Day 7 - Cooktown

It was a lazy morning this morning, complete with "cafe style" coffees in the Roberts' caravan. Eventually we got on the road and travelled the very lazy 45 minutes to the Lions Den Hotel. This was a stop ear marked on the map from the first day we started planning the trip as this pub is in Nick's Great Aussie Pubs book.

We stopped for pizzas and beers for lunch and had alook around the beautiful old pub. All of the walls have been written on by travellers over the years, dating back to over 100 years ago. The oldest surviving writting on the walls are about 35 years old and you can still see them like it was yesterday. We also added our names to the wall for travellers in the future to see (right near the toilets, you can't miss it!) There was also plenty of historical items and pictures and yarns from the old days to occupy us for quite some time.

The last leg of the trip today was to Cooktown, just 15minutes down the road. We stopped at Black Mountain which is a mountain consisting of black granite rocks entirely. The mountain has many mystic qualities with planes and helicopters experiencing strange readings due to the magnetic fields around the mountain and cattle and stockmen disappearing when attempting to cross.

Cooktown is beautiful with many old buildings and we arrived on a lovely sunny afternoon. After a set up and quick swim we headed into town to check out some of the historical monuments and have a look around.

A hightlight was definitely Cooks lookout where Captain Cook climbed to check out his situation in 1770 after running aground on the reef. The view was spectacular.