Weipa is home to one of the largest deposits of Bauxite (used in the manafacture of Aluminium) in the world and as such started off as a mining town with Comalco building houseing for its employees and their families. Weipa can be reached by the Peninsula Developental Road or Quantas air link to Cairns.

The tropical/monsoonal climate gives hot, wet summers and mild dry winters. The average rainfall is 1700mm, 97% of the rainfall occurs between November and April. The seasons can be divided into just two – the ‘wet’ season between November and April, and the ‘dry’ season between May and October. Minimum and maximum temperatures range, on average, from 18 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees Celsius in July, and 24 degrees Celsius to 36 degrees Celsius in December.

The region boasts some of the last untouched wilderness of Australia with stunning beaches, out-of-the-way waterholes and camping destinations. To the south of the town, on the banks of the Embley, Hey, Pine and Mission Rivers are the strange phenomenom known as the Weipa Shell Mounds. These mounds contains something like 200 000 tonnes of shells which seem to have been placed in the area about 800 years ago. There are a number of theories of the origin of the mounds (some of which are up to 9 metres high) but so far no one has offered an entirely convincing explanation.

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