KEY POINTS:
The Department of Conservation in Northland is seeking an extended "lighthouse family" to help restore the old Cape Brett light at the entrance to the Bay of Islands.
Decommissioned in 1978 after 68 operational years of marking the southern entrance to the bay, the well-known coastal landmark is now the focus of a DoC restoration project.
The lighthouse was simply locked up and left when it was taken out of service and replaced by an automatic beacon, now operated and maintained by Maritime Safety.
The historic and isolated site is popular with trampers who stay in the Cape Brett hut - the second of three keepers' houses built in 1909.
Archaeologist Andrew Blanshard from the department's Bay of Islands area office says community involvement is a priority in the project to restore the lighthouse.
"We know there are people around the country who may have lived there as lighthouse children, or visited, and we want to hear from them," he says.
The lighthouse was repainted this year. The aim now is to restore and upgrade the interior, with its cupboards and lockers representing different lighthouse technologies up to 1978.
Volunteers and individuals whose families have past connections with the light are being sought so DoC can form a community group to undertake voluntary work to help upgrade the site.
"We'll see who's interested in doing what," Mr Blanshard says.
Apart from internal restoration, work around the site will include uncovering a steep 350m tramway running from a sea landing up the hill to the lighthouse. It is intended to have most of the work completed by May next year.
In addition to work days by volunteers, the department also plans to have several open days so that people who are not able to help with physical work can go out and look around.
DoC, which administers reserve land adjoining the site, took over the lighthouse and its surrounds in 2005 to stop the landmark falling into disrepair. Mr Blanshard says there are great stories to be told about the light's past and a lot of research is being done into the site's history.
A research assistant has been employed to assemble information from the National Archives and the Alexander Turnbull Library.
The Herald reported on March 27, 1963, that "after a seven-hour struggle through heavy seas and a five-mile trek along a cliff-top goat track, a party of three men and a woman arrived at Cape Brett lighthouse in time to deliver the head keeper's wife, Mrs R. Sears, of a baby daughter."
Families at the lighthouse were said to grow enormous kumara, dive for crayfish, milk a cow, brew Lighthouse Lager and produce children.
* Anyone interested in helping should contact Andrew Blanshard or researcher Christen McAlpine on (09) 407-0300.
