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into effect after the necessary legislation was passed in 1912, a survey of existing lighthouses was conducted by Commander C R W Brewis RN, and a bureaucracy was established. The transfer of Queensland lighthouses to the new Commonwealth Lighthouse Service began in 1915. The Commonwealth Lighthouse Service headquarters was in Melbourne, and the design of new lighthouses became more standardised around the country, though regional depots (including one in Brisbane which was responsible for the coast between Torres Strait and Cape Moreton) still maintained some local character.

Since 1915 various Commonwealth departments have carried the responsibility for lighthouses. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), established under the Australian Maritime Safety Authority Act 1990, is now responsible for operating lighthouses and other Commonwealth aids to navigation, along with its other functions.

3.2 Lighting the Queensland coast
One of the first appointments made by the Queensland colonial government after separation from New South Wales was a marine surveyor, Captain George Poynter Heath. Between his appointment in 1859 and his retirement in 1887, Heath was responsible for supervising the opening of 13 new ports, establishing 33 lighthouses, 6 lightships and 150 small lights and marking 450 miles (724 km) of the inner route through the Barrier Reef (Gibbney 1972). Captain Heath advised a parliamentary select committee that set out the beginnings of the policy for developing lighthouses along the Queensland coast.

In 1864 the select committee recommended erecting lighthouses at Sandy Cape and Bustard Head. Selection of these two sites reflects the importance at that time of the ports of Maryborough and Rockhampton. The government acted on this recom­mendation, and its agents in England procured two complete lighthouses in 'kit' form, with towers of cast iron segments which were bolted together on their sites. The two towers were manufactured by different foundries in England, though their designs were similar. Both were equipped with lantern houses and optical apparatus manufactured by Chance Brothers & Company, the major English lighthouse equipment maker. The Bustard Head lighthouse was first lit in 1868, and Sandy Cape in 1870. These fully imported cast iron lighthouses were effective, though costly.
Figure 3 — Major pre-1900 lightstations in the Great Barrier Reef region (Source: GBRMPA)

Having pressed for the Sandy Cape and Bustard Head lights, the select committee members added that they did not ignore the fact which this enquiry has impressed upon them, that there is before the Government of Queensland the much larger and more serious task of so lighting what is called the Inner Passage within the Barrier Reef, that not only the trade to our own rapidly increasing ports may be protected, but that much of the trade with India, China, and other countries to the