The Cape Otway Lightstation has reached many milestones and been a part of many significant events in its life:

• It is the oldest lighthouse on the mainland of Australia;
• it was home to the first telegraph station linking Tasmania to the rest of the nation;  
• it witnessed the sinking of the first American ship in World War II; and
• it was the last place from which fog rockets were fired in Australia.

Fog rockets were used when the fog was so thick, ships could not see the lighthouse beam. The captain of a vessel could hear the explosions and know he was near Cape Otway, an area of the Great Ocean Road region notorious for shipwrecks

On the fateful night of their last firing, lighthouse keeper Jack Waites had the job of setting them off.

“We had to let off a rocket every 20 minutes,” he says.

“It was blowing a gale, even though they reckon there’s no wind when you have a fog, and the only building on the whole light station without a light in it was the fog rocket building.”

Unable to see, Waites lit a match; a spark from which landed in a box of detonators. Instead of one rocket every 20 minutes being set off, there was a huge explosion of 20 rockets at one time. After that, the fog rocket building no longer existed at Cape Otway Lightstation.

Happily Waites escaped to tell his story, but fog rockets were considered too dangerous to ever be used again.

Although the Great Ocean Road’s Cape Otway Lightstation no longer has its fog rocket building, there is still plenty to see and do at there.  Set on a huge cliff at the end of a pleasant diversion off the Great Ocean Road, from the moment a visitor turns on to the lightstation road, they are entering an enchanted land.

The yellow signpost on the side of the road says to keep a wary eye out for cows, birds, koalas and kangaroos.

The sign could equally urge them to look out for wombats, echidnas, dolphins and whales!

Cape Otway is where the southern Ocean meets Bass Strait.  The elements have sculpted here what could be the ultimate rugged coastline and certainly a dangerous place for sailors.

The role of the lightstation is to illuminate “the eye of the needle” – the narrow gap between Cape Otway and King Island.

As well as the historic lighthouse off the Great Ocean Road, from which the views are nothing short of stupendous, there’s a faithfully restored telegraph station and the remnants of a radar station built to protect Allied shipping during the Second World War.

The City of Rayville was the first American ship sunk in that war, pre-dating the attack on Pearl Harbour.

So as well as the wildlife and the stunning natural beauty, there’s plenty of history to look out for on the “compulsory” detour from the Great Ocean Road to Cape Otway.