History
There are two conflicting legends about where the bluestone for the building came from. One version states that it came from Scotland as a ships ballast. In the other more likely version, the stone was quarried in Melbourne and shipped to Queenscliff. The fact that the stone was shipped may have led to the former theory's conception.
Fort Queenscliff was built around the lighthouse during the Australian Gold Rush after concerns that ships carrying gold might be susceptible to attack from privateers. The light was converted to gas in 1890, and then to electricity in 1924. It is supposed that the first public telephone service in Victoria was installed here. Today the lighthouse is unmanned and automated, and is serviced by the Port of Melbourne Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Queenscliff High Light
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)
“I believe that history has shape, order, and meaning; that exceptional men, as much as economic forces, produce change; and that passé abstractions like beauty, nobility, and greatness have a shifting but continuing validity.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)