page_title: Caloundra Lighthouses
section_title: Old Caloundra Lighthouse
hierarchical_section_title: Caloundra Lighthouses / History / Old Caloundra Lighthouse
caption_attribution_description: English: Lighthouse for Caloundra Head, Moreton Bay, 1896 [Signed: E A Cullen, Assistant Engineer on 30 Jan 1896] [Stamped: Marine Dept of Qld]
context_page_description: Caloundra Lighthouses are a heritage-listed pair of lighthouses at 3 Canberra Terrace, near Arthur Street, Kings Beach, Caloundra, Sunshine Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. The first, known as the Old Caloundra Light, was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built in 1896; the second, New Caloundra Light, was built in 1968. They were added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 5 February 2010.
context_section_description: A 25 acres (10 ha) Lighthouse Reserve had been proclaimed when the town of Caloundra was surveyed in 1883 but was never used. Instead, in the mid-1890s a site of little over 0.5 acres (0.20 ha) was chosen on land owned by Robert Bulcock, where he had built an observation platform on the highest portion of his property during the early 1880s, reputedly to keep watch for enemy ships during the "Russian Scare". Early photographs show that the first Caloundra Head Lighth was built close to Bulcock's observation platform, which stood to the south-west on what is now Canberra Terrace.
  The lighthouse reserve was formally transferred to the Crown in 1896/97 and early in 1896 the Department of Harbours and Rivers called tenders for the construction of two lighthouse towers and cottages on Bribie Island and a lighthouse tower and cottage at Caloundra Head. Materials were shipped by barge from Brisbane and department officers supervised the erection of the lightstations using day labour. The Caloundra Head Lighthouse was a hardwood-framed structure, clad with corrugated iron. A fourth order dioptric apparatus, which operated by concentrating light by refraction, was imported from Chance Bros & Co near Birmingham. The towers for the two leading lights on Bribie Island were of a much simpler construction: open timber frames that could be moved as the channel changed.
  The first light keeper at the Caloundra Head Lightstation was appointed when the light became operational in September 1896. One room of his cottage functioned as a postal receiving office, complete with telegraph facilities, with the light keeper appointed as the receiving office keeper. In 1910 the telegraph service was discontinued but was replaced by a telephone service in 1912. The post office remained at the lighthouse until 1934 and as a result, a rough track along the ridge was created by a steady stream of local residents, helping to foster closer settlement around the lighthouse in the immediate years after its erection. This rough track eventually became Canberra Terrace. As a married man with a large family, the arrival of the first lightkeeper also led to the establishment of the first Caloundra School, which for several months in the late 1890s was conducted at the light keeper's cottage.
  An incandescent vapour light, the first of its kind in Queensland, was purchased from Chance Brothers and installed in 1910 and by 1912 its 1400 candle power was visible at least 22–25 miles (35–40 km) out to sea. Many mariners considered it the best light on the Queensland coast and the key to successfully traversing Moreton Bay. As a result, by 1920 all vessels entering and leaving the Port of Brisbane at night had to use the North West Channel.
  Following the passage of the 1912 Commonwealth Navigation Act, from 1 July 1915 Queensland handed over responsibility for its 30 manned lights and 37 unattended lights, beacons, and buoys to the Australian Government, who constructed additional lightstatons and made substantial upgrades to existing lights, with many lighthouses converted to unattended acetylene lights. The bulk of the expenditure was concentrated north of Cooktown where seven new lighthouses were constructed to guide ships through the Torres Strait and the Great Barrier Reef. Manned lighthouses were phased out in favour of less expensive, utilitarian-designed, unmanned structures.
  Caloundra Head Lighthouse continued to signal the entrance to the North West Channel to the Port of Brisbane and by 1929 investment in new navigation marks and dredging to increase the depth of the channel ensured that most of the larger ships entering Brisbane used this channel.
  The lighthouse also played an important role in the development of tourism on the North Coast (now Sunshine Coast). From as early as the 1880s holiday makers were travelling to Caloundra by boat or by rail to Landsborough then overland to Caloundra and staying in one of the early guesthouses or camping grounds. "Lighthouse Hill" became well known as a lookout and beauty spot, a place to which tourists and visit
caption: Old Caloundra Head Light plans, 1896
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