Wyborn Reef Light

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Wyborn Reef Light
Wyborn Reef light.jpg
Place: Albany Island , Queensland , Australia
Location: Queensland , Australia
Geographical location: 10 ° 49'8.9 "  S , 142 ° 46'30"  E Coordinates: 10 ° 49'8.9 "  S , 142 ° 46'30"  E.
Fire carrier height : 20.5
Fire height : 21st
Wyborn Reef Light (Queensland)
Wyborn Reef Light
Identifier : Fl. (4) WR 20s
Scope knows: 11 nm (20.4 km )
Scope red: 8 nm (14.8 km )
Optics: Chance Brothers 375mm mirror lens lens
Construction time: 1938
International ordinal number: Admiralty : K3252
NGA : 111-9732
ARLHS : AUS-283

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The Wyborn Reef Light is a lighthouse in active service on Wyborn Reef, formerly known as Y Reef, about 10 miles southeast of Albany Island , east of the tip of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland , Australia . The lighthouse, built in 1938, marks the entrance to the Albany Passage . The lighthouse was equipped with modern technology in 1991 and 1995. The structure is a frame construction made of stainless steel. A fiberglass housing is built between its struts, which houses the lighthouse's machinery.

history

The construction of an automated lighthouse on Y Reef was approved by the Commonwealth Lighthouse Advisory Committee on August 18, 1937 . This decision leads to some confusion because there was already a lighthouse on the similarly named Wye Reef, 120 km further south. Finally, in late 1938, construction was carried out by the Public Works Department, with difficult working conditions. The 14 construction workers lived in tents, which were erected on a 15 m long and equally wide wooden platform, only 135 cm above the water, in a sea ​​area contaminated by tiger sharks , without protection from the sun and the tropical heat. The lighthouse was put into operation on December 10th of that year. From the beginning it was unmanned and automatic. At first it blinked white.

The Admiralty List of Lights and Fog Signals published in 1957 lists the system as unmanned white light with a red sector, with an identifier of four flashes every 20 seconds (Fl. (4) WR 20s), which corresponds to the current identifier of the lighthouse. The intensity was given as 3000 cd for the white and 1300 cd for the red light. The lighthouse was under the responsibility of the Commonwealth Lighthouse Service.

In 1991 the lighthouse was converted to solar energy and in 1995 it was upgraded to a newer technical standard. The remains of the pillars of an earlier lighthouse are still right next to the current structure.

Structure and optics

Detail of the optical device

The structure is a tower made of stainless steel in a frame construction, which is mounted on concrete pillars. It has a height of 17.5 m from the ground to its platform. A gallery sits on the platform and with the white-painted lantern room, the total height of the structure is almost 21 m. A fiberglass housing that houses the lighthouse machinery is installed a few meters above the ground within the tower frame. The optics are a 375 mm Fresnel lens made by Chance Brothers .

The current identifier is four lightning bolts twenty seconds apart; they are white with a red sector between 133 ° and 143 ° (Fl. (4) WR 20s). The white lightning bolts have a range of 11 nm (20 km), in the red sector the range is 8 nm (15 km). The light source is a solar powered halogen lamp with a voltage of 12  volts and an output of 35  watts . The intensity is 3300  cd for the white light and 660 cd for the red light.

The facility is operated by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority . The island is only accessible by water and cannot be visited by the public.

See also

supporting documents

  1. ↑ The Discovery and Exploration of Australia ( English ) In: australiaforeveryone.com.au . Archived from the original on March 13, 2012. Retrieved September 17, 2011.
  2. ↑ New Lighthouses Approved (English) . In: Townsville Daily Bulletin , Aug. 18, 1937, p. 8. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  3. ^ Names of Reefs. Duplication Dangers. To Navigation (English) . In: Cairns Post , March 29, 1938, p. 12. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  4. ↑ Life Above the Sharks (English) . In: Townsville Daily Bulletin , Nov. 12, 1938, p. 7. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  5. ^ Foundation For Lighthouse (English) . In: The Queenslander , November 16, 1938. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  6. ↑ 'Y' Reef Light (English) . In: The Courier-Mail , November 19, 1938, p. 68. Retrieved September 17, 2011. 
  7. ↑ a b c d e f Wyborn Reef Light, QLD, AN299-01 ( English , PDF) In: Aids to Navigation Schedule Issue 14 . Australian Maritime Safety Authority . May 2006. Archived from the original on September 28, 2011. Retrieved on September 17, 2011.
  8. ↑ Clem Llewellyn Lack: The taming of the Great Barrier Reef . ( PDF ) In: Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland . 6, No. 1, Brisbane, Qld, 1959, ISSN  0085-5804 , pp. 130-154.
  9. ^ A b Russ Rowlett: Lighthouses of Australia: Queensland's Far North ( English ) In: The Lighthouse Directory . University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill . Retrieved November 14, 2010.
  10. ^ List of Lights, Pub. 111, The West Coasts of North and South America (Excluding Continental USA and Hawaii), Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, and the Islands of the North and South Pacific Oceans (PDF) (=  List of Lights ), United States National Geospatial Intelligence Agency , 2010, p. 193.

Web links

Commons : Wyborn Reef Light  - collection of images, videos and audio files