Not a word of a lie Fizzy - my grandad was one of the last manual light house keepers left in South Africa. He was also an alcoholic, surname Hughes (welsh) - are we related?
His last light house was on the Strand in Cape Town. My grandmother then left him - he was very violent. They started off in Namibia when it was originally South West Africa and owned by Germany. Every two years, they were moved down the coast.
One of the lighthouses was on Dassen Island, which is just a bit further south than Robyn Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for so long). My mum and her sisters used to go to boarding school on the main land by tug boat!! It was just them and the penguins on that island!