IT is an unofficial count, but apparently the new number of steps to the top of the Cape Nelson Lighthouse is 8,700.

Mind you, this calculation was made by a three-year-old who, after making almost the entire climb on his hands and knees, muttering to himself (closely monitored by his parents, of course), declared his tally loudly from the top.

In reality, the number of steps is 124, said lighthouse historian and tour guide, Gordon Stokes, “but of course, that depends on how old you are”. He would know better than most, having climbed those cast iron beauties regularly for the past 14 years.

And the ascent up the red and green spiral staircase is now all the more enjoyable, following a $2 million refurbishment which saw the closure of the historic landmark and tourist attraction in December 2022.

Works were due to be completed by mid-2023, but as a spokeswoman for the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said at the time, “ these buildings do have a habit of revealing nasty surprises as the works get underway”.

But while there were no reports of nasty surprises, the painstaking refurbishment, paid for by AMSA, still blew out by six months. The lighthouse reopened on December 22, 2023.

The main task was to ensure all surfaces containing lead, both inside and outside, were removed, said Mr Stokes.

“All of the early paint job had to be removed because of the lead in it,” he said. “This was a legal requirement, so the lighthouse was chemically stripped both inside and out and then many layers of (volatile organic compound-free) protective paint put back on.

“All of the electricals, cabling and so on, was replaced and brought up to the latest specifications. And each step of the cast iron spiral staircase was individually removed, packed up in crates and sent to Melbourne to be cleaned up and repainted.”

To say the year-long refurbishment was no easy task is an understatement. But it was a walk in the park compared to the actual construction – by hand – of the lighthouse more than 140 years ago from locally sourced bluestone. This stone had to be found, dug up, hand-cut, and carted to site piece by piece from west Portland by teams of men and horses. And with no direct road between there and the Cape back then, this ended up being a trip of 21km. Mostly through sand. With many of those stones weighing around five tons. That’s one hell of an effort.

The resulting lighthouse, a white tower of basalt, is “magnificent, and an exhibit of the skills of the stone masons and their architect and the engineers of the time”, said Mr Stokes.

“You can clearly see that in the finish. It’s an extraordinary construction, extremely accurate and it’s all done by hand. Young people can’t get their head around the ‘built by hand bit’.

“When I tell them that much of the stone in the lower and upper sections weighs around five tons…that’s when the conspiracy theorists appear.

“We’re talking about a very manual period when there were no machines to bulldoze the stones from the basalt shelf …so it was all axes, pick and shovel, and crowbar.

“We found many holes in a paddock on Murphy’s Road (which now houses a new estate, so the holes have now been filled up) where the stones were levered out on a tripod arrangement, cut with hand tools, loaded onto the back of a wagon and brought to site.”

There is no question that this beloved landmark is an engineering marvel: a mass of volcanic rocks held together in a common bond of huge stones at the bottom of the tower, smaller stones in the middle, and massive again at the top, which provides the lighthouse its stability.

“Each stone supports another,” Mr Stokes explained, “and the lighthouse is held together by equal pressure”.

How the engineers of the day got the stones so perfectly aligned on top of each other without modern machinery is in itself another example of engineering genius, but interested readers will need to take the tour to find out more.

The lighthouse’s crowning glory, the lead crystal lantern itself, is another thing of beauty. Made by the Chance Brothers in Birmingham, England in 1934, it was imported when the lighthouse was first converted to electricity. Before that, the lens under the red cap was a massive 1.8m across, driven by kerosene, and lit the way for ships more than 40kms away.

The ‘new’ lantern, with its four circular lenses, is still operational and focuses its light source into four pencil beams which sweep across the horizon in a group, otherwise known as group signaling.

These beams rotate every 20 seconds, which is particular to Cape Nelson, so that at night navigators can tell which lighthouse it is, Mr Stokes said. During the day, each lighthouse is recognised by its appearance; quite distinctive in the case of the Cape Nelson beacon, with its 32-metre-high, white-painted tower with a red cap.

Back down to earth and almost lost literally in the shadow of the lighthouse is Lookout House, an unassuming little building snuggled near the base of the sweeping tower, and which once served almost as important a function as the lighthouse itself – to monitor the ocean against hostile vessels.

It hasn’t been used for 50 to 70 years, Mr Stokes said, but it “played an important role in WW1 and WW2 in keeping watch over the coast”.

Lookout House houses a rare (but valueless) telescope which is one of only two in Australia and came out from England in 1885, and a collection of coded flags. The flags, new in 2009, when used with the International Code of Signals make up a complete message system which is still in use today as an internationally recognised maritime language.

Today, the Cape Nelson Lighthouse still plays a vital role in saving lives. Operated by AMSA, the lighthouse’s white light can be seen some 21 nautical miles out to sea. And the views over this wild south west ocean are unparalleled.

The architects of this local beauty were Scottish engineers; a breed who had a reputation for building one of the first circular lighthouses. Before that, these beacons were housed in towers with flat surfaces and were constantly washed off the rocks they were built on. Circular lighthouses were a game changer.

“We take so much for granted these days,” Mr Stokes said: the principles of levers and surfaces, and even round lighthouses.

The grand reopening of the Cape Nelson Lighthouse has been a long wait but it’s been well worth it.

Tours are $20 (adults), $12 (school-age children), $55 (2 adults, 2 children). Times and group fee negotiable. Contact Gordon on 0438 012 352.