Weipa

Weipa
Isolated mining town on the coast of Cape York.
Located 838 km north of Cairns on a road that varies from the sublime to the horrendous, Weipa is a mining town with a population of over 3000 people. Although geographically part of the Cooktown Shire (a shire which covers 11 330 000 ha from Cooktown to the Cape) it is run by a Weipa Town Office 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. The actual lease covers an area of 2590 sq. km.

The Weipa area was the first stretch of the Australian coastline ever explored by Europeans. The Dutch explorer Willem Jansz, sailing the Duyfken, first sighted the coast near Weipa in 1606. The northern point of Albatross Bay is still named Duyfken Point in honour of the expedition.

Matthew Flinders was the first person to note the possible mineral potential of the area. In 1802 while circumnavigating Australia he noted that the cliffs around Albatross Bay had a distinctive reddish hue.

Missionaries arrived in the area in 1891 and a decade later the geologist C.F.V. 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.

In 1947 further research into the mineral potential of the area was carried out but the samples were poor and generated little interest. It wasn't until 1955, when geologist Harry Evans, realised that Matthew Flinders 'reddish cliffs' were, in fact, virtually pure bauxite that the potential of the area began to be exploited. The result is that 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 Weipa township is totally planned. It was built by Comalco and the state government in the early 1960s and the port of Weipa was officially opened in 1962. Since then the town has continued to expand. The town's newest area of Trunding lies south of the old settlement at Rocky Point.

Today Weipa is a mining town where bauxite is mined, washed, graded and loaded for shipment to the aluminium processing plant at Gladstone. In some instances the raw bauxite is shipped directly overseas. Weipa's secondary production facilities include a calcination plant which was opened in 1970 and a kaolin plant which was opened in 1986.

Things to see:

Mine Tours
Tours of the mining operation can be arranged by contacting (07) 4054 7750.