Captain Cook Memorial

First to come across Australia that is. Not counting the aborigines who were already here. Some think it was the Chinese. But we’re all pretty sure it was Dutchman William Janszoon on the Dufyjen in 1606. We learnt a lot about the Dutch explorers on our last trip along the coast of Western Australia. But Captain Cook really nailed it in 1770 right here in Cooktown. And what a great place to run aground! It’s a lovely town these days.

View of Cooktown and Endeavour River from Grassy Hill

But you can see it’s another overcast and rainy day. Here’s another view from the harbour……

Endeavour River

Definitely took my raincoat today. We did a full “towny” which included the Cooktown Botanic Gardens. I thought this might be a neat little community project about the size of a suburban block. But the gardens are an extensive range of the most amazing collection of plants, and trees, many being very mature. The gardens were started in the 1800s in an attempt to reduce the expanding market gardens of the chinese who were here in large numbers with thousands of others to find fortune in the Palmer Goldfields. How times change. I think a little more Bok Choy in our diets would be great!

Endeavour River

I took the pic (above) before the rain set in actually. And the one below of the  Sovereign Resort. Maybe one day I could stay somewhere nice like that!!

Sovereign Resort

After it rained a whole lot more and the clouds had cleared, we went and did something we never thought we’d do on this trip. We played golf. Yep. It’s a nice nine holes, quite protected from the wind. But then the wind dropped off about 5pm and the Mozzie Massacre was on again. I bailed on the seventh hole. My score was high enough.

Then overnight, Cooktown gave us its best dose of the “bullets”. This is the local speak for bursts of wind that come rushing through town like mini cyclones. Then they disappear and all goes quiet. Then it starts again. This goes on all night. I woke up exhausted for all the wrong reasons.

Remember the fuss and bother about building a road (the Bloomfield Track) through the Daintree rainforest back in the 80s? It was actually a plan to build a road that lasts, rather than the track that had been there since the 40s but was washed away many times, following the aborigines foot trail through to the northern end near Cooktown. There are some that frown upon the tree huggers of the world, but without them we would have lost many of our old growth forests such as areas like the Franklin River. But the Bloomfield Track was built anyway.

It is a beautiful way to travel through the rainforest and as there are no places to camp (or barely even stop) along the way on the 30km track, there is little opportunity to damage the forest. This is a stunning journey. The surface is good and the only reason you need 4WD is due to the steep hills. And they are steep. As we approach the first hill of any note, there is already a queue of about six vehicles waiting for a car and trailer that jack knifed on the ascent to be sorted out. This is a good time to have lunch! It took only about half an hour for at least 15 blokes to give their (15 different) opinions on how to right the trailer now sitting on its side half way up a hill with a 1 in 3 gradient. So much testosterone.

Towards the end of the track we stopped at Bloomfield Falls. It was a pretty impressive display even though it’s the (wet) dry season. I’d love to see it in March!

Bloomfield Falls

And before you know it, the rainforest is gone. We emerge on the northern end to blue sky (short lived) and stop at Black Mountain. This is an amazing sight. It looks like an enormous truck had tipped out an enormous amount of black rocks. But they are HUGE rocks. PS – they are actually brown, but they look black due to a lichen that grows on them.

Black Mountain

The World Heritage listed Daintree Rainforest is across the aptly named Daintree River. We take the ferry across and find our way to a camping ground at Cape Kimberley.

Crossing the Daintree River

The camping ground pretty run down and still not recovered from Cyclone Ita, but the beach is beautiful and there’s only about six other groups camped here. We camp just behind the palm trees and can hear the ocean all night.

The kicking of the footy occurs absolutely everywhere, including Cape Kimberley beach

And this next pic is for Alison, because I know she’ll appreciate the art of the crabs at Cape Kimberley.

Cape Kimberley

The boys plan to paddle out to Snapper Island in the morning and do some snorkelling on the small reef around the island. But the plan is foiled when the rain comes down and the wind blows up to 30km/h.

Everyone keeps telling us it shouldn’t still be raining up here, but that’s not news to us. It’s getting a bit annoying.

I have never been to Cape Tribulation but I’ve always had a vision of a small jetty bathed in sunshine adjoining a bustling hub of trendy cafes and dive shops offering scuba courses and tourist options aplenty and someone selling beautiful handcrafted chopping boards. So I was somewhat underwhelmed to find that Cape Tribulation is a small cape, as capes go, and there is no actual town. It’s dark here and the multitude of accommodation options are all hidden in the thick rainforest, spread along 40-50km of road that meanders along the coast. You’re not really sure if you’ve arrived. And the mizzle keeps coming. Back in Cairns, you can take a full days trip out to the reef for snorkelling and scuba trips but we decided to take one of the trips here in Cape Tribulation which has only small groups and is a half day. But…….when we roll in to book it, they have nothing available for two days – and we’ll be gone by then.They promote these trips far and wide.

Maybe this was meant to be. It’s still windy out there, and we did some amazing snorkelling on the Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia. Que sera.

We did some discovering in the rainforest though. There are a few great boardwalks through the trees and mangroves. Below is one of the huge basket ferns growing on a tree. It must have been over a metre across.

Enormous basket fern

We did visit the actual Cape Tribulation beach where poor old Captain Cook’s tribulations started. My tribulations have started too. Right there under the mangroves at low tide (what was I thinking?) it was the Mozzie Massacre of the Rainforest. This will be the way for me for the next couple of weeks. I have defences on this trip – unlike the Massacre I endured at East Alligator River in 2013.

The cane fields around Cairns are everywhere, up to maybe 3m high with those fluffy bits in bloom on some crops. We heard that the cane railways are in use and to watch out for them at road crossings. Cane trains are to Cairns what the iron ore trains are to the Pilbara. Sort of. I was hoping to see one chugging along laden with freshly harvested sugar cane, but we didn’t. Maybe on our way back down south.

No fluffy tops on this crop.

Heading out of Cairns, through all the new subdivisions, the built up areas finally start to disappear. Heading off the highway to the coast, we stopped in at Palm Cove. I guess it was probably once a normal sort of residential beach side town, just out of the Big Smoke. But now it is cheek to jowl resorts all along the beach front, plus the second row too. But the nice thing was that it has a lovely relaxed feel about it and none of the glitz of similar Queensland beaches. There is also a distinct lack of parking for cars with trailers (us), so we moved on to Port Douglas. I’m sure this is a spectacular drive along the coast, with the towering rainforest mountain sides sliding down to the water in good weather. But we just got drizzle and mist (mizzle) and no sunshine.

The sun came out in Port Douglas! Yay!

Famous Four Mile Beach at Port Douglas

I’ve decided I should take a holiday up here with some friends and play golf (after I have learnt how) on the spectacular course here, eat out every night at swish restaurants and lie by the pool the rest of the time. For a month.

But for now, Port Douglas isn’t really our kind of camping town.

How could I forget to post this!!

Life’s good in a tank.