When you imagine life at manned lighthouses, do you dream of the challenge of keeping the light shining, the tranquility of remote picnics, and the romantic isolation of such an environment?
Allow me to introduce you to my grandmother, who will quickly dispel your utopian fantasies: "Our toilet tins had to be emptied and the men would try to choose a favorable wind, go to the cliff edge, empty and run." Yet your dreams have caught a part of the truth, for Granny goes on to say, "I loved dear Mokohinau; those were the best and happiest years of my married life."
It was 1938 when my grandfather eagerly exchanged a Depression-era shovel for the adventure and self-sufficiency of lighthouse life on the rugged Mokohinau islands, about 100km northeast of Auckland...
Published
in Lighthouse Digest,
September 2000
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Last updated in March 2007.