'Lighthouse Communities' and Indigenous-Settler Cultural Entanglements: The Early Architectural History of Southern Queensland's Lighthouses and Pilot Stations

Queensland lighthouses are celebrated as amongst Australia's earliest colonial architectural structures. However, to date, the contribution of Indigenous Australians to their development has not been addressed. Many Aboriginal people still occupied their traditional lands when the first lighthouses and pilot stations were erected. Thus early lighthouses and pilot stations first operated in an Indigenous landscape, at great remove from European settlement. This paper reconstructs how coastal surveillance became a catalyst for 'entanglement' between colonial and Indigenous communities in southern Queensland. It will be shown that coastal surveillance relied heavily on groups of Aboriginal people who lived nearby, and assisted these outposts with their functions.