Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2014L00095:body:0:p14
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C R W Brewis, a retired British naval surveyor, to report on the condition of existing lights and to recommend improvements. His reports set a course for the newly established Commonwealth Lighthouse Service that took over existing lighthouses in 1915. Dent Island Lightstation, along with the other coastal lights between Cape Moreton and the Torres Strait, was managed from a Commonwealth Lighthouse Service depot in Brisbane. (The establishment of the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service is outlined in Reid 1988).

The lighthouse service followed Brewis's recommendations and upgraded the light source at Dent Island in 1920 by replacing the wick burner with a much brighter pressurised burner with an incandescent mantle (Blackwood 1997). Around 1925 a Chance Brothers mercury float pedestal was installed. This improved the efficiency of the apparatus, but required an adjustment to the lantern base to accommodate the increased height of the focal plane of the lens above the floor (Commonwealth Lighthouse Service 1925).

Figure 7 — Dent Island Lightstation, c. 1915
Dent Island Lighthouse overlooking the Whitsunday Islands off the coast of Queensland, photograph commissioned by the Queensland Government Intelligence and Tourist Bureau and published in the book Views seen from Queensland Railways distributed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, 1915. (Source: State Library of Queensland <http://hdl.handle.net/10462/eadarc/6634>).

3.4.2. Improving the facilities
A cyclone hit the Whitsunday region in early 1917. A Brisbane newspaper reported that …no damage had been done to the lighthouse. The dwelling houses, however, required attention, and the outhouses had been flattened by a very severe hurricane. … Trees were uprooted, and the islands in the vicinity looked as desolate as if they had been swept by fire (Anonymous 1917). The damaged buildings were repaired and, at various times, the facilities on the station were adapted and improved.

In 1922 lighthouse service engineers surveyed the site and prepared a sketch of a derrick crane on the rocky cliff near the water's edge, and a tramway leading up the hill to a spot near the keepers' houses (Commonwealth Lighthouse Service 1922). Without such a facility it must have been a laborious business to manhandle supplies up the track from the little cove where small boats could land. Tins of kerosene, boxes of groceries, and household effects would all have had to be carried up a hill too steep for a horse and cart. It appears that the project did not proceed.

Electric lighting was introduced for the houses and to power radio equipment, with batteries charged by a diesel generator set in a small engine room building next to the lighthouse. Exactly when these changes were made has not been established, but it probably happened in the 1930s or 1940s, and the station certainly had