500th Lighthouse

Point Perpendicular lighthouse in New South Wales, Australia – Our 500th - and a beautiful one. To get to this one, we had to drive down a gravel road through a military testing range. The parking lot was full, but most of the people were there only to see the boats go by in the long Sydney, New South Wales to Hobart, Tasmania sailboat race.

December 28 – Yesterday we met our goal and photographed our 500th lighthouse – Yeah! The grand total of 503 so far includes 276 in the US, 164 in Canada, 34 in New Zealand, & 29 in Australia. Many of the ones in the US and Canada were around the Great Lakes (of which we have seen most of them). Our quest has taken us down numerous roads and byways that we would have never traveled on. We have been rewarded with some beautiful picturesque sights – with many of them being rugged coastal points. Of course, some of the lighthouses have not been very picturesque (examples: surrounded by industrial buildings or storage tanks, that have badly deteriorated, and those that were not very architecturally beautiful). You may ask – where do we go from here? The simple answer is that we keep on our quest to see more. Our next goal is 600 – and who knows – maybe even a 1,000 in some distant future. There are over 9,000 of them in the world, but we don’t think that we can see all of them.

On Christmas Day we drove out to Palm Beach to see a lighthouse and then went thru Sydney. Traffic was heavy and parking in beach areas was overflowing. It appears that almost everyone heads to the beach on Christmas Day & since it was a sunny day they were out in force. We read about people driving fewer miles due to the recession, but it doesn’t seem to be happening here (as a matter of fact, the Australian economy is in pretty fair shape – as opposed to New Zealand which is not faring very well). In the evening we did manage to find a McDonald’s that was open and enjoyed our Christmas Day feast there.

On December 26th (Boxing Day) and yesterday we continued south along the coast of the state of New South Wales seeing lighthouses and then headed inland to the Canberra – the capital of Australia. By the way, Boxing Day doesn’t seem to real special here since most stores were open and people were exchanging gifts etc. Traffic again was very heavy on the day after Boxing Day since people were heading back home.

Here are a few driving notes. In many of the towns, parking in the downtown areas by law is by backing in at an angle. Roundabouts work well except when there is heavy traffic from 3 or 4 directions. Traffic really backed up yesterday whenever we entered a town with its roundabouts. Divided highways are the exception and the major roads go right thru downtown in many places.

Flagstaff Point (Wollongong Head) Lighthouse

Crookhaven Head lighthouse – one of those lighthouses that has been vandalized & is being left to the winds.

Australian Pelican

Australian Darter (Male) – in the cormorant family

Warden Head lighthouse. We could drive right up to it, roll down the window, and touch it (far easier than those 3 to 5 kilometres (2 to 3 miles) round trip hikes to get to others).