Cobourg Peninsula

The Cobourg Peninsula is a peninsula located 350 kilometres (217 mi) east of Darwin in the Northern Territory, Australia.

The peninsula is deeply indented with coves and bays, covers a land area of about 2,100 square kilometres (811 sq mi), and is virtually uninhabited with a population ranging from about 20 to 30 in five family outstations, but without any notable settlement or village. It is separated from Croker Island in the east by Bowen Strait, which is 2.5 kilometres (1.3 nmi; 1.6 mi) wide in the south and up to 7 kilometres (3.8 nmi; 4.3 mi) in the north, and 8.5 kilometres (4.6 nmi; 5.3 mi) long. In the west, it is separated from Melville Island by Dundas Strait. From Cape Don, the western point of the peninsula, to Soldier Point in the east of Melville Island, the distance is 28 kilometres (17 mi). In the north is the Arafura Sea, and in the south the Van Diemen Gulf. The highest elevation is Mount Roe in the south with an altitude of 160 metres (525 ft).

The peninsula was named after Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, later known as Leopold I of Belgium, by Phillip Parker King. The French spelling of the name has been retained over the years.

The Cobourg Peninsula has been the country of the Iwaidja and the associated Marrgu, Garig and Wurrugu Indigenous Australian people for at least 40,000 years.

European interest in the region began in the 1636 when the Dutch explorer Pieter Pieterszoon sailed along the peninsula's coastline, while Abel Tasman also surveyed the area in 1644. Dutch interest lapsed until 1705 when the Dutch East India Company ordered Captain Maarten van Delft to prepare a fleet of three vessels to make a closer inspection of the region. He remained for three months at the Tiwi Islands before surveying part of the peninsula. He named Maarten Van Delft Bay after himself, which is now known as Port Essington. For the remainder of the 1700s, foreign interest in the region came from the Makassans, who visited the bay annually from Sulawesi to harvest trepang, shark fin, wax and turtle shell. There was hostility between the Indigenous people and the Makassans with some being made to work on their boats and a number being taken to Makassar. The Indigenous people, however, acquired new technologies from the Macassans such as iron tools. In 1818, Captain Phillip Parker King in HMS Mermaid began a circumnavigation of Australia and made a detailed survey of the region. He named the Cobourg Peninsula and many of its geographic features such as Port Essington, Raffles Bay, Croker Island and Cape Don. He had a small skirmish with some Indigenous men after he appropriated a human skeleton from a burial site.

In the 1820s, the British Colonial Office became interested in establishing a settlement on Australia's northern coastline in the hope of both facilitating trade with Asia and discouraging the colonial aspirations of the French and the Dutch in the region. Melville Island was initially chosen as the site in 1824 and the short-lived military colony of Fort Dundas was founded there. This was subsequently abandoned in 1828 in favour of Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay on the Cobourg Peninsula. However, this too was abandoned in 1829. Despite these failures, the British persisted with their policy of establishing a colonial outpost in the region and in 1838 Port Essington was chosen as a site to create a settlement, and an outpost, officially named Victoria Settlement was established. This settlement consisting mostly of soldiers and their families continued for 11 years until it too was abandoned in 1849.

Data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).