingston to became a museum run by the state’s National Trust.
The lighthouse originally was 41 metres high, with a Wells screw pile: narrow wrought-iron poles able to resist heavy seas breaking across the reef. Those rough seas meamt it took three years to assemble the lighthouse parts sent from England. The lighthouse’s eight rooms accommodated two lighthouse keepers and families, with enough stores for several weeks. Its Chance Brothers lantern could be seen 40 kilometres away.
First noted by French captain Nicholas Baudin in 1802, the reef also was sighted in 1826 by the Sesostris, a ship carrying convicts to the colony of New South Wales. A chart by South Australian governor harbormaster Thomas Lipson showing the reefs west of Cape Jaffa was published in the government gazette in 1853. This was the year after the Margaret Brock, a three-masted wooden barque built at Hobart Town in 1848, carrying cargo and 27 passengers was wrecked and broke up on the reef. The captain praised the passengers who were all landed safely but found his crew to be “surly and uncooperative”.
Margaret Brock later became the name of the reef that had also claimed the brigantine Maria, wrecked in 1840 with notorious tragic sequels when all its survivors were killed in a dispute with the Milmenrura people of the Coorong. But a major catalyst for building the lighthouse was South Australia’s biggest loss of life (89) in the wreck of the Admella in 1859 of the southeast coast. (The reef continued to take victims: schooner Agnes in 1865, fishing vessel Thunderbird 1964, fishing vessel Explorer 1977).
Among long-serving lighthouse keepers at Cape Jaffa was Charles Henry West, who also served at Troubridge and South Neptune Island, after being a customs officer at Port Adelaide. At 44, he’d married Emma Isabella Germein, age 27, daughter of Samuel Germein, at Baptist Church Manse, Adelaide.
The Cape Jaffa lighthouse's original multi-wick oil burner was replaced by a pressurised kerosene burner in 1909. Jack Loney’s book Shipwrecks on the South Australian Coast tells of castaways reaching the lighthouse only to find it was unmanned. The body of one lightkeeper was found and the other never recovered. Loney suggested this led to the the lighthouse being closed.
In April 1973, a new lighthouse at Robe was switched on and the Cape Jaffa kerosine-burner light, possibly the last of its type operating in Australia, turned off. It was replaced with an automated light.
The National Trust of South Australia (Kingston branch) successfully lobbied for the lighthouse to be rebuilt on Marine Parade, Kingston, and it opened in 1976 as a museum to show what life was like on the platform. The museum conducted tours during school holidays (and on certain nights with the light on). An interactive display on the Margaret Brock was opened in 2016.
Margaret Brock reef remained a sanctuary, proclaimed in 1973, to protect the southern rock lobster. The sanctuary covered the area within a radius of one kilometre of the navigation aid on the former lighthouse platform.