Weipa, Queensland

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Weipa (12°36′S 141°58′E), a town on the Gulf of Carpentaria coast on Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia, 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 one of the first recorded points of European contact with the Australian continent by the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon on his ship the Duyfken in 1606. This was 164 years before Captain James Cook would officially discover 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.

The present town has been constructed mainly by Comalco, a large aluminium company, who began making trial shipments of bauxite to Japan in 1962.

[edit] References

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