The independent Commonwealth of Australia occupies the entire Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. British exploration and settling of the continent began late in the 1700s, with the first colony established in the Sydney area in 1788. By the 1850s there were six British colonies, including New South Wales and Queensland in the east, Victoria and South Australia in the south, Western Australia in the west, and Tasmania off the south coast. The Commonwealth was formed on New Years Day 1901 as a federation of the six colonies. Australia is both the smallest continent and the sixth-largest country in the world, with a population of about 26 million. The state of Western Australia includes all of the continent west of longitude 129° East. It is by far the largest state in the Australian union, including roughly one third of the country and about the same fraction of the coastline. The coast sweeps in a great semicircle, facing south on the Southern Ocean, west and northwest on the Indian Ocean, and north on the Timor Sea. A large part of the coastline is wild and thinly populated and there are some very large gaps between lighthouses. Because of the large area of the state two pages are required in the Directory. This page includes lighthouses of the northern half of the coast: the Gascoyne, Pilbara, and Kimberley regions. A second page covers South Western Australia. The coastal Western Australia lighthouses are managed by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), but after automation a number of the light station properties were transferred to the control of the state Parks and Wildlife Service. ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volume Q of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. U.S. NGA numbers are from Publication 111.
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Gascoyne Region Lighthouses
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Pilbara Region Lighthouses
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![]() Bessieres Island Light, Exmouth Gulf, July 2005 ex-Panoramio Creative Commons photo by Terra'Mer |
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Kimberley Region Lighthouses
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Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: East: Northern Territory | South: South Western Australia
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index | Ratings key
Posted June 15, 2004; checked and revised March 26, 2025. Lighthouses: 39. Site copyright 2025 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.