Low Head Lighthouse

Low Head Lighthouse is in Low Head, Tasmania, about north of George Town on the east side of the mouth of the Tamar River. It was the third lighthouse to be constructed in Australia, and it is also Australia's oldest continuously used pilot station. This light is now unmanned and automated.HistoryDuring the course of their circumnavigation of Van Diemen's Land now Tasmania in the Norfolk in 1798, George Bass and Matthew Flinders made landfall at a place they named Port Dalrymple now George Town, 40km to the north-west of Launceston. In doing so, they proved the existence of a strait between Australia and Tasmania. Flinders reported difficulty in locating the entrance to the channel.Colonel William Paterson arrived on 16 February 1804 aboard HMS Buffalo as the newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land with the first settlers. The first navigation marker he installed at Low Head was a simple flagpole in 1804. Later that year, Paterson established a pilot station and signal station in the sheltered bay below Low Head. He also installed a fire beacon at Low Head to mark the hazardous entrance of the Tamar River. When a vessel was sighted after sunset, a fire would be lit and attended all night by convicts to allow the vessel to maintain sight of the port.