Barrenjoey Lighthouse volunteer Rohan Walter found passion in retirement
He flew to numerous countries during his 37 years as a captain with Qantas, but Newport’s Rohan Walter believes the best place is Pittwater. “I travelled the world for a living and that is the most precious place to me on earth up there,” he says of Barrenjoey Headland and its views, 91 metres above sea level. “The passion I have for that lighthouse, it just bubbles out of me.”
Rohan is one of 15 National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) volunteers who take the public on 30-minute Sunday tours of Barrenjoey Lighthouse and share in its history. Rohan, 77, marvels at the ‘beautiful sandstone work’ of the Scottish stonemasons who built the lighthouse in two years. Constructed from sandstone found on site, it was completed in 1881.
He takes visitors inside the lighthouse and through the fuel room where the original kerosene to power the first light was kept. He says there’s a whole history around the light itself. “And the light still operates even though people don’t use it anymore,” he explains, adding an LED light is now used. “Because people have GPS and chart plotters, they don’t need it.”
Rohan was part of the Chase Alive Discovery Group when he first started at the lighthouse some 17 years ago. He joined the group, a volunteer team for NPWS, a few years after he retired in 2003. “I really believed in volunteering as a way of giving back,” he says.
Having toured the waters of Pittwater as a ‘boaty’ for years, Rohan was fascinated by his other favourite place, West Head. In his younger days, Rohan’s stepfather told him about the WWII forts, tucked into the hillside and slightly visible from the water.
By 2012, Rohan says the concrete forts were so overgrown with vegetation, ‘you could be standing two metres away from it and you wouldn’t even know it was there’. He contacted the head ranger at the time, asking to uncover the bunkers. She agreed, word of the project got out and soon Rohan had gathered together the West Head Awareness Team. Together with the help of two National Parks employees they ‘started clearing the scrub away’ and began recording a history of the site.
Once the bunkers were uncovered, Rohan decided the tracks needed work so the public could visit them. He approached then Pittwater MP Rob Stokes. “I told Rob about the project and he just fell in love with the whole idea, got very enthusiastic and supported me,” Rohan says. The team plotted out the track and Rob got $200,000 allocated from the State Government. He explains it was a difficult project as helicopters needed to be used to bring the stone steps in. But the rewards were ‘wonderful’.
“Now you have a magnificent walkway down to the forts that the public can access from West Head lookout,” Rohan says proudly of the four-year project to restore the West Head Army Track, which includes gun emplacements and a battery observation post. “We put together a fantastic thing for people to see what happened back in the war.”
Information about the Barrenjoey Lighthouse and the West Head Army Track can be found on the NPWS website.