Yuwi

The Yuwi, or Yuwibara, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Queensland coast, whose country centred on the site of Mackay and ran from St Helens to Cape Palmerston and inland to the Connors Range. Of the six peoples around Mackay, the Yuwi were the dominant group. Their Yuwi language was a Biri dialect of the Pama-Nyungan family.

They lived by hunting and gathering: men took sea turtles and dugong off Cape Hillsborough while women hunted freshwater turtles, and stone fish traps were built across the shoreline. At Cape Hillsborough boys were initiated into manhood, the dead were buried, and shell middens accumulated over centuries; canoes carried trade from there to the Ngaro of the Whitsunday Islands.

On 1 June 1770 James Cook's Endeavour sailed this coast, naming Cape Palmerston, Slade Point and Cape Hillsborough, while Joseph Banks noted people on the shore.