Wadjemup Lighthouse
The "new" Wadjemup Lighthouse
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| Location |
Rottnest Island Western Australia |
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| Coordinates | 32°0′26″S 115°30′15″E / 32.00722°S 115.50417°ECoordinates: 32°0′26″S 115°30′15″E / 32.00722°S 115.50417°E |
| Year first lit | 1896 |
| Automated | 1986 |
| Construction | limestone |
| Tower shape | tapered cylindrical] tower with balcony and lantern |
| Markings / pattern | white tower and lantern |
| Height | 38.7 metres (127 ft) |
| Focal height | 80.5 metres (264 ft) |
| Intensity | 1,300,000 cd |
| Range | 26 nautical miles (48 km; 30 mi) |
| Characteristic | Fl W 7.5s. |
| Admiralty number | K1760 |
| NGA number | 9024 |
| ARLHS number | AUS-146 |
| Managing agent | Australian Maritime Safety Authority |
Completed in 1849, the original 20-metre (66 ft) Wadjemup Lighthouse (also known as Rottnest Island Light Station) was Western Australia's first stone lighthouse and was built to provide a safer sailing passage for ships to Fremantle Port and the Swan River Colony.
A second and larger replacement tower was built on the same site in 1896. It is the fourth oldest extant lighthouse in Western Australia and was Australia's first rotating beam lighthouse. A shipwreck which was partly caused by poor communications and misunderstood signals from the lighthouse prompted the construction of another lighthouse on the island in 1900.
Rottnest Island is the largest and northernmost of several islands near the Port of Fremantle. It is 19 kilometres (12 mi) from the mouth of the Swan River and is generally the first land sighted by ships arriving from the west. The island is 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) long, and 4.5 kilometres (2.8 mi) at its widest point with a total land area of 19 square kilometres (7.3 sq mi). The lighthouse site is at the highest point of the island at Wadjemup Hill, with the tower base 45 metres (148 ft) above sea level. It is 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of the Thomson Bay settlement and about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) south-west of the Geordie Bay settlement.
Between 1837 and 1843, Commander John Clements Wickham led an expedition in HMS Beagle with Lieutenant John Lort Stokes to chart sections of the Australian coastline. During the voyage Fremantle was visited seven times and in the course of one of these visits on 25 March 1840, Stokes wrote in his journal
"We moved the ship to Rottnest Island, to collect a little material for the chart and select a hill for the site of a lighthouse. The one we chose lies towards the South east end of the island bearing N76°W (true) twelve miles and a quarter from the Freemantle gaol."
In October 1840, Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe, together with Wickham and Stokes published . The document appeared in the Government Gazette and included
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