Coen

Where’s that!? Yeah, that’s what I said when I found out I was going to be spending a week there.

Coen is a small (and I mean small!) inland town on the Cape York Peninsula in far north Queensland. It boasts a population of approximately 270 people, a pub, a motel, two grocery stores and a fuel pump.

Gold was discovered on the Coen River in 1876. Coen came into being first as a small fort built by gold miners and prospectors in May 1877 but this first gold rush quickly came to an end, and the settlement did not recover until 1883. It became a centre for several small goldmines in the region but, in 1893, the rich Great Northern mine boomed and the town became a more substantial place (from Wiki)

The purpose of my visit to Coen was the same as Cooktown. I spent the 4 days there doing OH&S audits of premises and meeting with the Kalan and Lama Lama Rangers and talking to them about OH&S.

Apart from that, I didn’t really do much else. I spent my evenings in a luxurious donga and most of the day looking out for snakes (coz there were plenty) and trying to avoid the green frogs in the toilet.