Coen is a town and coastal

locality Locality may refer to: * Locality (association), an association of community regeneration organizations in England * Locality (linguistics) * Locality (settlement) * Suburbs and localities (Australia), in which a locality is a geographic subdivis ...

in the

Shire of Cook The Shire of Cook (The Shire) is a local government area in Far North Queensland, Australia. The Shire covers most of the eastern and central parts of Cape York Peninsula, the most northerly section of the Australian mainland. It covers an area ...

Queensland ) , nickname = Sunshine State , image_map = Queensland in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of Queensland in Australia , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , established_ ...

, Australia. The town of Coen is inland on the

Peninsula Developmental Road The Peninsula Developmental Road (PDR) runs from Lakeland to Weipa. It is the main road transport link within Cape York Peninsula and to the rest of the Australian mainland. The segment from Weipa Town to south of the town is within the Rio ...

, the main road on the

Cape York Peninsula Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest unspoiled wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth’s last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación ...

in far northern Queensland. In the , Coen had a population of 364 people.

Geography

The locality of Coen is on the eastern side of Cape York Peninsula with the

Coral Sea The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down the Australian northeast coast. Most of it is protected by the Fre ...

forming its eastern boundary. Part of the northern boundary follows the

Archer River The Archer River is a river located on the Cape York Peninsula, Far North Queensland, Australia. Course and features The headwaters of the river rise in the McIlwraith Range and it flows west, traversing tropical savanna plains and wetlands, ...

, while the

Coen River The Coen River is a river located in the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. The headwaters of the river rise at the confluence of Pandanus Creek and an unnamed creek near Bend along the Peninsula Developmental Road in the Great ...

forms part of its western boundary. The Peninsula Developmental Road runs roughly north to south through the locality.

History

Kaanju (also known as Kaanju and Kandju) is a language of Cape York. The Kaanju language now known as Southern Kaantju language is the local language for the region includes the landscape within the local government boundaries of the

Cook Shire Council The Shire of Cook (The Shire) is a local government area in Far North Queensland, Australia. The Shire covers most of the eastern and central parts of Cape York Peninsula, the most northerly section of the Australian mainland. It covers an ar ...

. In 1623,

Jan Carstensz Jan Carstenszoon or more commonly Jan Carstensz In Dutch patronyms ending in -szoon were almost universally abbreviated to -sz was a 17th-century Dutch explorer. In 1623, Carstenszoon was commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to lead an ex ...

, the navigator of the ship ''Pera'' of the

Dutch East India Company The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...

named a river on Cape York Peninsula after

Jan Pieterszoon Coen Jan Pieterszoon Coen (, 8 January 1587 – 21 September 1629) was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, holding two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, ...

, the Governor-General of the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, which ...

. Today that river is known as the Archer River and the name Coen River is given to one of its tributaries.

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

was discovered on the

in 1876. Coen came into being first as a small

fort A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

built by gold

miner A miner is a person who extracts ore, coal, chalk, clay, or other minerals from the earth through mining. There are two senses in which the term is used. In its narrowest sense, a miner is someone who works at the rock face; cutting, blasting, ...

s and

prospector Prospector may refer to: Space exploration * Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962 * ''Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft Trains * Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ra ...

s in May 1877 but this first

gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Z ...

quickly came to an end, and the settlement did not recover until 1883. It became a centre for several small goldmines in the region but, in 1893, the rich Great Northern mine boomed and the town became a more substantial place. Coen Post Office opened on 20 June 1893 (a

receiving office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional serv ...

had been open from 1888). The Great Northern mine continued operations until 1916 and produced some 52,000 troy ounces (1,617 kg) of gold before it closed. As gold mining declined from around the 1930s, Coen still remained an important administrative and social centre for the surrounding Cape York communities. Also, during the Second World War, Coen was an important part of the forward defence network. Isolation was however still a challenge, in particular in regard to communication, with one of the last pack horse runs in Queensland operating out of Coen as late as the 1950s. As well, until the 1960s, when the Weipa-Bamaga area was developed, Coen was the most northerly town on Cape York Peninsula. In the , Coen had a population of 416 people. On 3 July 2014, Barry Port retired from the

Queensland Police The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is the principal law enforcement agency responsible for policing the Australian state of Queensland. In 1990, the Queensland Police Force was officially renamed the Queensland Police Service and the old motto ...

