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Wharton Reef Light is an inactive lighthouse which used to be located on Wharton Reef in Princess Charlotte Bay off the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia. When it was deactivated in 1990 it was donated to the Townsville Maritime Museum and it is now on display near the museum. It is the only survivor〔 of a series of twenty automatic lighthouses installed in Queensland during the "Golden Age of Australian Lighthouses" from 1913 to the early 1920s.〔 ==History== With the Federation of Australia in 1901, responsibility over coastal lighthouses was to be transferred to the commonwealth. In 1911, the Lighthouses Act was passed, giving the Commonwealth the power to take responsibility over navigational aids as required.〔 The actual transfer of responsibility took place with the formation of the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service (CLS) on 1 July 1915, during a period that was termed "the Golden Age of Australian lighthouses", from 1913 to the early 1920s.〔 reprinted in 〕 The CLS took over a group of 104 manned and 18 unmanned lighthouses. Lighting the northern Inside Passage, the shipping route inside the Great Barrier Reef, was one of the urgent tasks taken by the CLS. At the time, only four lights were present between the Torres Strait and Cooktown, namely Grassy Hill Light, Pipon Island Light, Goods Island Light and Booby Island Light. The CLS tackled this task with the installation of twenty new fully automatic unattended lights, a decision motivated by the shortage of manpower, materials and funding caused by World War I.〔 The structures were almost identical, differing mainly in height. The structures were mostly installed on coral reefs or sandbars, with little natural support. The foundation was usually a flat concrete base with concrete piers supporting the structure. The structure was a simple four legged steel frame, manufactured in Brisbane, topped with simple lantern with a small balcony. The apparatus was a fully automatic Dalén light consisting of a carbide lamp feeding on compressed acetylene gas, controlled by a sun valve.〔 Wharton Reef Light, established 1915, was one of the first such lights to be constructed. The lighthouse was located on Wharton Reef (then called Dhu Reef) in Princess Charlotte Bay, west of Pipon Island, about north of Cairns, replacing an earlier beacon on the reef.〔 It was originally about high. The construction of Wharton Reef Light was especially difficult due to bad weather. Instability of the surface required deep excavation of the foundations.〔 Wharton Reef Light was described in 1959 as showing a white flash every three seconds. The light had an intensity of 1,500 cd and was visible for . The light was displayed at an elevation of .〔 as quoted in Lack, 1959.〕 The lighthouse operated until 1990, when the structure was replaced by a fiberglass hut〔 and the light was replaced by an automatic ML-300 beacon. By then it was the last of its kind to remain operative.〔 The tower was donated by the federal Department of Transport to the Townsville Maritime Museum. It was dismantled and shipped to Townsville. In 1996 it was erected in the middle of a traffic turnabout near the museum, where it stands on display as of 2011.〔 The Fresnel lens from the light is on display inside the museum, along with other lenses used in the area. It is now the only survivor of the series of twenty lighthouses.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Wharton Reef Light」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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