Address: Peninsula Developmental Road, Coen QLD 4871
The European settlement of Coen was founded as a log fort beside the Coen River by Robert Sefton in 1876. The river’s name, which the settlement adopted, was chosen more than 200 years earlier by a Dutch explorer on the West Coast, after the Governor of Batavia (Dutch East Indies) who was Jan Pieterszoon Coen.
Coen is situated within a number of important ‘story’ or creation sites, threaded throughout the local landscape’s rivers, rocks and hills. Local elders maintain custodial obligations and responsibilities of these places.
Following a number of land transfer and purchases through State/National Parks, from the 1980s the Indigenous Land Corporation has seen the return of significant outstations and/or land parcels to most language groups residing in Coen.
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