. He was Australia's last

Aboriginal Aborigine, aborigine or aboriginal may refer to: *Aborigines (mythology), in Roman mythology * Indigenous peoples, general term for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area *One of several groups of indigenous peoples, see ...

police tracker. In his 36 years working for the police, he has tracked criminals, missing people and stowaways. In the , the locality of Coen had a population of 364 people.

Facilities

Today Coen provides services to the region, and is an important supply point on the long unpaved road leading to

Weipa Weipa () is a coastal mining town in the local government area of Weipa Town in Queensland. It is the largest town on the Cape York Peninsula. It exists because of the enormous bauxite deposits along the coast. The Port of Weipa is mainly involv ...

and other northern communities. It is a popular stopping point for tourists driving to the tip of Cape York - the northernmost part of the Australian mainland. It has an airstrip at

Coen Airport Coen Airport is an airport located northwest of Coen, Queensland, Australia. See also * List of airports in Queensland This is a list of airports in the Australian state of Queensland. __TOC__ List of airports The list is sorted by the ...

( north of the town), public library, hotel/motel, guest house, two general stores and fuel outlets, hospital, post office, police station, camping grounds, primary school kindergarten, ranger base and more. There is a scheduled air service to Lockhart and Cairns four times a week. Our Lady of the Way Catholic Church is in Taylor Street. It is within the Cooktown Parish of the

Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cairns is a diocese of the Catholic Church located in the state of Queensland, Australia. It is a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The diocese was erected as a vicariate apostolic in 1877 and was ...

Attractions

Coen is an ideal destination for birdwatchers: there are good accommodations and a large and varied bird fauna with representatives from rain forest, monsoon forest and coastal forests.

Heritage listings

Coen has a number of

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

sites, including: * Coleman Close:

Coen Carrier Station Coen Carrier Station is a heritage-listed telegraph station at Coleman Close, Coen, Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. It was designed and built in 1942 by the Postmaster-General's Department. It is also known as Coen Telegraph Station and ...

Climate

Coen has a

tropical savanna climate Tropical savanna climate or tropical wet and dry climate is a tropical climate sub-type that corresponds to the Köppen climate classification categories ''Aw'' (for a dry winter) and ''As'' (for a dry summer). The driest month has less than of p ...

('' Aw'') with distinct wet and dry seasons. Daytime temperatures are usually over most of the year. The dry season runs from May to October. The temperatures in this season can drop below in the coolest months between May and August, and it can peak further above in the build up months between September and November. The wet season occurs from December to March and is characterized by frequent torrential downpours and high humidity. This season is also generally associated with the arrival of the

monsoon trough The monsoon trough is a portion of the Intertropical Convergence Zone in the Western Pacific,Bin WangThe Asian Monsoon.Retrieved 2008-05-03. as depicted by a line on a weather map showing the locations of minimum sea level pressure, and as such, ...

and

tropical cyclones A tropical cyclone is a rapidly rotating storm system characterized by a low-pressure center, a closed low-level atmospheric circulation, strong winds, and a spiral arrangement of thunderstorms that produce heavy rain and squalls. Depend ...

Footnotes

References

*Moon, Ron & Viv. 2003. ''Cape York: An Adventurer's Guide''. 9th edition. Moon Adventure Publications, Pearcedale, Victoria. *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. . *Premier's Department (prepared by Connell Wagner). 1989. ''Cape York Peninsula Resource Analysis''. Cairns. (1989). *Ryan, Michelle and Burwell, Colin, eds. 2000. ''Wildlife of Tropical North Queensland:

Cooktown Cooktown is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs ...

Mackay Mackay may refer to: *Clan Mackay, the Scottish clan from which the surname "MacKay" derives Mackay may also refer to: Places Australia * Mackay Region, a local government area ** Mackay, Queensland, a city in the above region *** Mackay Airpor ...

''. Queensland Museum, Brisbane. (set of 3 vols). *Scarth-Johnson, Vera. 2000. ''National Treasures: Flowering plants of Cooktown and Northern Australia''. Vera Scarth-Johnson Gallery Association, Cooktown. (pbk); Limited Edition - Leather Bound. *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). *Wallace, Lennie. 2003. ''Cape York Peninsula: A History of Unlauded Heroes 1845-2003''. Central Queensland University Press, Rockhampton. *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.