Kamay, Botany Bay · Kurnell, New South Wales
A decommissioned lighthouse, kept alive by volunteers.
The Cape Solander Light was switched off in 1972 and left to the salt. We got a key in 1998 and have been scraping, repointing and re-glazing ever since. Four days a week we open the tower and the keeper's quarters to anyone who wants to climb.
Book a tower tour See what's inside the museum
- OpenFriday to Monday
- The climb87 steps to the gallery
- MuseumFree, step-free, ground floor
The light
A light that has been off for more than fifty years
The Cape Solander Light was built in 1873 on the headland at the southern entrance to Kamay, Botany Bay, to carry coastal shipping past the cliffs between Port Hacking and the Heads. It was first lit on 1 June 1874 and kept by a resident keeper and his family until the light was automated in 1934. The Commonwealth switched it off for good in 1972, when the new beacon on the breakwater took over the job.
Nobody pulled the tower down. For twenty-six years it stood empty and padlocked, and the salt air did what salt air does. In 1998 a group of Kurnell residents turned up with a key, a ladder and a permit from the park and started scraping the loose mortar out of the base. The society was incorporated the following year, and we have held the care-and-maintenance licence for the tower ever since.
We are not the lighthouse authority and we never will be. The light stays off. What we look after is the fabric of the building, the records that came with it, and the small everyday business of keeping a 150-year-old structure standing where the weather can reach it.
- First lit
- 1 June 1874
- Tower
- 21 m to the gallery, 87 steps
- Optic
- 2nd-order Fresnel, Chance Brothers of Birmingham
- Automated
- 1934
- Decommissioned
- 1972
- Built of
- Locally quarried sandstone and Hawkesbury brick
- Cared for by
- The Society, under licence from NSW National Parks
Tours
Climb the tower
A guide takes you up the 87 steps to the gallery, where the light used to stand. You will see the original optic, hear how a keeper trimmed a wick and kept the rotation going by hand, and get a view down the coast that most people only ever see from the whale-watching platform. Allow about forty minutes.
| Day | Tours | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Friday | 10.30am · 1pm | School groups until noon, so the morning tour is lively and the afternoon one is not. |
| Saturday | 9.30am · 11am · 1pm · 3pm | Our busiest day. Tickets at the desk only, first come; the 3pm is often full by lunchtime. |
| Sunday | 9.30am · 11am · 1pm | Family day. There is a worksheet for children at the desk and a shorter version of the climb. |
| Monday | 11am · 1pm | Quietest day of the week, and the best light for photography in the lantern room. |
- Adults $14, concession and students $10
- Children 5 to 15 $6, under 5 free with an adult
- Society members climb free, every day we are open
- Private group of up to 15, $180, weekdays by arrangement
Tours run in everything but severe weather. The gallery closes when the wind is above 40 km/h, or when there is lightning within 10 km, and we will rebook you or refund you on the spot. The stair is narrow, the handrail is original, and closed shoes are a requirement rather than a suggestion.
Museum
The keeper's quarters
Two rooms of the old quarters are open as a free museum. It is small, it is mostly paper, and it is the reason most of us joined. Everything here either came out of the tower or came back to it.
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The keepers' logs, 1874–1934
Sixty years of daily entries in three hands: weather, shipping, oil burned, the state of the wick. Digitised and searchable on the tablet by the door, and the originals are in the case beside it.
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Two panels of the 1874 optic
Part of the original Chance Brothers second-order lens, on long-term loan from the maritime collection at Darling Harbour. The whole assembly weighs more than this floor was built to carry, so we show the panels and the plans.
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The clockwork
The weight-driven mechanism that swung the beam before the tower was wired for electricity. It was seized solid when we found it. A retired fitter from Sutherland had it turning again in 2011, and it still runs on open days.
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Wrecks and salvage
Wreck charts for the Bay, the ship's bell off the collier Marlow, and a case of things the sea has handed back to the headland: brass, glass, a boot, a dinner plate with the maker's mark still on it.
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Whale season
Count sheets, tide tables and photographs from forty years of humpback surveys off the cape, kept by the same three Kurnell families. The cape is one of the best shore stations on the east coast between June and August.
