Hopevale

Hope Vale is a town within the Aboriginal Shire of Hope Vale and a locality split between the Aboriginal Shire of Hope Vale and the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. It is an Aboriginal community. At the, Hopevale had a population of 974 people.GeographyHope Vale is on Cape York Peninsula about 46km northwest of Cooktown by road, and about 10km off the Battlecamp Road that leads to Lakefield National Park and Laura.Early mission stationThe Cape Bedford Mission was established by Johann Flierl, a missionary of the Lutheran Church in 1886, with the settlement at Elim on the beach.Owing to fears that the German-influenced Aboriginal people might cooperate with the advancing Japanese in World War II, the total population of 286 was evacuated south to various communities by the military in May 1942. The German Lutheran missionaries were sent to internment camps. Most of the people were sent to Woorabinda, near Rockhampton, in Queensland, where a large number reportedly perished from disease and malnutrition. Hope Vale was re-established as a Lutheran mission in September 1949. Aboriginal people from the Hope Valley and Cape Bedford Missions settled there. A work crew was allowed to return in 1949 and the first families came home in 1950. Hopevale Post Office opened on 1 May 1965 and closed in 1990.