Our day to Cooktown.....

Forgot to mention yesterday, that we had a friend sleep with us last night....well up in the tree next to us....the peacock flew up the tree about 7 metres or so and slept there for the night.  Every now and then he would let us know that he was there calling out to the others, but most of the night was quiet until around 4'ish.  Here he is up the tree....

 
We left around 8am this morning and went to the Cape Tribulation Ferry where we were ferried over the Daintree River so we could head up to Cooktown.

 

On the way up, we stopped at Alexandra Lookout and took in the view of the Daintree River meeting up with the Coral Sea in the background.

 

We travelled up the Bloomfield track after passing a lot of Retreats and Resorts in the Daintree National Park area. The track is for 4WD only and we encountered some shallow water crossings and quite steep hillclimbs (and descents) along the way.  It was quite windy and I got a bit of travel sickness - we stopped at a little town called Rossville for a cuppa and a break.  Not far from there we got on to bitumen for the majority of the trip to Cooktown which is about 100kms from Wonga. 

We got to a Black Mountain Lookout which showed us a very small portion of Black Mountain which is mostly made up of thousands of rocks - never seen anything like.  It looks like a dump truck (actually lots of dump trucks) have put them there!

It took us just on 3 hours to get to Cooktown.  It is a very historic town outlining the story of Captain James Cook and the Endeavour's arrival.    There are several monuments and memorials throughout the town dedicated to Captain Cook.  The first place we visited was Grassy Hill which is where the lighthouse is located.  It was last manned in 1918 which is the year the lighthouse keeper died.  The State Government decided to decommission the lighthouse in 1987 - amid public outcry by the residents of Cooktown, the lighthouse and the area around it was sold to the Cooktown residents for $100.  It is only a small lighthouse compared with others we have seen - it is about 7m high.

 The views from Grassy Hill were amazing - the Coral Sea was so blue and we saw the sandbank system that Captain Cook was very concerned about at the time of his landing - he was concerned that he wasn't going to get out of there!!

We took lunch with us and went to the local park on the Esplanade which had quite a few monuments there....

 

This cannon was requested by the people of Cooktown as they were concerned about the Russians invading them.

 

This is a "replica" of the Endeavour and has various musical "instruments" on board for kids (and adults) to play with.

 Captain James Cook

 James Cook Museum

 

A fellow that we met at Kuranda suggested that we call in to the Lions Den Hotel for a look. Every inch of wall space and anything that is hanging about  on the rafters has been signed by visitors to the Pub.

 



 

 

 

They use anything at Rossville as a letter box - this is a mower grass catcher.  We also saw a micro-wave as a letter box but couldn't find it on the way back to take a photo.  These country folk make the most of any opportunity!

 

 

We got on to the Cape Tribulation Ferry just after 6pm as the sun was setting.  Still not sighting of any crocs though.

All in all a big day.  We head off for Cairns tomorrow - not quite sure of what we will do there at this stage - still deciding....but we will call in and have a look at Port Douglas on the way down and see how the other half lives!!

Time for a shower and bed.....chat tomorrow.