Cape Don Lighthouse

Cape Don Lighthouse is Australia’s northernmost traditional lighthouse and the first lighthouse to be built by the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service. It began guiding mariners through the Dundas Strait in 1917, a popular route to Darwin between the Coburg Peninsula and Melville Island.

Due to tropical cyclones, it took three dry seasons to construct the 36-metre high tower out of concrete reinforced by gravel, arriving all the way from Melbourne. The builders of the lighthouse had to construct a jetty and a tramway to get the materials through the reef and a mangrove swamp to the construction site.

The light was fitted with a Chance Brothers 3.3-metre lantern and originally had a Third Order dioptric lens on a mercury-bath pedestal.

When war came to the Pacific in 1941, the Royal Australian Air Force established 46 radars at Cape Don to watch the northern and eastern approaches to Darwin. Log books and accounts from men stationed at Cape Don talk about the life at the station— often mentioning sharks, crocodiles and snakes, and the happy relationship between the lighthouse keepers, station men and the local indigenous communities.

Cape Don Lighthouse became automated and unmanned in 1983 when a high-intensity light replaced the original lens—the first of its kind to be powered by solar cells.

In 2013 AMSA refurbished the structure, which included a significant quantity of concrete repairs.

From: Working Boats, April 2019