Travelling through inland Australia: Days 21 - 23 Cooktown and Ellis Beach

First, congratulations Rowena, you were the first to solve the island question. The answer was, and still is, Double Island.

The blog has been quiet recently because we took a holiday from our holiday and drove up to Cooktown, about 300 kms from Ellis Beach by road, and stayed overnight.

We are really glad we went up there. We drove through many different landscapes and constantly changing scenery. From rainforest fringed beaches, flat sugar cane country, mountainous country with tight, twisting roads, through scrub savannah lands then back to the sea.

Cooktown itself is an amazing place. Today, a small country town with a population of about 2000 people, it started life in the mid 1870's as the supply port for the Palmer River gold fields where gold was discovered in 1873. However, this was not the first time this part of the world entered the history of european settlement of Australia. It was on this spot that Captain Cook beached the "Endeavour" in order to repair it after bumping into the Great Barrier Reef. The site where the ship was beached and the hill that Cook and Co climbed to try and work out a course out of the reef are all within the town and are easily accessible. After visiting these sites you realise that you have established a real connection with Cook and his explorers, much more so that by looking at Cook artifacts in museums.

Cooktown, and in particular, Grassy Hill, was also the first place that europeans encountered that strange animal, the kangaroo. After staying in the area for about 7 weeks, Cook's party got to know some of the members of the local Guugu Yimithirr people and learned a few words of their language, one of which was gangurru. Cook recorded this as Kangaroo. So this one word of the local people's language is now an integral part of global english.

The town has enjoyed mixed fortunes since its founding. After the end of the gold rush its population fell. It was devastated twice by cyclones and once by a disastrous fire. It also suffered from various economic downturns including the 1930's depression. Now it is thriving on a growing tourist interest in this part of Australia.

We visited the town museum and paid our $5.00 to view its exhibits. This was money well spent. The museum should be visited by anyone coming to Cooktown. It is only when you have a look at these exhibits that you can come to an understanding of just how isolated Cooktown used to be and what life was like for people living here. The town was only connected by road to Cairns in 1961 and that was only an unsealed development road that provided only minimal and very basic contact. It was only in 2006 that the present all weather Mulligan Highway was opened. Judging by the height of the flood markers alongside some parts of this road, there must be times when even this very good road is closed by floods.

While the town has the look and feel of any number of small Australian country towns, we discovered that, at the Sovereign Resort at least, the food is anything but small town. We enjoyed two very tasty meals here and some great coffee. We stayed here overnight and enjoyed the experience of living in a space that was considerably bigger than a 17 by 8 ft box and which had its own bathroom!

One highlight of the trip home was a photo stop at the intriguing Black Mountain. This looks exactly like a gigantic pile of black rock that had been dumped here by an even more gigantic tip truck. How it came to be formed and the danger it can present to unwary explorers can be found by looking up Black Mountains Cooktown on your favorite browser.

On the way back, we called into Port Douglas for a bite to eat. Nothing much has changed here since our last visit. Still the same main street full of touristy type shops, pubs and food outlets and expensive boats in the marina.

Today, has been a restful day spent doing nothing more than the washing and walking on the beach. The weather over the last two days has been somewhat cloudy and a little cool. However, things fined up this afternoon and we were able to eat our evening meal alfresco.

Now, before you look at the rest of the photos, you must identify the bird in this photo.

He and his mate are residents of the caravan park and are more than a little noisy at night.

OK now that you have found out the answer you can look at the other pictures.

Main street Cooktown

Honestly, Bev ate this bucket of prawns for her lunch!

The musical ship, Cooktown

Endeavour River, Cooktown

Milbi Wall. Made by aboriginal artists. These
tiles tell the history of Cooktown from an aboriginal
perspective from the creation of the Endeavour
River to the present day.