In addition to providing support services at RAAF Tindal, it also has responsibilities for the three RAAF bare bases at RAAF Scherger near Weipa, Queensland, RAAF Curtin near Derby, Western Australia and RAAF Learmonth near Exmouth, Western Australia.
Part of the Combat Support Group, it is responsible for the provision of combat and base support services and maintains the RAAF's "bare bases" at Weipa, Exmouth and Derby in the northern part of Australia's airspace.
The present town was constructed mainly by Comalco (now called Rio Tinto Alcan), a large aluminium company, which began making trial shipments of bauxite to Japan in 1962.
Henry James Evans (1912–1990), Leading exploration geologist and discoverer of the Weipa bauxite deposits in 1955
The Jian Seng was an 80-metre tanker and ghost ship of unknown origin that was spotted drifting 180 km south-west of Weipa, Queensland in the Gulf of Carpentaria by an Australian Coastwatch aeroplane in 2006.
Formerly known as Weipa South, Napranum was established in 1898 by Moravian missionaries on behalf of the Presbyterian church.
The taxonomy of the Slender-billed Cuckoo-Dove is disputed, and some authorities split it into two species: M. amboinensis (Slender-billed Cuckoo-Dove) of eastern Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and M. phasianella (Brown Cuckoo-Dove) of eastern Australia from Weipa and Aurukun in the north to Bega in the south, and most inland at Atherton and Toowoomba.