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The Weipa Mission (1898-1932) on Cape York Peninsula (north-eastern Australia) was one of seven Australian missions designed and staffed by the Moravian Church during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We present findings of archaeological and historical research that illustrate key aspects of the settlement's development and operations. Moravian missionaries at Weipa aimed to create a built landscape that reshaped Aboriginal social, cultural and economic relations, with particular emphasis on children through the use of a dormitory system. However, their efforts were mediated by the open spatial and social boundaries of the settlement, which enabled Aboriginal people to make choices about the nature and extent to which they engaged with the mission. Adopting a political economy approach, we show that this openness emerged through complex social relationships between missionaries and Aboriginal people. While missionaries required access to children and adults, they lacked the ability (or will) to maintain a resident population through force, with limited financial resources also hampering their activities. Instead, Aboriginal people came and went from the settlement, with some establishing and maintaining social relationships with missionaries to access economic and social benefits. We argue that these social relationships led to the development of the settlement as a more open domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terpenoid composition of fossil resin from the Cape York Peninsula, Australia has been analysed by pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS) to determine its origin. The pyrolysis products were dominated by cadalene-based C15bicyclic sesquiterpenoids including some C30–C31bicadinanes and bicadinenes typical of Class II resin derived from angiosperm plants of Dipterocarpaceae. This observation contrasts with the Araucariaceae (Agathissp.) source previously suggested for the resin based on Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analyses. Dipterocarpaceae are not known in Australian vegetation but grow abundantly in Southeast Asia including New Guinea, indicating that the geological origin of the amber is not the Australian mainland but could be traced to Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Observations and analyses of low-level convergence lines over the Gulf of Carpentaria region of northeastern Australia made during the second and third Gulf Lines EXperiments (GLEX II and GLEX III) are reported. During GLEX II, the initiation of the North Australian Cloud Line (NACL) was documented using a small autonomous aircraft and two Doppler sodars. NACLs are long convergence lines that form on the western side of northern Cape York Peninsula and are typically marked by a line of contiguous cumulus or cumulus congestus cloud. The observations show that the degree of asymmetry between west-coast and east-coast sea breezes (as characterized by the wind field) depends on the strength of the background easterlies, and that NACLs develop only when the background easterlies are sufficiently large (≥ 5 m s−1). GLEX III focused on morning glories, which are (mostly) southwestward-moving bore-like convergence lines that originate over the southern part of the gulf region. The field experiment involved Doppler sodar measurements as well as high-temporal-resolution data from operational automatic weather stations. The sodar measurements showed that undular bore-like morning glory cloud lines develop only when the background easterlies are sufficiently weak (≤ 10 m s−1) and that strong bore-like morning glories develop when the background winds exceed about 10 m s−1. If the background easterlies are too strong, no morning glories develop. Numerical simulations show that the structure of convergence line produced depends on the strength of the collision between the sea breezes from each side of the Cape York Peninsula, which in turn depends on the strength of the background easterlies. When the easterlies are weak (≤ 10 m s−1), the sea breezes have similar depths and strengths, and their collision is relatively violent, whereas when the background easterlies are strong (> 10 m s−1) the sea breezes have very different depths and strengths and their collision is comparatively benign. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes an observation of ritualized dance behavior for the white-faced robin, or Tregellasia leucops from Cape York Peninsula, Queensland in Australia and a study which examined the territorial and copulation behavior for the species in the Gordon Creek area of Iron Range National Park in Queensland, Australia. The behaviors of the white-faced robin recorded in 2005 and 2006 in the study are consistent with copulation and territorial behaviors for other Australo-Papuan robins. Meanwhile, the ritualized dance behavior of the white-faced robin observed in 2011 is considered a territorial dispute between two males upon considering the possible interpretations of the dance display of the white-faced robin, including whether such was a male-female interaction.

