THE pioneering Glover family are well known and respected in the local community.

Lighthouse keeping is synonymous with the family and their story is extraordinary.

William and wife Lucy Palmer Glover arrived in the Swan River Settlement, Western Australia on 23 August 1829 on the ship ‘Marquis of Angelsea’.

The couple had two sons when they arrived, William Henry and Thomas.

Young William Henry, at ten years of age in 1832, was apprehended for stealing a canister of gunpowder, thirteen shillings worth of silver coins and three shillings worth of copper from Mr Leroux’s store in Perth.

Things turned bad for William – his father then took hold of a rope and flogged him till at last the prisoner confessed.

The young thief was carted down to Fremantle Gaol given two dozen lashes, before entering and serving fourteen days in gaol, receiving another two dozen lashes for good measure before being released.

Will survived the ordeal and in the 1837 Perth census, aged fifteen years, was listed as a servant. I’ll bet he didn’t steal anything.

At sixteen years William left the colony and went to sea to become a Mariner.

Records from his marriage in 1846 show his occupation as a free Mariner and Lighthouse Keeper then to be recorded as a waterman (bargeman).

Later, with his own 246 ton barque Helvellyn, Will married Margaret Dow and as a squatter, moved with his family to Fly Point, Port Stephens in 1857. From here he ran a timber transporting business when a significant number of the population of the area was made up of Aboriginal people and Chinese fishermen.

In October 1869 Will was appointed the Telegraph Operator.

This was a vital position at the time as the Outer Light on Point Stephens was connected to Morpeth Telegraph Office for the transmission of shipping and weather reports to Sydney.

Maintaining his Telegraph Operator duties, William then became the first lighthouse keeper, inside Port Stephens, when the Inner Light was built in 1872. The family moved into the brick residence in 1875 with their eleven children.

William remained on duty until the day he died as reported in The Mercury, Hobart on Friday 22 July 1892.

“William Glover, keeper of the lighthouse in Port Stephens, fell dead while attempting to perform his duties this morning aged 70.

“He was in charge of the Inner Lighthouse since it was opened.”

The Glovers that followed worked on every lighthouse on the NSW coast.

Twelve-year-old Walter, one of the eleven Glover kids to move into the Inner Light residency (more children followed), recorded that he and his mates would walk out to the point at Fingal and delight in watching the Outer lighthouse being constructed.

He watched the road from the cove to the site of the lighthouse being built, he watched the sailing ships come into the cove with their loads of Hawkesbury sandstone.

Walter, who became a fisherman, described Port Stephens in the late 1870s as a very busy shipping place with sailing ships loading timber for New Zealand and interstate.

“Big quantities of railway sleepers and telegraph poles were shipped away.

“Sailing ships lay at anchor in Shoal Bay and when they got a favourable wind, you could hear sea shanties being sung as they hoisted the sails.”

The first Glover to live on the Outer Light was the ninth child of William Henry and Margaret Glover, seventeen-year-old Isabella Alice, known to all as ‘Jemima’.

Jemima, a midwife, became the third wife of 52-year-old light keeper James Priest in 1880.

Midwives were much sought after as families were big and having a doctor in attendance at a birth was practically unheard of.

William and Margaret’s twelfth child, Francis John, known as ‘Alf’, moved onto the Fingal Outer Light in 1891 as an Assistant with Henry Lambourne.

The Principal keeper at the time was George C Priest, whose wife Sarah served as a midwife – very convenient for Alf and his wife Eveline who had four children, all born on the Outer Light.

One of Alf’s sons, Herbert William, followed his father into the lighthouse keeping service and spent many years as the keeper at Norah Head.