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The watch book
Our own log, kept every morning since 1998: sea state, visibility, who was on the headland and what they saw. Visitors are welcome to add an entry, and people do.
Restoration
What the crew is doing this year
Twelve regular volunteers, one working bee a month, and a conservation plan agreed with the park. Nothing touches the fabric of the tower until a heritage stonemason has signed off on the method, and we keep to it.
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Repointing the tower base
The lime mortar at the base has failed where the salt spray sits. We are raking out and repointing 40 m² of sandstone with a matched lime putty, one bay per working bee, with the joints finished flush as they were in 1873.
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Re-glazing the lantern room
Sixteen panes are cracked, crazed or missing altogether. Replacements are being cut in laminated glass to the original profile and bedded in putty, two at a time, from the inside out.
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Painting the bands
The red and white bands were repainted in 2024 with a breathable linseed paint mixed to the 1930s specification. In this weather it will want doing again in about eight years, and that is already in the plan.
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The watching brief
Someone from the society walks the headland every morning, records the sea state and visibility in the watch book, and reports anything that looks wrong — a slipped stone, a loose rail, a new crack — to the park that day.
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The archive
Logs, plans and about 1,200 photographs, catalogued and stored in acid-free boxes in a climate-controlled room at the visitors' centre. Volunteers who would rather work indoors are always welcome here.
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What we do not touch
Nothing above the gallery. Anything structural up there is the park's call and the park's contractor, and we are happy to leave it that way. Our job stops at the door of the lantern room.
Join a working bee Or support the work from the outside
Working bees run on the second Saturday of the month, 8am to noon. Bring gloves, a hat and water; we supply the tools, the lime and the tea.
Visit
Getting there
Cape Solander Drive, Kurnell, inside Kamay Botany Bay National Park. Park at the Cape Solander car park and walk 300 m south along the clifftop track; the tower is the one with the red bands. There is no vehicle access to the gate, and the track is unsealed for the last stretch.
Whale season runs from June into August, and the headland gets busy on a clear weekend. Come before 10am or after 2pm if you would rather have the track to yourself. There is no cafe on site; the nearest is back in Kurnell village, about a ten-minute drive.
Park information, closures and fire bans are published by NSW National Parks, who manage the park the tower stands in. Check it before you drive out on a total fire ban day, because we will be closed.
| Museum | Friday to Monday, 10am to 4pm |
|---|---|
| Tower tours | Friday to Monday, at the times above |
| Grounds and track | Every day, sunrise to sunset |
| Closed | Christmas Day, Good Friday, and every total fire ban day |
- The museum and the ground floor are step-free from the car park, with a gentle 1:14 grade on the last 40 m of path.
- The tower itself is 87 steps with no lift. The stair is 600 mm wide with no turning space at the top, and it is not suitable for prams, wheelchairs or anyone who does not like enclosed stairs.
- A hearing loop, a large-print guide and a plain-English guide are all available at the desk. Just ask.
- Two accessible parking bays sit 60 m from the gate. Assistance dogs are welcome everywhere on site, including up the tower.
- Toilets, including an accessible toilet, are at the car park. There is no drinking water on the headland.
Support us
Keep the light on the map
We are a volunteer society with no paid staff and no government funding for the tower. Membership and donations pay for lime mortar, glass, archival boxes, and the public liability insurance that lets us take strangers up a 150-year-old stair.
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Ordinary member
$30 a year
Free tower tours whenever we are open, the newsletter four times a year, and a vote at the annual meeting in August.
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Household
$50 a year
Two adults and any children at the same address, with all the same rights and a family place at the members' evening in December.
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Life member
$500 once
Everything, permanently, and your name on the board in the keeper's quarters. Eleven people have done this since 1999.
The Lantern Room Fund
Money given to this fund is ring-fenced for one job: putting the glass back in the lantern room. $25 buys and fits a pane, and there are sixteen to do. Anything left over goes to the lead and the glazier. Donations of $2 or more are tax-deductible, and we will send you the receipt and a photograph of your pane in place.
Other ways to help: buy a postcard or a reprint of the 1874 elevation at the desk, leave a bequest in your will, or give us a Saturday morning and a pair of gloves. We would rather have your Saturday than your money.