The health status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples continues to be significantly poorer than Australia's general population. Clearly there is a need for change, hence the renewed interest in transitioning to a community control model for health services as a health intervention. Yet this requires a significant change management process, which is a process developed using Western business philosophies, and may not be applicable for community-controlled services that need to operate within the Aboriginal cultural domain. This paper examines the literature on organisational change management processes, and features of Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations and Aboriginal management styles. It identifies challenges and synergies that can be used to inform more effective transition processes to a community-control model for health services. The findings also highlight the need for a fundamental systems change approach to achieve such major reform agendas through the creation of a "collective responsibility" to achieve the vision for change, utilising participatory change management processes both internally and externally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health service delivery model reforms are currently underway in Cape York in an effort to improve health outcomes for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. These reforms include the transition of the Apunipima Cape York Health Council from an advocacy agency to a community-controlled health service provider. This paper investigates the literature on existing community governance models and community-controlled health service delivery models, to guide the choice of the most appropriate model for the Cape York health reforms. The evidence collected suggests a new innovative health service delivery model is emerging that will not only improve Indigenous health status, but may also present a more appropriate model for the health care sector than the existing mainstream health service delivery model provided for other sections of the collective Australian population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the capability approach as an evaluative tool for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) policy and programs in developing countries, in particular at a grass-roots community level, is an emerging field of application. However, one of the difficulties with ICT for development (ICT4D) evaluations is in linking what is often no more than a resource, for example basic access, to actual outcomes, or means to end. This article argues that the capability approach provides a framework for evaluating the strength of this linkage and that the latter is a key determinant of whether or not communities sustain ICT4D programs beyond the initial start-up phase. The argument is made by describing an evaluative application of the capabilities approach to community ICT4D programs using two Indigenous community case studies conducted in Cape York, in the far north-east of Australia. Key to the evaluative approach is the identification of community defined, context specific concepts of well-being and constitutive valued functionings and the derivation from this of required capabilities. This move away from normative definitions of capabilities or capability types to a definition that reflects the Indigenous culture, history, circumstances, and well-being aspirations of each community is intended to give a voice to the people and at the same time provide a deeper informational base-through narrative-for policy and program design than has previously been available. The article concludes that by operationalising the capability approach in a context and purpose specific way, policy and program design can be improved so as to include more communities on the margin and thereby achieve more socially inclusive ICT based development. A process is also outlined for using the evaluative application of the capability approach for community ICT4D within a policy feedback loop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrenched contests about the future of Cape York Peninsula's lands, waters and people have for long received national prominence. In the federal arena, this has climaxed with the campaign to overturn the State's declarations on wild rivers. Initially pursued as a means of influencing decisions on the determination of the government in a finely balanced federal parliament, it has been retained as an early test of the survivability of the minority Labor government. The peninsula's prominence is founded on its iconic conservation status and the continuity of Aboriginal occupance of their country, reinforced by the formidable capabilities of Indigenous and conservationist leaders. Contests are characterised by their complexity, durability and intractability. Contests are bedevilled by shifting alliances and schisms within Indigenous and conservationist constituencies. Increasingly potent is the schism between modernist/reformist/regionalist visions of Indigenous futures, forcefully presented by Noel Pearson against more traditionalist/localist visions held by many community leaderships. Other participants, notably conservationists, State politicians and bureaucracies have needed to align their policies around these contested visions. Over the last two decades, policies of State Labor governments have maintained some continuity, being pro-active on conservation goals, selectively supportive of Aboriginal advancement, necessarily passive in the determination of land claims, reactive in the resolution of land tenures and property rights, and inconsistent and ineffectual in conflict resolution and in providing leadership in shaping sustainable, multifunctional futures, attuned to the peninsula's unique challenges and potentials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existence of eastward-propagating bores over Cape York Peninsula is shown from data obtained during the Gulf Lines Experiment (GLEX) conducted during September and October 2002 and from numerical modeling experiments. The disturbances were detected regularly at two stations, observable on 24 days during the 40-day experiment. The passage of a typical disturbance exhibits a sudden increase in pressure of around 1 hPa, often accompanied by undulations, and a change in the wind speed and direction from an easterly to a westerly flow. Disturbances were not observed during days of strong easterly flow. A two-dimensional nonhydrostatic mesoscale model is used to examine the formation of these disturbances. It is shown that the west coast sea breeze is shallow and does not penetrate far inland because of the opposing low-level easterly flow. In contrast, the east coast sea breeze is deeper and is less stable because it is modified by daytime convective mixing as it crosses the peninsula. As the east coast sea breeze overrides the west coast sea breeze, the west coast sea breeze produces an eastward-propagating bore on the stable layer laid down by the east coast sea breeze. About 2 h after generation, the bore becomes undular. These eastward-propagating disturbances are shown to be associated with the westward-propagating north Australian cloud line and the northeasterly morning glory. In addition, it is shown here that an undular bore can be formed when cold-air downdrafts from afternoon deep convection enter the stable layer created by the east coast sea breeze. Four events from GLEX are believed to have been formed in this way. The eastward-propagating disturbances produced in this way are accompanied neither by the north Australian cloud line nor by the northeasterly morning glory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the interaction between semantic and pragmatic information in illocution and focus marking in Umpithamu (Cape York, Australia), and it uses these data to argue that while FDG can deal with the basics of the semantics-pragmatics interface, it lacks three crucial features to represent the interaction between semantic and pragmatic information in an adequate way. The marking of illocution illustrates the importance of preferred interpretations that are halfway between encoded and incidental aspects of interpretation, driven by general pragmatic principles. While such preferred interpretations are crucial from the perspective of diachrony and language processing, they do not have a clear place in the FDG model. The marking of focus illustrates the existence of categories in the case system that combine interpersonal and representational aspects of organization in a nonarbitrary way, which can form a diachronic pathway between the interpersonal and the representational levels. While the synchronically dual nature of categories is easy to represent in FDG, the nonarbitrary link between the two functions, and its potential diachronic consequences, do not have an obvious place in the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have witnessed increasing attention in theory and practice to participatory approaches to policy appraisal, in part due to the potential of such approaches to facilitate reflexive policy appraisal. It has been observed, however, that in practice these approaches are often as prone as traditional, non-participatory appraisal techniques to being limited in the extent to which that can achieve reflexivity e.g. due to the influence of interests and power and problems of representation. This article explores the extent to which Q Methodology, or ‘Q’, can play a role in ‘opening up’ (Stirling Science, Technology & Human Values, 33, 262–294, 2008) policy to reflexive appraisal. A Q study of fire management discourses in Cape York, northern Australia is presented which exposes the existence of four key discourses in the region: discourse A—rational fire management; discourse B—fire-free conservation; discourse C—pragmatic, locally controlled burning; and discourse D—indigenous controlled land management. At present only discourses A and C are reflected in policy. Appraising existing policy on the basis of the different constructions articulated by discourses B and D of the purpose of and practices involved in fire management, is successful in opening up existing policy to reflexive appraisal. In the face of considerable scientific uncertainty as to the ecological impacts of different burning regimes in northern Australia, this process of opening up has important potential for appraising the social desirability of existing policy and practice in the region. This analysis provides a practical demonstration of the wider potential of Q Methodology in opening up other important contemporary policy issues to reflexive appraisal. It also provides the basis for recommending the expansion of participatory processes for facilitating stakeholder engagement in fire management policy and practice in Cape York. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership is dedicated to research and policy advice relevant to the remote Aboriginal communities of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Its inaugural conference, entitled 'Strong Foundations: Rebuilding Social Norms in Indigenous Communities', addressed widespread problems of social dysfunction that manifest in failure to attend school, substance abuse and sexual violence. Keynote addresses explained the dysfunction as an outcome of dependency on welfare, disincentives to work, poor governance and dispossession. They made a number of worthwhile proposals, including governmental intervention, recognition of shared Australian-ness and humanity, abandonment of victimhood and cultural security. However, they made only tangential allusion to Aboriginal identity politics, which I argue play a crucial role in constituting the dysfunction and, if understood, open new avenues to Aboriginal development. This essay constitutes a plea for more rigorous examination of the politics that present such a barrier to Aboriginal development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study