The newly completed Green Cape Lightstation was in this functional state on 30 May 1886 – the night of the Ly-ee-Moon disaster. On a clear, calm night en route from Melbourne to Sydney, the paddle-steamer ran full-speed into rocks at the base of the lighthouse and quickly broke apart. Seventy-one lives were lost in the sinking – one of the greatest losses of human life in a single shipwreck in the state's history. Fifteen men (ten crew and five passengers) survived the shipwreck but only 24 bodies were ever recovered and buried in unmarked graves in a small cemetery a short distance from the lightstation. Flora MacKillop, the mother of Mary MacKillop, died in that accident.