Guugu Yimithirr
The Guugu Yimithirr (alternatively Gugu Yimithirr, Kokoimudji, with numerous variants) are the traditional custodians of around 1600 square kilometres of territory north of the Endeavour River estuary. Their territory extends north to the mouth of the Starcke River and, according to Norman Tindale, towards Cape Flattery. To the west, it extends to the source of the Jack River and as far south as Battle Camp. While Lizard Island is sometimes included in their domain, it is usually described as the home of the Dingaal people, who may have been a clan of the Guugu Yimithirr's 'saltwater people'.
Contact with the first known European expedition along Australia's east coast followed James Cook's arrival in the Endeavour estuary (the site of modern-day Cooktown) on 11 June 1770. Although there has been some debate on the matter, Cook's seven-week stay while his crew repaired the Endeavour's damaged hull produced the first sightings of kangaroos and the animal's name. Apparent discrepancies can be explained by the use of gangurru to refer to the large grey kangaroo, while the minnar or meenuah recorded by Philip Parker King in 1820 referred to meat or edible animals. Overall, relations between the two groups during Cook's time at the Endeavour could be described as amicable, although confrontations stemming from different hospitality concepts soured relations towards the end of his stay. Still, the pigs Cook left when he departed bred rapidly, becoming a significant food source and a subject for paintings in rock art sites across the region.
After James Venture Mulligan discovered payable gold on the Palmer River in 1873, a massive influx of European and Chinese miners saw Indigenous groups around Cooktown decimated, with a recorded massacre by Sub-inspector Stanhope O'Connor's Native Mounted Police troopers at Cape Bedford annihilating twenty-eight Guugu-Yimidhirr men and thirteen women. The remainder were among the groups the Lutheran missionary Johann Flierl took in when he established the Elim Aboriginal Mission at Cape Bedford. Flierl's successor, G. H. Schwartz, renamed the mission Hope Vale and was still there when the population was forcibly relocated to Woorabinda, inland from Rockhampton, during World War II.
Today, the majority of the Guugu Yimithirr live at Hope Vale, around twenty-five kilometres north-northwest of Cooktown, the administrative centre of Hope Vale Aboriginal Shire.
