- AU QU
- Corporate body
- 1891-
The Mapoon Mission commenced on 28 November 1891 on the traditional lands of the Tjungundji people. Initially called Batavia River Mission and founded by Moravian missionaries, James Gibson Ward and Reverend John Nicholas Hey, who were said to have brought several South Sea Islander men to Mapoon to assist them. Many children from the Gulf of Carpentaria region where forcibly removed to Mapoon when the mission became an Industrial School under the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act (1865) (Qld) in 1901. Outstations to the south of Mapoon were established in the early 1900s. The conditions at Mapoon were very poor during the management by the Presbyterian Church. On 1 January 2005 the Mapoon Aboriginal Council became the Mapoon Aboriginal Shire Council.