Queenscliff High Light, Black lighthouse in Queenscliff, Australia

Queenscliff High Light is a black basalt lighthouse standing within the grounds of Fort Queenscliff. Its tower was designed in Scotland as a wave-washed structure, with curved walls and an entrance 5 metres above the base, reached by rope ladder for its first ten years. The light source sits 40 metres above sea level.

The 1862 tower replaced an 1843 sandstone lighthouse on the same site that was underpowered and deteriorating. It was designed in Scotland, and accounts differ on its basalt: shipped from Scotland as ballast, quarried in Melbourne, or cut in Scotland and assembled on site by numbers. Fort Queenscliff was built around it during the Victorian Gold Rush against privateers; the light went to gas in 1890 and electricity in 1924.

The lighthouse is one of four black lighthouses in Queenscliff used as a leading line to guide ships through the dangerous mouth of Port Phillip Bay. Henry Handel Richardson's 1910 novel The Getting of Wisdom describes a ferry trip past the lighthouse, though she calls it granite rather than basalt.

The tower stands inside the grounds of Fort Queenscliff, a working military site, so the lighthouse itself is not freely reached from the coastal road; access is through guided tours of the fort. The light is unmanned and automated, serviced by the Port of Melbourne Corporation. Allow time for the fort's entry procedures and expect wind on the exposed bluff.

This lighthouse belongs to an exclusive group of only four black-painted towers in the world, making it the sole example in the Southern Hemisphere. The black color gives it a distinctly recognizable appearance that sets it apart from virtually all other lighthouses.