Bean Rock Lighthouse is a maritime landmark for the Hauraki Gulf and for New Zealand, restored for posterity as it is a rare and interesting character amongst New Zealand lighthouses, and an international curiosity.
One of the first structures to go up in a frenzy of lighthouse building that hit New Zealand in the 1870s, this beacon in the gulf was determined necessary when the marine traffic to and from the Coromandel goldfields crowded the gulf. Being roughly halfway between North Head and Orakei this is a better spot for a lighthouse than a low and lone rock.
The rock is not a bean, doesn't look like a bean, it was named for a Lieutenant Bean the master of the HMS Herald which surveyed the entire Gulf in 1840. It's name before that was named Te Toka o Kapetaua, by the Hauraki Tribes, a reference to the success of a battle here by a chief named Kapetaua, the beginning point for a hapu named Te Patukirikiri, which settled in the Coromandel. The rock doesn't look like a big enough place for a battle, but it doesn't look big enough to be a problem either, but it was, in it's position in the middle of boating and shipping lanes, with no marker other than some early beacons which seemed not to help.
Bean Rock's lighthouse design predates New Zealand's plethora of timber 'Blackett' lighthouses, as it was designed in 1870, by James Balfour, in an ingenious style called 'Wave Washed' meaning it has only a frame for it's bottom half. Apparently modelled on Canadian designs, it was initially understood to be a temporary type of fixture, put up in the rush to light the coast and slow up the rate of shipwrecks. It is part of a set, the others being at Ponui Passage, Kawau Rock and Manukau Heads, which were all designed by Balfour's predecessor James Stewart. On top, a symmetrical dwelling, officially called a cottage, has a kitchen, bedroom, and long drop toilet to the harbour below, and is surrounded by a pretty veranda. There is no room for the lighthouse keepers family here, or any reason for them to be here, so the first keeper, a Mr Brown, set a precedent with his family living in Devonport and commuting there occasionally, when there was relief, by rowboat. He did this for almost 20 years.
Electricity, by cable from Orakei, did away with the need for lighthouse keepers in 1912, so this temporary structure thus chugged it's way through the 20th century, with various changes, upgrades and not enough maintenance, until it was virtually falling down in the 1970s, sparking a movement for it's restoration.
Restoration of the lighthouse was complete in 1985 and the subsequent restoration to it's home rock was completed by the floating crane Hikinui. It is now New Zealand's only cottage-lighthouse and an international rarity too. NZPlaces has not heard of another like it, though the Port Adelaide one bears some similarities and in Rhode Island there was built, in 1879, an entire two story house upon a rock with a light on top. It did not last.
A solar powered light has now been installed, along with an automatic foghorn, which is reportedly quite loud.
An excellent and eccentric replica of the lighthouse is stuck to the front of the Trans Pacific Marine retail premises on the corner of Beaumont and Gaunt Streets in the Wynyard Quarter in Auckland.
Image Credits: Ingolfson, Wikimedia, Auckland City Libraries ref 1-w35 Henry Winkelmann 1905 and Seb M, Unsplash
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