The Yintyingka, now extinct, were an Indigenous Australian people of central and eastern Cape York Peninsula.
The Yintyingka broke down into two distinct blocks, those clan groups, often referred to as Sandbeach people, with a maritime economy living off coastal estates on the plains and savannahs near or along the eastern shores of the Cape York Peninsula, and inland clans, across the Great Dividing Range, constituted by the Ayapathu, centering around the headwaters of the Lukin and Holroyd rivers, whose economy was based on the hinterland's riverine ecology.
[2] The traditional tribal areas of the coast were deeply affected by the rapid development of the beche-de-mer and pearling industries after the 1860s, when men, women and children from the tribe were recruited to work on the luggers that plied the waters offshore.
In the 1880s, a gold boom, pastoralist expansion and the arrival of many labourers to build the Cape York Peninsula telegraph line, also contributed to a disintegrating impact.
The first pastoralists, the Massey brothers, Glen Harry and Charlie, had repeated clashes with the indigenous estate owners, whom they regarded as pilferers of the cattle stock they had introduced in the region.