Lighthouses of Australia Inc. Bulletin

Bill Breen reminisces about life on Cliffy Island with Denise Shultz & Christian Bell
Photo: Denise Shultz

My father William J. Breen was born in Ireland. He served on various ships as a deckhand and when he eventually got off the ships, he landed in Williamstown. Two years later, when he was working on the Williamstown-Port Melbourne ferry, he met his future wife and my mother. They decided to get married, but before they could do that, his bride suggested that he get a better job.

Bill Breen’s father William (in the centre in the dark coat) proudly poses with his lifeboat crew members.
Later in his life William Breen became harbourmaster in Queenscliff.
Photo: Bill Breen

And so, in 1902 at the age of 27, my father joined the lighthouse service. Men who joined the lighthouse service back then, usually got their first appointment at what was called an “inside station”, and so my father was sent to Portland to learn the trade of the lighthouse keeper. My parents with all their worldly possessions boarded the train in Melbourne to go Portland. They went via Ballarat, where it was very cold at the time and my mum got the shock of her life, because she had never seen the snow before.

Our family lived in Portland till 1909 and I was born there two years before we left, in 1907. It was required of the new keepers that they had to do three years on an outside station before they could get a more convenient placement on the mainland and that is why we had to start at Cliffy Island. We stayed there until 1911, when my dad was transferred to Queenscliff.

A RAAF helicopter coming into land on Cliffy Island
Photo: PG, LoA Archives

I was only about four years old when we left Cliffy Island, but I still have vivid memories of our life there. Cliffy Island is just a small rock. On top, there was a lighthouse and a duplex assistant keeper’s quarters made of timber. Then there was a head keeper’s house, which looked almost exactly like the one at Cape Nelson. They must have been built from the same plan. In 1909 there were three families - two assistant keepers and the head keeper. My dad was one of the assistant keepers (I can’t remember the name of the other one) and the head keeper was named Jack Mackie.

I was the only kid on the island; the other assistant keeper and his wife did not have any children. Later on, there was also my little brother Mark. Three years younger then me, he was born in Williamstown, my mother had to leave the island to give birth to him. Mark was only a few months old baby when we left Cliffy Island and could not remember anything about it. The families visited each other, and we had a very good social life. I was particularly fond of one of the ladies I always followed her around. When she took me for a walk we used to collect all sorts of pretty pebbles. She had a pickle jar full of them. But the best founds were pieces of coloured glass polished by the sea. Our favourite were the blue ones, which I think, came from broken bottles of castor oil.

Landing on Cliffy Island was always precarious.
People as well as supplies had to be lifted from churning sea by a crane and then pulled along the tramway to the lightstation. The roof of one of the cottages is just visible on top of the island.
Photo: Max Huxley

We had few visitors, because it was almost impossible to land on the island. Only local fishermen who could operate the landing mechanism were able to get ashore and visit us. It was a pretty lonely existence and I can imagine that if you happened to strike a neighbour that you did not get along with, it would be hell.

Cliffy does not have any beaches - it is sheer rock. There is very little grass for animals to feed on but incredibly, there were two hardy species of fauna that survived the harsh conditions of the island. A few wild rabbits sheltered in the crevices between the rocks, feeding on pigfaces and similar coastal vegetation. The keepers caught them occasionally for meat.

Sharing the sparse plants with rabbits were our goats. Like rabbits, the goats were very resilient and for the lighthouse families, they were a blessing because they were the only source of fresh milk. Each family had one goat. There was a wall all around the houses and within the wall was a little shed where the goat was kept. Milking the goat was a very elaborate procedure. First, my father pulled the unwilling goat out of the shed, then he put a rope around its legs, held its head and proceeded milking it while sitting on the bucket. Apart from the semi-wild goats, we had a few chooks as well but they had a hard time trying not to be blown away.

Even though there was not much soil on the island, we also grew a few vegetables from a tiny veggie garden, sheltered within the stone walls.

