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Cape York Peninsula
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Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. This remote peninsula is one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth. Its undisturbed tropical rainforests and savannas are now recognized for their global environmental significance.
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Encyclopedia
Cape York Peninsula is a large peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. This remote peninsula is one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth. Its undisturbed tropical rainforests and savannas are now recognized for their global environmental significance. A nomination for World Natural Heritage is currently being considered by the Queensland and Australian Federal governments.
The Cape York Peninsula region encompasses an area of approximately 137,000 km² north of 16°S latitude. It has a population of only about 18,000, of which a large percentage (~60 %) are Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
At the tip of the peninsula lies Cape York, the northernmost point on the Australian continent. It was named by Lt. James Cook in 1770 after His Royal Highness the Duke of York. From the tip, it is about 160 km to New Guinea across the island-studded Torres Strait. The west coast borders the Gulf of Carpentaria and the east coast borders the Coral Sea.
Geography and geology
As a peninsula, Cape York is bordered on three sides (north, east and west) by water. There is no clear demarcation to the south. The official boundary of the Cape York Peninsula Region as referred to in the Cape York Peninsula Heritage Act 2007 of Queensland runs along approximately 16°S latitude. The entire region covers an area of approximately 137,000 km². At the peninsula’s widest points, it is 430 km from the Bloomfield River, in the southeast, across to the west coast (just south of Kowanyama), and some 660 km from the southern border of Cook Shire, to the tip of Cape York.
Geological history
Around 40 million years ago, the Indo-Australian tectonic plate began to split apart from the ancient supercontinent Gondwana. As it collided with the Pacific Plate on its northward journey, the high mountain ranges of central New Guinea emerged around 5 million years ago. In the lee of this collision zone, the ancient rock formations of what is now Cape York peninsula remained largely undisturbed.
Throughout the Pleistocene epoch Australia and New Guinea have been alternately land-linked and separated by water on a number of occasions. During periods of glaciation and resulting low sea levels, Cape York Peninsula provided a low-lying land link. Another link existed between Arnhem Land and New Guinea, at times enclosing an enormous freshwater lake (Lake Carpentaria) in the centre of what is now the Gulf of Carpentaria. In this way, Australia and New Guinea remained connected until the shallow Torres Strait was last flooded around 8,000 years ago.
Landforms
The tropical landscapes of Cape York are among the most stable in the world. Long undisturbed by tectonic activity, Cape York is an extremely eroded, almost level plain, with some very low hills on the eastern side.
The backbone of Cape York is the Peninsula Ridge, part of Australia’s Great Dividing Range. This mountain range is made up of ancient (1,500 million year-old) Precambrian and Palaeozoic rocks and rises to some 800m elevation in the McIlwraith Range around Coen. To the East and West of the Peninsula Ridge lie the Carpentaria and Laura Basins, themselves made up of ancient Mesozoic sediments. Those lowlands are dominated by mighty meandering rivers and vast floodplains.
There are also several outstanding landforms on the Cape York Peninsula: the large expanses of undisturbed dunefields at the eastern coast around Shelburne Bay and Cape Bedford-Cape Flattery; the huge piles of black granite boulders at Black Mountain National Park and Cape Melville; or the limestone karsts around Palmerston in the Cape’s far south.
Rivers
The Peninsula Ridge forms the drainage divide between the Gulf of Carpentaria and the Coral Sea. To the west, a series of large, winding river systems including the Mitchell, Coleman, Holroyd, Archer, Watson, Wenlock, Ducie and Jardine catchments empty their waters into the Gulf of Carpentaria. During the Dry season, those rivers are reduced to a series of waterholes and sandy beds. Yet, with the arrival of torrential rains in the Wet season, they swell to mighty waterways, spreading across extensive floodplains and coastal wetlands and giving life to a vast array of freshwater and wetland species.
On the Eastern slopes, the shorter, faster-flowing Jacky Jacky Creek, Olive, Pascoe, Lockhart, Stewart, Jeannie and Endeavour Rivers flow towards the Coral Sea, providing important freshwater and nutrients to the healthiest section of the Great Barrier Reef. On their way, those wild, undisturbed rivers are lined with dense rainforests, sand dunes or mangroves.
The floodplains of the Laura Basin, which are protected in the Lakefield and Jack River National Parks, are crossed by the Morehead, Hann, North Kennedy, Laura, Jack and Normanby Rivers.
Cape York’s river catchments are noted for their exceptional hydrological integrity. With little disturbance on both water flows and vegetation cover throughout entire catchments, Cape York has been identified as one of the few places where tropical water cycles remain essentially intact. Cape York Peninsula contributes as much as a quarter of Australia's surface runoff. Indeed, with only about 2.7 percent of Australia's land area it produces more runoff than all of Australia south of the Tropic of Capricorn. Tapping those heavy tropical rainfalls, Cape York’s rivers are also of particular importance for replenishing central Australia’s Great Artesian Basin. The Queensland Government is currently poised to protect 13 of Cape York’s wild rivers under the Wild Rivers Act 2005.
Soils
The soils on Cape York are remarkably infertile even compared to other areas of Australia, being almost entirely laterised and in most cases so old and weathered that very little development is apparent today (classified in USDA soil taxonomy as Orthents). It is because of this extraordinary soil poverty that the region is so thinly settled: the soils are so unworkable and unresponsive to fertilisation that attempts to grow commercial crops have usually failed.
