Passenger Lounge

MV Cape Don was not only a working vessel. Alongside its crew of 39 and its cargo of fuel, equipment, and navigational supplies, it carried people. Families assigned to remote lighthouse postings travelled aboard to reach their stations and return from them. Government officials joined inspection runs along the Australian coastline. For those passengers, this lounge was where the voyage was spent. Three separate lounges divided the vessel's complement: one for officers, one for seamen, one for passengers. The passenger lounge, photographed here in 2016, holds every piece of furniture it was fitted with in 1962. Nothing has been replaced. MV Cape Don was built at the State Dockyard in Newcastle, NSW, with its keel laid in 1961. The vessel was launched on 28 May 1962 and completed in January 1963, with its maiden voyage departing on 29 March 1963. Designed by the Australian Shipping Board as one of three Cape Class sisters alongside Cape Moreton and Cape Pillar, it was the primary supply tender for the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service, servicing lighthouses, lightships, and navigational buoys along the WA, NT, Tasmanian, and eastern Australian coasts. It is the sole surviving vessel of the entire CLS fleet. The vessel retired from government service in 1990 after 27 years. It is now berthed at Balls Head Bay, Waverton, within the Balls Head Coal Loader Complex, which was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 2021. MV Cape Don holds registration HV000208 on the Australian Register of Historic Vessels and is managed by the Sea Heritage Foundation, with conservation work carried out by volunteers of the MV Cape Don Society. The passenger lounge in this photograph is as it was left: original furniture, original fittings, from a vessel that was launched 62 years before this image was made.