The relevant SLA comprises the whole of the Aurukun Shire lease, an extensive area bounded on the west by the Gulf of Carpentaria, and lying between the Embley River north of Aurukun, and the South Kendall (Holroyd) River between Aurukun and Pormpuraaw. At various times when past censuses have been undertaken (e.g. 1986), significant numbers of Aboriginal people have been resident on outstations situated within the SLA. In August 2001 however, for a range of reasons including ceremonial restrictions on outstations and their access roads following deaths, none of the outstations were occupied. The conduct of the census therefore focused almost entirely on the township of Aurukun itself. However, a small number of people were resident in short term or semi-permanent dry season camps, most within a few kilometres of the township. Census collectors also made a special trip involving two days' driving to an Aboriginal-owned cattle station inland from Aurukun, on advice that several Aurukun people were resident there; in the event however, only two people were enumerated there. Quite a number of people had travelled overland to Pormpuraaw, a day's drive south of Aurukun, for a football carnival and had not returned to Aurukun as expected by the weekend before the census.

A combination of reasons including the complex geography of this region, its monsoonal climate, poor regional transport links, and a range of historical and sociocultural factors, have resulted in there being a relatively low permanent Aboriginal population movement away from or into the area (Martin & Taylor 1996; Taylor 1995), although some Aurukun Wik people now live more or less permanently in centres such as Coen, Napranum and Pormpuraaw on the fringes of Wik country, and others live further afield in centres such as Kowanyama and Mornington Island.

There is, however, very high internal mobility. Ethnographic surveys conducted in February and June 1986, showed that some 35 per cent of the total Aurukun Aboriginal population had shifted their place of residence over the four-month period. Examination of household composition in these surveys demonstrated a frequent pattern whereby residential cores remained relatively constant, while more mobile groups (such as children and young men) moved between households (Martin 1993: 274; Martin & Taylor 1996), a phenomenon reported elsewhere in Aboriginal Australia (Finlayson 1991; Smith 1991). Who was considered a 'visitor', and who a 'usual resident', could be just as much a function of the social and kin distance between core household residents and the individual concerned, as of whether he or she was normally resident there. In such circumstances, it is clear that the census distinction between 'usual residents' and 'visitors' can be problematic.

Moreover, daily social life was characterised by high levels of movement, with most individuals spending much of the day either in their various work places or in more-or-less public spaces outside dwellings involved in socialising, playing cards and other such activities. It was often the case that residents were not in their homes well into the night, and that many dwellings would not necessarily have anyone present for most of the day.