Climate
The climate on Cape York Peninsula is tropical and monsoonal, with a wet season extending from November to April and a dry season from May to October. The temperature across it is warm to hot, with a cooler climate in higher areas. The mean annual temperatures range from 18 °C at higher elevations to 27 °C on the lowlands in the far south-west. Temperatures over 40 °C and below 5 °C are rare.
Annual rainfall is high, ranging from over 2000 mm. in the Iron Range and north of Weipa to about 700 mm. at the southern border. Almost all this rain falls between November and April, and only on the eastern slopes of the Iron Range is the median rainfall between June and September above 5mm (0.2 inches). Between January and March, however, the median monthly rainfall ranges from about 170mm (6.5 inches) in the south to over 500mm (20 inches) in the north and on the Iron Range.
Ecology and biology
Ecosystems
Cape York Peninsula supports a complex mosaic of intact tropical rainforests, tropical savannas, heathlands, wetlands, wild rivers and mangrove swamps. Almost the entire area of Cape York (99.6%) still retains its native vegetation and is little fragmented. Therefore, the Peninsula has also been noted for its exceptionally high wilderness quality.
The majority of Cape York is covered in tropical savannas. On Cape York, this ecosystem consists typically of a tall dense grass layer and varying densities of trees (dominantly eucalypts), making it a tropical savanna woodland. Although abundant and fully functioning on Cape York, tropical savannas are now rare and highly degraded in other parts of the world.
Cape York’s tropical rainforests cover an area of 748,000 ha, or 5.6 percent of the total land area. Rainforests depend on some level of rainfall throughout the long Dry season, climatic conditions that are mostly found on the eastern slopes of the Cape’s coastal ranges. Being almost exclusively untouched, old-growth forests and supporting a disproportionately high biodiversity, all those forests are of high conservation significance. The largest contiguous rainforest area on the Cape occurs in the McIllwraith Range-Iron Range area. This area contains at least 1000 different plants, including 100 rare or threatened species, supports 16% of Australia's orchid species and 200 species of butterfly including 11 endemic butterflies.
On poor, dry soils tropical heathlands can be found. North-east Cape York supports Australia’s largest areas of this highly diverse ecosystem.
The extensive wetlands on Cape York Peninsula are “among the largest, richest and most diverse in Australia”. 19 wetlands of national significance have been identified, mostly on the large floodplains and in coastal areas. Important wetlands include the Jardine Complex, Lakefield, and the estuaries of the great rivers of the western plains. Many of these wetland come into existence only during the Wet season and support rare or uncommon plant communities, provide important fish habitat, crocodile habitat and drought refuge.
Cape York’s coastal areas and river estuaries are lined with mangrove forests. Australia’s largest mangrove forest can be found at Newcastle Bay. They are noted for their importance as a fish nursery and crocodile habitat.
Flora and fauna
The Cape harbours an extraordinary biodiversity, with more than 700 vertebrate land animal species and about 3300 species of flowering plants. As a result from its geological history, “the flora and fauna of Cape York Peninsula are a complex mixture of Gondwanan relicts, Australian isolationists and Asian or New Guinean invaders” (p.41). Cape York Peninsula also contains one of the highest rates of endemism in Australia, with more than 260 endemic plant species and 40 terrestrial vertebrate animal species found so far.
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The rainforests of the Iron Range support species that are also found in New Guinea, including the Eclectus Parrot and Southern Common Cuscus.
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People and culture
Aboriginal culture
Some of the world's most extensive and ancient rock painting galleries surround the town of Laura, some of which are available for public viewing. There is also a new Interpretive Centre from which information on the rock art and local Aboriginal culture is available and tours can be arranged.
Settlements
The administrative centre for Cape York Peninsula is Cooktown, located in its far south-eastern corner. Cape York’s largest settlement is the mining town Weipa on the Gulf of Carpentaria. The remainder of the Cape is extremely sparsely populated. Along the Peninsula Developmental Road, there are small service centres at Lakeland, Laura and Coen. At the tip of Cape York, there is a sizeable service centre on nearby Thursday Island. Aboriginal communities are at Hopevale, Pormpuraaw, Kowanyama, Aurukun, Lockhart River, Napranum, Mapoon, Injinoo, New Mapoon and Umagico. Torres Strait Islander communities on the mainland are at Bamaga and Seisia.
Economy
Land tenure
Pastoral land leases occupy about 57% of the total area, mostly located in central and eastern Cape York. Indigenous land comprises about 20%, with the entire West coast being held under Native title. The remainder is mostly declared as [National Park] and managed by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Land uses include broad acre pastoralism, bauxite and silica sand mining, nature reserves, tourism and fishing (Sattler & Williams, 1999).
Infrastructure
A completely sealed inland road links Cairns and the Atherton Tableland to Lakeland Downs and Cooktown. The road north of Lakeland Downs to the tip of the Peninsula is sometimes cut after heavy rains during the wet season (roughly December to May).
Tourism
Cape York is a popular destination from May to October for 4WD enthusiasts who come to test their driving skills and their vehicles on the remaining sections of the Overland Telegraph Track.
Major national parks include the Jardine River National Park in the far north, Mungkan Kandju National Park near Aurukun, and Lakefield National Park, in the south-east of the bioregion.
Mining
There are extensive deposits of bauxite along the west or Gulf of Carpentaria coast. Weipa is the centre for this mining activity.
See also
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