Split Point Lighthouse

The white masonry tower of Split Point Lighthouse rises steeply into a vivid teal sky at Aireys Inlet on the Great Ocean Road, shot from a low angle in a 96-second exposure. Sun flare cuts across the lower frame. The composition fills the vertical space with the tower and very little else, the geometry of the structure sharp against open air, the red cap sitting at the top of it.

The tower was built in 1891 from rendered concrete rubble using local limestone, designed by the Victorian Public Works Department to guide vessels along the Shipwreck Coast and cut the loss of ships in Bass Strait. It was first illuminated in September 1891 and originally fitted with a Chance Brothers first-order Fresnel lens showing a fixed red light. It is known as the White Queen, after the title of R.V. Carr and K.L. Cecil's published history of it, and to a generation of Australian viewers it is the family lighthouse from the television series Round the Twist. It has been lit since 1891 and remains an operational navigation aid. Brett photographed it on the afternoon of 20 October 2017. The frame treats it as standing engineering rather than as a postcard.