Weipa, Queensland

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Weipa Coordinates: °12′36″S, 141°58′E″type:townis the largest town on the Gulf of Carpentaria coast of the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. It is sometimes considered to be the 'Capital of Cape York' and is a mining town of approximately 3,000 people that exists because of the enormous bauxite deposits along the coast.

Weipa is just south of Duyfken Point, a location now agreed to be the first recorded point of European contact with the Australian continent. Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, on his ship the Duyfken, sighted the coast here in 1606. This was 164 years before Captain James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia.

Weipa began as a Presbyterian Aboriginal mission outpost in 1898. In 1932 it was moved to Jessica Point, now called Napranum, about 12 km south of the present town of Weipa.

In 1955 a geologist, Harry Evans, discovered that the red cliffs remarked on by the early Dutch explorers and Matthew Flinders were actually enormous deposits of bauxite - the ore from which aluminium is made - and to a lesser extent tungsten.

The present town was constructed mainly by Comalco (now called Rio Tinto Alcan), a large aluminium company, which began making trial shipments of bauxite to Japan in 1962.

[edit] See also

Weipa Airport

[edit] References

Moon, Ron & Viv. 2003. Cape York: An Adventurer's Guide. 9th edition. Moon Adventure Publications, Pearcedale, Victoria. ISBN 0-9578766-4-5
Moore, David R. 1979. Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York: An ethnographic reconstruction based on the 1848-1850 'Rattlesnake' Journals of O. W. Brierly and information he obtained from Barbara Thompson. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Canberra. ISBN 0-85575-076-6 (hbk); ISBN 0-85575-082-0 (pbk). USA edition ISBN 0-391-00946-X (hbk); ISBN 0-391-00948-6 (pbk).
Roberts, Jan. 1981. Massacres to Mining: The Colonization of Aboriginal Australia. Dove Communications, Blackburn, Victoria. Rev. Australian ed. Previous ed: CIMRA and War on Want, 1978, London. ISBN 0-85924-171-8.
Premier's Department (prepared by Connell Wagner). 1989. Cape York Peninsula Resource Analysis. Cairns. ISBN 0-7242-7009-6
Roth, W.E. 1897. The Queensland Aborigines. 3 Vols. Reprint: Facsimile Edition, Hesperian Press, Victoria Park, W.A., 1984. ISBN 0-85905-054-8
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Sutton, Peter (ed). Languages of Cape York: Papers presented to a Symposium organised by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies, Canberra. (1976). ISBN 0-85575-046-4
Wallace, Lennie. 2003. Cape York Peninsula: A History of Unlauded Heroes 1845-2003. Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton. ISBN 1-876780-43-6
Wynter, Jo and Hill, John. 1991. Cape York Peninsula: Pathways to Community Economic Development. The Final Report of The Community Economic Development Projects Cook Shire. Cook Shire Council.