Crookhaven Heads Light, Maritime beacon near Culburra Beach, Australia.
Crookhaven Heads Light is a brick lighthouse standing at the entrance to Shoalhaven River, with a cylindrical tower and an attached single-story operational building. The structure sits on a rise above the coastline and can be accessed from two different directions.
A red lantern made from a ship's masthead on two poles stood at the river entrance from 1872. In 1882 a timber tower was built 200 metres west as part of the Shoalhaven Signal Station, with Thomas Bishop as first operator. The present brick tower was commissioned in 1904 and the wooden one demolished at once; its lantern came from the former Cape St George Lighthouse, replaced by Point Perpendicular Light in 1899, and the station was renamed Crookhaven Heads.
The station's name changed to Crookhaven Heads in 1904, when the lantern from the former Cape St George Lighthouse was reused here. A replica of the tower, fitted with that original lantern, opened at the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum in 2022.
From the northern parking area on Prince Edward Avenue, two routes lead to the lighthouse: a boardwalk and a beach trail. Clear weather days are ideal for visiting, as the paths can become slippery when wet.
The lantern now at the site is not the 1904 original: it was removed in 2011 and, in 2022, a replica of the lighthouse including that original lantern was installed at the Jervis Bay Maritime Museum, costing $200,000. The tower itself stands closed and vandalised, its doors gone and windows boarded up.
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