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Cooktown Mission Strip and Eight Mile Mission Site
Cooktown Airport
Development of the Cooktown Mission Strip, as it became known, began in June 1942 with about 250 Civil Construction Corps (CCC) workers.
The new and larger Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) airfield was intended to replace the older and smaller Cooktown Civil 'Drome, nearer town, which was flood-prone and had reached its operational capacity with the increasing number of aircraft staging through Cooktown and requiring refuelling.
Place information
Location
Place type
Airfield
History
After Japan entered the war, concerns regarding the loyalties of Aboriginal people led to claims by white Australians that Aborigines in north Australia would assist the Japanese. Cape Bedford mission near Cooktown was run by George Schwarz, a German-born Lutheran pastor who had arrived at the mission in 1887. By the early 1940s the mission station was located at Spring Hill on the Endeavour River. Schwarz and his wife owned a farm nearby at a place known as the Eight Mile. There he produced food for the mission population assisted by the Aboriginal men.
As Schwarz was of German descent, Army...
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