The lightstation’s row boat returns back to the lighthouse tender while supplies are lifted up to the island.
The tender was probably MV Cape York which tended the island in the 1940s & 1950s.
Photo: Dick O'Neal

The goats, rabbits, chooks, fishing and veggie garden were the only means of obtaining fresh food. Everything else had to be brought to the island by the supply ship, which in those days, was Lady Loch. The supply ship came once a fortnight from Williamstown, where the headquarters were established. She always anchored well off shore and the supplies were brought in by a rowboat. We always sent our advanced order to the grocer (he was named Doig) in Williamstown.

Of course, we always have to have an extra week of food supplies for emergency. Sometimes when the weather was bad and it was impossible to land the stores, Lady Loch just continued on to other lighthouses and they dropped our supplies off on their return, when the weather was better. After Lady Loch, Cliffy Island was served by fishermen from Port Albert and now it is only visited from time to time by a helicopter.

To keep the food fresh was a sometimes a real challenge, without refrigeration we were really doing it tough. The best my parents could do to keep the meat cold was to put it in the “cool garden shed”. It was just a framework covered with hessian and lined with strips of felt, which were dipped in water on the sides of the shed. As the water rose by capillary action, it evaporated and kept the inside of the construction cool. If all failed, we always had tinned food, like pickled pork or condensed milk.

Cliffy Island is just a top of a granite hill protruding above the surface of water.
Steep cliffs plunge into the sea on all sides. The landing platform is visible on the lower (right) side of the island.
Photo: Dick O’Neal

Except for the fortnightly visit of the supply ship, there was no communication between Cliffy Island and the mainland in the first decade of twentieth century. There was no radio¹ or telephone. In absolute emergency, we had a flagpole and could use it to stop passing ship. Of course, they did not always answer the call for help because they were too busy, but if they did, they sent a small boat from the ship. Once they took ashore a woman who got scolded by a Primus stove which accidentally exploded. She was seriously injured but once she got ashore, there was a doctor who took care of her and she recovered. Normally we would use a kitchen stove which was fuelled by coal and that in turn, was brought on the island by the supply ship.

We had to be very careful with our water because the only supply we had was rainwater collected from the roofs of the buildings. Even though we had a lot of rain, the water was almost brackish because of all the salt; the sea spray was blowing over the roofs all the time. The laundry was done all by hand and the toilet - it was basically a bucket the content of which got thrown over the cliff.

A very early photograph of Cliffy Island shows the lighthouse and two of its original cottages.
The buildings and the wall do not look weathered, they look almost newly built. This picture shows the lightstation as it must have looked like during Bill Breen's time there in 1909.
Photograph courtesy: Warwick Jones

Our time on Cliffy Island ended in 1911, when I was four years old. When we were leaving, I remember that I was put in a black woven cane basket that was just big enough for one man to stand in it. It had a side door I was put in this basket and then it was just swung to the waiting boat, where two men stood ready and as soon as the basket reached them I had to be very quick to get out of it. We were all loaded like that to the boat, taken back to the supply ship Lady Loch and sailed back to Williamstown.

Afterwards, our family lived in Queenscliff where my younger sister was born in 1914. She is not with us any more, but my brother is still alive, he is only 95! I will be 100 in February. My dad stayed in Queenscliff till end of WW2 until he retired. He was due to retire just as the war started but was asked to remain for another few years and he eventually retired when the war ended. He finished in Ballarat, where he is buried in a cemetery.

Like most other lighthouse kids, I did not follow in my father’s footsteps and become a lightkeeper. In Queenscliff, where we lived all my youth, there were few options for young people to make a career related to the sea. The only option seemed to be fishing, and I did not want to become a fisherman. Instead, I went to Melbourne and found myself a job in the building trade.

I revisited Cliffy Island in 1966 with a friend. We camped at Wilsons Promontory (I think it was either Sealers or Refuge Cove) and we went fishing in a boat. During our trip we decided instead to go and check Cliffy Island. By this time, some of the lighthouses were already being automated, but Cliffy was still manned at the time and was serviced from Port Albert. Our original cottages were of course no longer there, ² they were replaced by new ones. But even these did not survive very long. Because of fear of vandalism, they were deliberately pulled down by the authorities.

1. The radiotelephone was not installed until 1926 for communicating with Wilsons Promontory lighthouse.
2. The original stone cottages were destroyed by fire in 1919 and replaced by the weatherboard cottage transferred from Citadel Island in 1921 and a new brick cottage in 1927.