The lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin 

The lighthouse at Cape Leeuwin is located at the most south westerly point of Australia’s mainland.

It’s easy to get to by car from West Australia’s capital, Perth or from the Margaret River, one of the nations best wine growing regions.

The above video is a tour to the top of this fully operational lighthouse, still working more than 125 years after it was built.

Sailors consider Cape Leeuwin to be one of the most dangerous capes in the world, along with South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope and Argentina’s Cape Horn.

It’s dangerous because it’s where the western edge of the Indian Ocean meets the Great Southern Ocean. The interaction creates an unstable combination of winds and currents very close to a surprisingly treacherous shoreline.

The Southern Ocean wraps all the way around Antarctica and is technically defined as beginning at Latitude 60° S, which is 3,000 Kms south of Cape Leeuwin. However, there is no land at all between Australia’s Cape Leeuwin and the Antarctic mainland – just a lot of ocean for 4,100 Kms.

That’s why Australians consider the entire body of water to their south to be the Great Southern Ocean.

Whatever the technical semantics, if you are lucky enough to visit Cape Leeuwin, you’ll feel like you are standing on the edge of the world.

If you want to get a sense of of what this place is like to visit, here’s the link to a very lovely story about Cape Leeuwin