The independent Commonwealth of Australia occupies the entire Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. British exploration and settling of the continent began late in the 1700s, with the first colony established in the Sydney area in 1788. By the 1850s there were six British colonies, including New South Wales and Queensland in the east, Victoria and South Australia in the south, Western Australia in the west, and Tasmania off the south coast. The Commonwealth was formed on New Years Day 1901 as a federation of the six colonies. Australia is both the smallest continent and the sixth-largest country in the world, with a population of about 26 million. It continues to be a federation of the six original states, plus the federally administered Northern Territory, Australian Capital Territory, and Jervis Bay Territory. It is a Commonwealth Realm recognizing the British monarch as head of state. Queensland, the state occupying the northeastern quarter of Australia, has a long tropical coastline facing the Coral Sea (a basin of the Pacific Ocean) and fringed in large part by the famous Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef system. This coastline ends at Cape York, the northernmost point of the Australian continent. Beyond Cape York the Torres Strait separates Australia from New Guinea and provides a passage from the Coral Sea to the Arafura Sea (the easternmost arm of the Indian Ocean). This page includes lighthouses of the Coral Sea coast from the Townsville region south through the Gladstone region. For the Cape York Peninsula lighthouses see the page for Queensland's Far North and for lighthouses south of the Gladstone region see the Southern Queensland page. Most of the older lighthouses in Queensland are wood frame towers covered by iron sheets, like the Cape Cleveland Light at right. These towers were built in the late 1800s when there was a need to build a great many lighthouses on the Queensland coast as quickly as possible. Remarkably, at least 16 of these inexpensive lighthouses have survived to the present and 9 remain active. Coastal lighthouses in Australia are operated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) but after automation AMSA transferred many of the station properties to the control of local or state authorities or organizations. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volume K of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA numbers are from Publication 111.
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![]() North Head Light, Bowen, 2018 Whitsunday Regional Council photo (no longer online) |
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Far North Queensland | East: Coral Sea Islands | South: Southern Queensland
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted July 6, 2004; checked and revised January 27, 2025. Lighthouses: 46. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.