Woorabinda is an Aboriginal community in Queensland , Australia , 165 kilometers west of Rockhampton . Woorabinda was founded as a camp for Aborigines. Today almost 1000 people live there.
Woorabinda was founded in 1927 as an Aboriginal camp for a camp out of Taroom that was under the control of the Chief Protector of Aborigines and was abandoned. The Aborigines from Taroom came from tribes with 17 different languages.
During the Second World War in 1942, the Hopevale Aboriginal Mission of the Evangelical Lutheran Churches at Cape Bedford on the Cape York Peninsula in north Queensland was closed because it was suspected that they would collaborate with the Japanese . Many of them died there from illnesses caused by the poor hygienic conditions of the sanitary facilities and the unhealthy climate with frost in the cold winter nights of the Aborigines living in huts. One source cites 235 Aborigines from Cape Bedford who died in Woorabinda in eight years. The survivors were returned to Cape Bedford in 1949, to what is now called Hopevale.
today
The Woorabinda Community is the only Aboriginal community that is recognized as a Deed of Grant in Trust (DOGIT) in the central Queensland region. DOGIT communities have a special title of ownership of land that applies only to the former Aboriginal reservations. This land tenure is part of a special system of community land trusts administered by a local council.
Today in 2009 Woorabinda had approximately 1,000 residents, more of whom were young people under the age of 18, than any other non-indigenous community. Statistically speaking, Woorabinda has had the most violent indigenous community in Queensland over the past few years, with 45 personal injuries per 1000 people resulting in required hospitalizations. It is thus above the national average. There are restrictions on alcohol in this place.
