Lighthouse Island’s Rocks To Be Blasted

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 6

Lighthouse Island’s Rocks To Be Blasted

“The Press” Special Service WELLINGTON, Nov. 1. A cluster of rocks near the anding at the Brothers islands lighthouse in Cook Strait will be dynamited early his month to minimise the danger to ships landing stores. The Brothers is one of 24 manned lighthouses on the ■oast. The 128 other lights ire unmanned and are visited periodically. The work to improve the landing is being done by the Marine Department in conjunction . with the Navy, which is lending six underwater divers from its special diving school at H.M. N.Z.S Philomel in Auckland. The operation, which will take about three weeks, will increase the clearance over an underwater reef near the landing by 10 feet.

This is necessary because the department's new lighthouse tender, being built at Picton, is larger than the present vessel, and will require more space for manoeuvring. The Brothers is one of New Zealand’s smallest inhabited offshore islands and the lighthouse is situated hundreds of feet above Cook Strait. Seabirds nest without fear only a few yards from human habitation, and the worlds only living fossil, the tuatara, lives and breeds unmolested. The light first shone across the strait 100 years ago and is now a vital link in the chain of radio aids and lights to aid ships and aircraft.