provides a linguistic perspective on the structure and the interpretation of a key historical narrative in Umpithamu (a Pama-Nyungan language of Cape York Peninsula, Australia), against the background of a larger corpus of narrative texts in Umpithamu. The analysis focuses on the role of participant tracking devices in the macro-structure of the narrative, and the role of case marking in the build-up of narrative motifs. It is argued not only that marked types of participant tracking serve to mark the boundaries of episodes, as often noted in the literature, but also that some types have additional functions within episodes, which leads to a proposal for refinement of Fox's (1987) Principle of Morphosyntactic Markedness. On a micro-structural level, it is shown how a rare system of case marking is used by the narrator to construe white-Aboriginal interactions as events in which the Aboriginal participants experience an extreme lack of control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pollen and diatom analyses of organic sediments from Three-Quarter Mile Lake, a perched lake on Cape York Peninsula, north Queensland, indicate that significant changes in vegetation and hydrology occurred during the Holocene. Early Holocene grass-dominated landscapes were replaced in mid-Holocene times by increasingly woody vegetation comprising tropical heathlands, savanna and rainforest. Early-Holocene lake levels fluctuated widely. From mid-Holocene times, lake levels stabilized and water became increasingly acidic as a mature swamp forest developed adjacent to the lake and contributed tannins to the lake water. The timing and character of changes are consistent with those described from the Atherton Tableland in wet tropical Queensland. Holocene dry phases described from the Northern Territory and the western shores of Cape York cannot be identified from Three-Quarter Mile Lake. Rainforest is currently close to its greatest Holocene extent, suggesting that the rainforest-dependent endemic fauna of northern Cape York have been isolated from rainforest blocks to the south throughout the last 10 000 years and, by inference, throughout at least the 120 000 years beyond that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the debate about the processes of coastal dune initiation in Australia. A review of the dates published so far on coastal dunes in Australia indicates that these belong to identifiable process regions. Those to the north and northeast seem to be largely derived from the deflation, at low sea levels, of exposed deltaic sediments, which are subsequently reworked by episodes of active transgressive dune development. In the southeast, the dunes, like other coastal depositional features, are largely derived from the alongshore sediment transport system, which is active along this coast at times of higher sea level. Apart from during glacial maxima, episodes of dune transgression, where a source is identifiable, seem to be initiated along the shoreline, strongly suggesting that marine disturbance is the trigger. Although, in many cases, these are also at times when climate is favourable to active transgressive dune development, the eastern Cape York dune fields make it clear that this is not a necessary condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses reasons for optimism regarding the future of Indigenous health in Australia. Willingness of Premier Peter Beattie to engage with Noel Pearson and other leaders as they seek solutions for the people of Cape York; Intimate familiarity of Indigenous Australians with disadvantage and the ramifications of the change of political tides; Cape York's Alcohol Management Plans; Appreciation of the history of black-white relations in Australia.

To study the prevalence of rheumatic disorders in two Aboriginal populations on the western coast of Cape York Peninsula.Physical and radiological examination of 217 adult Aborigines at Aurukun Aboriginal Mission and 71 Aboriginal adults at Weipa Mission. The study was performed in October 1965.Mild to moderate degenerative arthritis was not uncommon in the populations examined. However, generalised or nodal osteoarthritis was not seen. One young woman had definite sero-positive rheumatoid arthritis. This woman's appearance suggested some Torres Strait Islander influence. No case of gouty arthritis or classical ankylosing spondylitis was encountered. An incidental finding of retrospective interest was that the calculated body mass index showed that the majority of adults were underweight by Caucasian standards.These findings are of historic interest given the health impacts of social, cultural and environmental circumstances of Aborigines currently reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A high-resolution cloud model is used to explore in detail the generation of the morning glory, a low-level nonlinear atmospheric internal wave observed on the southwestern side of Cape York Peninsula (Australia). The model is two-dimensional and nonhydrostatic and simulates an east–west cross section of the southern part of Cape York Peninsula at a horizontal resolution of 200 m. Most of the numerical experiments are initialized at sunrise with a 5 m s-1 easterly flow and a sounding taken upstream from the peninsula. The sea breezes that develop over Cape York Peninsula are highly asymmetric with the east-coast sea breeze being both deeper and warmer than its western counterpart. When the sea breezes meet, the east-coast sea breeze rides over that from the west coast and in the process produces a series of waves that propagate on the west-coast sea breeze. The model calculations show that when the phase speed of these waves matches the westward propagation speed of the east-coast sea breeze, the waves grow to large amplitude, thus forming the morning glory. When the east-coast sea breeze propagates too fast relative to the waves, the waves do not amplify. In this sense the morning glory is generated by a resonant coupling between the east-coast sea breeze and the disturbances that propagate on the shallow stable layer produced by the west-coast sea breeze. The number of waves produced depends on the stability of the west-coast sea breeze and the strength of the east-coast sea breeze. These numerical experiments have for the first time explicitly modeled the generation of morning glory waves through the interaction of two sea breezes. The inclusion of orography representative of Cape York Peninsula does not change the overall result with a morning glory forming in much the same way as in the case without orography. The main difference is that the sea breezes meet earlier when orography is included. