The Longest Lighthouse Keeper

Before making one of the cottages at Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse his home, Australia’s longest-serving lighthouse guide and caretaker used to cycle to work. He pedalled past humpbacks traversing Flinders Bay in June, and explosions of wildflowers in August, observing the Cape’s seasons and rhythms. Uniform tucked in his backpack, Paul Sofilas let the onshore wind dictate whether his morning swim would be in the Southern or Indian Ocean each day, immersing in nature, bodily and mentally, before commencing the tasks of modern lighthouse keeping.

Paul’s always had a keen sense of place. Raised in a fishing family in Bunbury, Paul credits his father’s boat building as the catalyst for his enduring love for Augusta. In the late 1960s, Paul accompanied his family to deliver a handmade timber boat to its new owner before the first of many family holidays to the town. Enamoured by the area, Paul’s parents built a holiday home in Augusta and eventually retired there.

Paul worked up north in mining construction but was always drawn back to the region for surfing, camping and family connection. During a visit in 1998, Paul rediscovered its unique beauty through the newly forged Cape to Cape Track, which he roamed daily in sections, alongside two-wheeled exploring on his mountain bike. “Seeing the region up close links it all together, and you begin to understand it as a greater picture: Paul says.  

 Magnetised by the wonders of the local natural world, he recalls visiting the Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse with friends and telling them afterwards, ‘That’s the sort of place I’d be happy to do the odd day as a volunteer.’ Six weeks later, he was staring at a newspaper job advertisement for a Cape Leeuwin Lighthouse Supervisor. ‘The joke there is that there was one guy doing three days, and this role was four days, and you never saw each other, so you were mainly supervising yourself.’  

 A lot has changed in the 25 years since. Initially, the visitor experience amounted to selling tickets from a back room and sending punters off on self-guided tours. Despite having no training in the industry, Paul took his hybrid local-tourist’s eye and personable nature and turned it into a passionate vocation. He has overseen the site’s restoration and revegetation, plus additions of the interpretive centre, Leeuwin Been Café, and enhanced services for visitors. From early in his tenure, Paul carefully kept and collated information and items for future projects, and they became vital to the detail of the current museum. He attended conferences, joined the historical and other societies and campaigned continuously for improvements to regional tourism, including a mixed-use trail from Augusta town centre to the lighthouse site. His colleagues call him a trove of information and a steadfast pillar of the community – much like the lighthouse. 

It’s not just Paul’s vast knowledge that sets him apart, it’s his muck-in and get it done attitude – letting a contractor in on his day off or riding into town through 120kmh wind and pouring rain, just because he promised he would. He adapts his tours to suit his audience, children torn from their devices or those with limited English. “Some people are there for the climb and the view, others will spend hours reading in the museum, and return again the next day, you have to be flexible.”

One of Paul’s fond memories is of a gentleman who arrived very late one afternoon and shared with Paul that his own father had rounded Cape Leeuwin on merchant ships many times and often spoke of how intense the experience was. It’s these gifts, of sharing the Cape and its history, that keep Paul motivated over so many years.

He loves to see walkers completing their Cape to Cape trek, tired but inspired with a contagious buzz that he says he can catch even at the end of a long day climbing stairs. He grins at the memory of resident sheep silently mowing the site’s vast lawns. Luring the naughty one, Feta, back inside the gate with an apple, or watching her nuzzling into the hands of delighted visitors who’d never been outside a landlocked city. He recalls that it was always children who stopped to notice he’d shaped some seeded grass into a smiley face for the rock parrots, and one parent’s good-natured jibe that maybe he’d been out there too long if he’d begun doing things like that.

And the lighthouse? “I’m often asked if it’s still working,” he says. ‘Solar flares, sunspots and atmospheric conditions mean there’s still a need for it.’ The vulnerability of GPS is another reason the light is kept in mint working order, with the jagged incisors of the rocks no less dangerous than they were in 1910 when they got the better of a passenger liner.

You get the impression that if Paul were around back then, he’d be one of the keepers lighting fires to guide the evacuees to the safety of the sandy beaches, rescuing everyone on board. He often thinks of the 10 sailors who left Melbourne in 1945 and were swept off their deck into the swirling brine and perished. He laments that they’d likely be able to see the light from the ocean, bleating the presence of land into the night with no way to reach it. He’s that kind of guy.