Qualla: Pine Islet Light

Pine Islet Light: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Burkhard Westphal from Duesseldorf, Germany, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every other great lighthouse of its age was electrified, automated, or left to rust. Pine Islet Light was not. Its lamp still burns vapourised kerosene, hissing through an incandescent mantle exactly as it did in 1885 - the last fully operational kerosene lighthouse on Earth. To find it, you don't sail 130 kilometres out to the Percy Isles where it spent a century warning ships off the reefs. You walk down to the Mackay marina, where the whole iron tower was carried, piece by piece, and rebuilt by people who could not bear to watch it die.

Read more: Pine Islet Light on Qualla

Image: Burkhard Westphal from Duesseldorf, Germany, Germany | CC BY-SA 2.0

Pine Islet Light: A Tower Shipped From Britain

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk), Public domain. In 1885, the contractor W. P. Clark assembled Pine Islet Light from a kit. The internal frame was hardwood; the skin was riveted galvanized iron plate, imported from Britain and prefabricated in Brisbane before being shipped to the islet to be bolted together on site. Clark knew ...

Read more: Pine Islet Light on Qualla

Image: StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk) | Public domain

Pine Islet Light: The Keeper's Clockwork

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk), Public domain. Lighthouse keeping was not poetry. It was labour, repeated through every night for a hundred years. In 1923 the light was converted to a Chance Brothers kerosene burner, brighter and more reliable. In 1934 the apparatus was replaced with a clockwork mechanism salvaged from North ...

Read more: Pine Islet Light on Qualla

Image: StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk) | Public domain

Pine Islet Light: Refusing the Dark

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. On 27 August 1985, the authorities switched Pine Islet off and raised a small fibreglass tower in its place. By then it was the last kerosene-powered lighthouse in Australia, and the decision could have been the end. Between October and November 1986 the original light and tower ...

Read more: Pine Islet Light on Qualla

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Pine Islet Light: Two Lights, One Name

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk), Public domain. There are now two Pine Islet Lights, and they tell opposite stories. Out on the islet, a twenty-foot fibreglass daymark carries a solar-powered VRB-25 beacon, a halogen lamp flashing white every ten seconds, tended by no one and visible to passing ships. The Australian Maritime S...

Read more: Pine Islet Light on Qualla

Image: StateLibQld_1_121752_Pine_Islet_Lighthouse,_Queensland,_ca._1935.jpg: UnknownUnknown derivative work: Muhandes (talk) | Public domain