Lockhart River

Lockhart River is a town in the Aboriginal Shire of Lockhart River and a coastal locality split between the Aboriginal Shire of Lockhart River and the Shire of Cook, on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia.

Lockhart River is a town in the Aboriginal Shire of Lockhart River and a coastal locality split between the Aboriginal Shire of Lockhart River and the Shire of Cook, on the Cape York Peninsula in Queensland, Australia. In the 2016 census, Lockhart River had a population of 724 people.

From 1924 to 1967 the Lockhart River Mission was run by the Anglican Church.

Lockhart River takes its name from the river located 14 kilometres (8.7 mi) south of the community. The river was named by explorer Robert Logan Jack in January 1880, after a close friend, Hugh Lockhart.Non-Indigenous people first arrived in 1848, when the explorer Edmund Kennedy set up a base camp near the mouth of the Pascoe River at Weymouth Bay. Kennedy left eight men at the camp but by the time they were located by the supply ship, only two remained alive, the other six having died from disease and starvation.By the 1870s, fishermen with luggers looking for trepang, pearl shell and trochus were in the coastal areas. Miners in search of tin and gold, along with timber cutters, were in the hills around Gordon Creek and the country inland around the Wenlock River.

The Anglican Church established a mission at Orchid Point near the Lockhart River in 1924, at a location which had been a centre of a sandalwood trade. Aboriginal people came and were collected from parts of the Cape York Peninsula and placed at the Mission, known as the Lockhart River Mission, Old Lockhart River Mission or just Lockhart Mission. Six months later, the Mission was relocated to Bare Hill, south of Cape Direction. In the 1930s, Lamalama people were forcibly relocated to the mission from the Port Stewart area, but they later returned. In 1939, many people who had earlier been removed from Coen to the mission, returned to the Coen area.After the Second World War broke out, the European superintendent went on furlough in 1942, and the Aboriginal people were told to go to several bush camps and fend for themselves. After six months, in July 1942, the mission was reopened but with poor resources and lack of funding. Things improved under superintendent John Warby in the 1950s. A cooperative society was created for the management of the trochus shell industry, until the market failed. New houses were built and a village created on the ocean side.In 1967, the church handed over the mission to the Queensland Government, who tried to relocate the people to Bamaga. Most of the people refused to go. In 1968–9, the people were relocated from the traditional area of the Uutaalnganu people on the coast to a new site in Kuuku Ya'u country further north and inland from Quintel Beach. This move and the assimilation policy of the new government administration resulted in much discontent and friction.The Lockhart River Community was given Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) title to the lands in 1987.Locally elected councillors now provide administration for the Lockhart River DOGIT.

Lockhart State School opened on 1 January 1924.During World War II, Lockhart River Airport was constructed as a large American bomber base with three airstrips operating. The US bombers flew to Papua New Guinea and were met by their fighter escorts based at Bamaga and Horn Island further north. Many thousands of troops, both US and Australian, passed through as part of their jungle training before being shipped to southeast Asia, and many sorties from the base were flown against Japanese forces during the critical Battle of the Coral Sea, 4–8 May 1942. Portland Roads community, 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Lockhart River, was the supply port for the war effort with a large jetty. This jetty has since been removed. Many old bunkers and rusting 44 gallon drums can still be found in bush areas.Iron Range Post Office opened on 5 November 1936, closed in 1942, reopened in 1950 and was renamed Lockhart River in 1978.On 7 May 2005, a Fairchild Aircraft Inc. SA227-DC Metro 23 aircraft, registered VH-TFU, with two pilots and 13 passengers, was being operated by Transair on an instrument flight rules regular public transport service from Bamaga to Cairns, with an intermediate stop at Lockhart River, Queensland. At 1143:39 Eastern Standard Time, the aircraft impacted terrain in the Iron Range National Park on the north-western slope of South Pap, a heavily timbered ridge, approximately 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) north-west of the Lockhart River aerodrome. At the time of the accident, the crew was conducting an area navigation global navigation satellite system (RNAV (GNSS)) nonprecision approach to runway 12. The aircraft was destroyed by the impact forces and an intense, fuel-fed, post-impact fire. There were no survivors.On 11 April 2014, the former locality of Lockhart was split into new localities: Iron Range and Lockhart River.

The urban area has a tropical monsoon climate (Köppen: Am) the rural part to the south borders on tropical savanna climate (Aw), in any case with notable differences of precipitation according to the season. With wet, hot summers and dry, winters warm to cool.