Qualla: Double Island Point Light

Double Island Point Light: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neil Pierce from Buderim, Australia, CC BY-SA 2.0. It is a modest tower, only eight metres from base to lantern, white iron with a red copper cap, perched at the top of a green headland where the surf of Wide Bay meets the open Pacific. But the placement of Double Island Point Light tells a story of an argument won. The original plan put the lighthouse halfway up the point. When Queensland's portmaster came out to inspect the site in 1883, he saw the flaw at once: a light there would be hidden from ships approaching from the north, the very vessels most in danger. He insisted it be built at the summit, with a stronger lens than first proposed. He got his way, and the light first shone on 11 September 1884.

Image: Neil Pierce from Buderim, Australia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Double Island Point Light: Two Decades of Waiting

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government, Public domain. The headland had been marked for a lighthouse as early as 1864, when committees in the young colony of Queensland first studied where the coast most needed warning. Then nothing happened for twenty years. The recommendation sat unbuilt while ships kept rounding the point unaided....

Image: Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government | Public domain

Double Island Point Light: A Century of Brighter Light

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government, Public domain. The technology inside the tower kept changing as the years passed. The first lamp was an oil wick burner, faint by later standards. In 1923 it became a kerosene gas mantle, and in 1925 the lens was upgraded to an apparatus floating in a bath of mercury, the standard precision bea...

Image: Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government | Public domain

Double Island Point Light: The Lives at the Light

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government, Public domain. For more than a century, people lived on this remote point. Keepers and their families occupied a cluster of cottages below the tower, and from 1884 a small schoolhouse taught their children until it closed in 1922. The isolation was total; supplies and company arrived by sea. On...

Image: Agriculture And Stock Department, Publicity Branch of the Queensland Government | Public domain

Double Island Point Light: Reaching the Point Today

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Scolou, CC BY-SA 4.0. The light still turns, automated now and watched over by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, flashing white every 7.5 seconds. The land around it belongs to the Great Sandy National Park, looked after by Queensland's parks service. There is no public access to the tower its...

Image: Scolou | CC BY-SA 4.0