Weipa, Queensland

An isolated mining town on the coast of Cape York. Weipa is run under a special act of the Queensland Parliament which gave the town the status of a Special Bauxite Mining Lease and handed control over to Comalco Aluminium.
Location: 838 km north of Cairns.
Origin of name: of Aboriginal origin, it is the name of the locality given by the Yupangati people.
Brief history: The coasts in the Weipa area was the first stretch of Australian coastline ever explored by Europeans. The Dutch explorer Willem Jansz, sailing the Duyfken in 1606, first sighted land near where Weipa stands today. The first recorded contact between Aboriginal and European people occurred at the Pennefather River about 50 km north of the township. The northern point of Albatross Bay is named Duyfken Point in honour of the expedition. Missionaries arrived in the area in 1891 and a decade later the geologist CFV Jackson noted the presence of bauxite. There was little interest in the mineral at the time - the gold discoveries at the Wenlock River were attracting much more attention. It wasn't until 1955 that the pure bauxite deposits of the area began to be exploited. Weipa is now the largest bauxite mine in the world. The known deposits are likely to last for another 250 years at the present rate of extraction. The town was built by Comalco and the Queensland government in the early 1960s and the port of Weipa was officially opened in 1962.
Natural features: Gulf of Carpentaria; Embley River; Hey River; Pine River; Mission River
Built features: Weipa bauxite mine
Heritage features: Aboriginal canoe trees; Weipa Aboriginal shell mounds (around 200 000 tonnes of shells which seem to have been placed in the area about 800 years ago. How and why they got there is a mystery)