Officers Smoke Room

The officers' smoke room is one of three separate lounges aboard MV Cape Don, the others serving seamen and passengers respectively. In a vessel carrying 39 personnel across voyages to some of Australia's most isolated coastlines, these spaces were strictly divided by rank. The officers' room was where deck and engineering officers came off watch, away from the noise of the Polar diesel two decks below. MV Cape Don was built at State Dockyard, Newcastle, NSW, with the keel laid in 1961. She was launched on 28 May 1962 and completed in January 1963, one of three Cape Class sisters designed by the Australian Shipping Board for the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service. Her purpose was to service lighthouses, lightships, and buoys along the Australian coastline, supplying fuel, equipment, and stores to manned stations, and enabling maintenance at unmanned lights and floating navigational aids. Home-ported at Fremantle from 1964, her primary operating area covered the Western Australian and Northern Territory coastlines, with operations extending to Tasmania and the eastern seaboard. The ship carried a complement of 39 personnel through 27 years of government service. Progressive automation of Australian lighthouses through the 1980s steadily reduced the demand for supply tenders, and Cape Don retired from government service in 1990. She is the sole surviving vessel of the entire Commonwealth Lighthouse Service fleet, and the only surviving Cape Class ship. After a period carrying cargo between Australia and the Solomon Islands and a spell laid up on the Clarence River, the vessel was sailed to Sydney and moored at Balls Head Bay, Waverton, at the former Coal Loader wharf. She is now managed by the Sea Heritage Foundation and the MV Cape Don Society, and was photographed in 2016 as part of the Lost Collective MV Cape Don series.