Coen is a town and coastal locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia.
Coen is a town and coastal locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. The town of Coen is inland on the Peninsula Developmental Road, the main road on the Cape York Peninsula in far northern Queensland. In the 2016 census, Coen had a population of 364 people.
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.In 1623, Jan Carstensz, the navigator of the ship Pera of the Dutch East India Company named a river on Cape York Peninsula after Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Today that river is known as the Archer River and the name Coen River is given to one of its tributaries.Gold was discovered on the Coen River in 1876. Coen came into being first as a small fort built by gold miners and prospectors in May 1877 but this first gold rush 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 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.
On 3 July 2014, Barry Port retired from the Queensland Police. He was Australia's last Aboriginal police tracker. In his 36 years working for the police, he has tracked criminals, missing people and stowaways.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 2011 census, Coen had a population of 416 people.
Weather
Coen has a tropical savanna climate (Aw) with distinct wet and dry seasons. Daytime temperatures are usually over 30 °C (86 °F) most of the year. The dry season runs from May to October. The temperatures in this season can drop below 10 °C (50 °F) in the coolest months between May and August, and it can peak further above 35 °C (95 °F) 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 and tropical cyclones.
Things to do
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.