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses anthropological engagement with photography in indigenous Australian contexts. Following the work of Gell and Edwards, and drawing on the history of photography and ethnography in central Cape York Peninsula, I explore some ways that photographs may exceed relations of objectification and exoticism. Many ethnographic photographs have continued to circulate within and beyond Cape York Peninsula, while others have been returned to the descendants of those portrayed. This process of circulation may be accompanied by shifts in the meanings drawn from images, and increasing numbers of photographs are being taken by Aboriginal people themselves. Both these photographs and the engagement of earlier photographs by Aboriginal people demonstrate differences with the ways that photographs are dealt with in 'Western' contexts. Whether as 'social things', as objects, or as distributed aspects of the agency of those taking or featuring in them, photographs remain active in their interaction with viewers and demand a more nuanced analysis of colonial relationships." Key words: Visual research methods; ethnography; labor relations; trade union protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Describes developments in Guugu Yimithirr kinship terminology of the Aboriginal people of the Cooktown region in south-east Cape York, Queensland. Data extracted from historical sources and recorded from adult informants of different generations; Synchro-diachronic approach as proposed strategy for researching other Australian Aboriginal kinship systems.

Accounts of European explorers between 1623 and 1880 indicate that fires were lit by Aboriginal people on Cape York Peninsula in northeast Australia throughout the dry season (May-October). Diaries kept by three generations of pastoralists in the Musgrave area (1913-1952, 1953-1974 and 1976-1992) show that burning activities were largely confined to a two to six week period between May and early August. The timing of burning depended on the amount and date of cessation of wet season rainfall. More rarely, 'storm-burning', burning under hot conditions within a few days of the first heavy rains of the wet season, was undertaken. Long-term pastoralists felt a responsibility to use fire wisely and had a detailed knowledge of the role of fire in land management. Their decisions to burn were based on the extent of grass curing, and soil and weather conditions, all of which affected the extent of each burn. They used early dry season fires mainly to maintain forage and control cattle movements. Storm-burns were reputed to control woody weeds, but were used infrequently because of difficulty in controlling their spread and uncertainty as to when the next rains would stimulate new grass growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past, indigenous people have often been entirely excluded from social impact assessments (SIAs) of projects or activities that affect them, or have faced major financial and cultural barriers in participating effectively and in having their perspectives accepted as legitimate. More recently, indigenous groups have achieved greater success in influencing SIA, but a fundamental problem remains. Their enhanced input into SIA has generally not increased the capacity of indigenous people to shape the outcomes of development projects in ways that favor their interests. This problem reflects a wider failure, extensively documented in the literature, to integrate SIA into decision-making. Drawing on case studies from Australia's Cape York Peninsula, this article shows how SIA can be integrated into the negotiation of legally binding agreements between developers and indigenous groups, offering a practical and effective way of ensuring that SIA findings influence the development and operationof resource projects. While the case studies relate to specific regional, political, and cultural contexts, the general approach outlined in the article should be of interest to indigenous communities and SIA practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much information on traditional indigenous society in Australian historiography and anthropology stems from the vast store of eyewitness accounts left by missionaries, settlers and government officials. How cautious does one need to be in using such material? After all that it reveals about the moral and legal universe of its writers, can it speak reliably about traditional society? This article traces the production of knowledge about indigenous gender relations at Cape York Peninsula through a lineage of sources from the 1890s to the 1990s and concludes that unless the assumptions embedded in the primary sources are clearly identified, the discourse on Aboriginal womanhood continues to be a colonising project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the type of orchids found specifically in Wooyee lake, west of Cape Flattery in Starcke Dharrba Lands, Cape York Peninsula. Grouped into either Terrestrial or Epiphytic type, the orchids were enumerated alphabetically by their scientific name with English translation and notes. The study commissioned by the Cape York Marine Advisory Group acting on behalf of the Dharrba Land Trust, took place from October 25-30, 2010.