New vs Old

Two towers rise from a grassy headland at Green Cape on the far south coast of New South Wales, both lit against a deep indigo sky thick with stars. The skeletal steel lattice tower on the left burns bright at its crown, while the shorter solid white lighthouse to its right holds a quieter glow. A broad band of the Milky Way cuts diagonally across the upper sky, arching over both structures. Photographed just after midnight on 29 August 2016.

The masonry tower is the original, designed by NSW Colonial Architect James Barnet and first lit on 1 November 1883, an octagonal concrete structure on a square base standing about 29 metres. It was taken out of service in March 1992, and the steel lattice tower beside it was commissioned in early 1994 to carry the light off the historic structure. The pairing is the whole subject, and it is an arrangement that has since ended. In February 2026 the 1883 tower was re-lit, with an LED beacon turning inside its own first-order lens, and the lattice tower is to be removed. This frame records the decades in between, when the newer structure did the work and the old one waited.