13th March - 18th March Cairns to Cooktown

Days spent:
Cairns: 3
Cooktown: 3

We were lucky to find the worse effected areas of the flooding had gone down by the time we got Tully (see pics) which was on the way to Cairns. We eventually found ourselves in Cairns just after it had rained, so it was extremely humid and almost unbearable. We looked at a few campsites, one being by the Barron river near a lake, then one in the city. We chose the city one as it was walking distance to the town centre.

We spent the evening walking into town along the esplanade, and Vik saw the extent of changes to the city that had occurred since her last visit, 9 years ago. There was a new lagoon by the water's edge, which is a real benefit to the city as it doesn't have a beach.

From that evening, it rained almost continually for 2 days, stopping us from doing the simple tasks from cooking food outside, and it was even a nightmare to go to the toilet. We thought the campsite was going to flood, there was that much water. We even went to the extent of buying some umbrellas to see if that would stop it.

This made us decide that we should go to Cooktown first, and escape the rain for a while and postpone our rainforest tours.
We did however, manage to drive up to Kuranda,walk the rainforest boardwalk, and see the Barron falls at it's best, one evening. (See pics)

We drove the inland on the recently sealed road to Cooktown which took 4 hours. It firstly went through the rainforest, which was amazing, then into the outback where the cows roamed free, and in the road. There were no towns, but one little place called Lakeland. You really felt that you were in the middle of nowhere, as there weren't many cars.

Cooktown is known for two reasons, one, that Captain Cook first landed in Australia here, and two, for the gold rush of 1873. The town looks like a frontier town, with the old dilapidated old buildings of this time.

We arrived in Cooktown quite late and really hungry, so we treated ourselves to pie and chips in the local café. It was a Sunday, and as most of Australia is really quite religious, everything else was closed.

We walked along the Endeavour River to the sea where there were lots of people fishing (as usual), we were making our way back before the heavens opened and we were stuck under a tree for around 30 plus minutes. We did have our brollies with us, but these weren't much protection against the torrent of rain or the biting green tree ants which were all over us.

In the early evening we drove down to Finch Bay and sat on a rock watching a pod of Dolphins play in the surf.

We had an unexpected visitor that evening, we left the van for just a few minutes to come back to find the tiniest tree frog on our seat, no idea how he got there, but he was really cute, so we put him outside on a leaf. (See pics) These rainforest frogs are very common around these parts, and Carl found one in the sink of the toilets. (See main pic) Vik found a large White Lipped Tree Frog on the stair banister.

The next day we had planned to book a 4x4 car so we could spend the day seeing some other places, as the only sealed road was the one to Cairns. The man who hired us the Ute for the day was a Captain Cook re-enactment fanatic and was quite interested that Vik came from Whitby (as Captain Cook did). He asked us whether we wanted to join in his re-enactment that evening as they were doing a practice run.

We weren't going to pick up the Ute until 4pm so we some of our time at a café by the riverside with fresh muffins and tea. We saw a young Albatross, which some locals were feeding. It must have flown off course and ended up in Cooktown as it certainly wasn't a normal sight.

We picked up the Ute and drove to Quarantine Bay, which was suppose to be a nice little track to go down, but it had been sealed since the car hire guy had last been there, so no off road action for us then.

That evening , it seemed right to buy a few cans of Guinness, as it was St. Paddy's Day.

We had the car for a full day, and didn't need to hand it back until 10pm if we wanted. We made a plan of places to visit that was recommended by the guy. We first went up to the light house to get a view over Cooktown and the Endeavour river. (See pics).

The next place took us to a cold water creek where you may get a glimpse of a Duck- Billed Platypus. Not that we did that day, but the road was fun getting there.

After that we went to Mungumby Hidden Falls, but we couldn't find them. (Honest!)

One of the other places was to Trevethan Falls, which was a really rough track through creeks and grass. We came across a snake that had stopped in our track. It was really quite aggressive towards the car, surprisingly so. We edged the car slowly towards it, giving it every opportunity to get out of the road.

The waterfall was at full pelt and we couldn't even get close to it as the power of the water was spraying every thing in a 70 metre radius. We got absolutely soaked by standing close to it. We were suppose to swim there, as it was safe (no crocs), but you couldn't even get close to the water. It would have been really refreshing.

We returned to the Ute and had ate our sandwiches in the back where it was safe from snakes, while we dried off, which didn't take very long in the heat.

On the way back to Cooktown, we took a detour to Archer's Point, a favourite for fishing. On the way there we went through a creek which was about a metre deep. Great fun!

Archer's Point reminded us of Scotland with it's ruggedness. It was very peaceful and remote.

We dropped the van off around 6pm and had a swim in the campsite pool before going for fish and chips. It was our last night in Cooktown as we were driving back down and stopping off at Port Douglas before going back north to Cape Tribulation.