Woorabinda, Queensland

Woorabinda is an Aboriginal community in Queensland, Australia, located 165 km west of Rockhampton. Woorabinda was founded as a camp for Aborigines. Today there live about 1000 people.

Foundation

Woorabinda was founded in 1927 as an Aboriginal camp for a Camp from Taroom, which was under the control of the Chief Protector of Aborigines, and was abandoned. The Aborigines of Taroom were from strains with 17 different languages.

During the Second World War in 1942 the Aboriginal mission station of Hopevale the Evangelical Lutheran Churches at Cape Bedford was closed on Cape York Peninsula in northern Queensland, since it was felt that they would collaborate with the Japanese. Many of them died there due to diseases caused by poor hygienic conditions of sanitation and by the unhealthy climate with frost in the cold winter nights of living in huts Aborigines. One source lists 235 dead Aborigines from Cape Bedford in eight years in Woorabinda. The survivors were in 1949 returned to Cape Bedford, in a place which is now called Hopevale.

Today

The Woorabinda community is the only Aboriginal community which is recognized as a Deed of Grant in Trust ( Dogit ) in the central Queensland region. Dogit communities have a special title deeds to land, which applies only to the former Aboriginal reserves. This ownership right to land is in a special system of Land Trusts of communities that are managed by a local council.

Today in 2009 Woorabinda has about 1,000 inhabitants, of which more young people under 18 years than in all other non - indigenous communities. Woorabinda had statistically in recent years the most violent indigenous community in Queensland with 45 injuries per 1000 inhabitants, with the consequence of necessary health maintenance visits. It is thus above the state average. In this place rule restrictions on alcohol.