Sep 2008

After the horrendous introduction to the weather yesterday, I adjusted somewhat and settled in to enjoying all that Cooktown has to offer. We wandered up and down the main street. Took in the views from the magnificent lookout with 360o views out the sea and down the inlet and across town. What a magnificent location. You will notice from the pics the other side of the inlet is uninhabited and pristine. Its actually all Aboriginal land and just looks gorgeous. If you look hard at the sign with our van in the background, you can see the transcripts from Cook’s diary relating to his visit to the lookout area. It was a horrendous trip up for the poor Van to do. Steve stalled it on a hairpin bend and couldn’t get it going. I took over and got us up the hill. I think residents of this hills must go through a gearbox a year trying to get up and down to their house. But it was worth the trip!

We then visited the old Bank which houses the Historical Societies collection, which was fantastic. There was so much history including the gold boom that saw up to 22,000 Chinese “arrive” to make their fortune. From what we could gather, those that setup provisioning shops in the boom towns usually made more money than the poor miners. Some made money, but more often than not, most didn’t. Like all the mining appears to have been short lived here in the mining towns we visited, and we’ve seen yet another railway to no where get built to help provision the boom.

Cooktown is home to a population of just 2,000. It looks like the most idealic spot to live, only if you can handle the weather. Properties aren’t that cheap though. Anything with a view was around $1.3m+ with a nice pole home or such type of house.

We then went out to the Botanical Gardens via the beach. The beach was beautiful and we found this cute little 60’s number on the beach. In fact they had the entire beach to themselves. What a place!

The botanical gardens had some amazing trees. Its even more surprising that its located right on the beach, so in spite of all the salt about the place, the plants were thriving. There had been a recent improvement of a lovely large new building incorporating a rainforest exhibition, tourist info and café. Enjoyed a lovely homemade lemonade and ginger refreshment before taking a lap around the gardens. I’ve never seen so many gingers – and in flower.

We then took in the James Cook Museum. It was located in a stunning National Trust building and the flashest building left in town. It was previously a catholic school, but during a 1940s cyclone coupled with the war, the nuns were evacuated and never returned. The place was left to fall apart. The National Trust took it over in the 70s and are still applying for grants to complete all their renovations. The best part was the incredibly modern extensions made to the rear to incorporate the recently found Endeavour anchor and cannon. These spent many years in deoxidation processes before being able to be displayed. It was a very popular and well done museum.

We decided to celebrate our last night in our most North Eastern part of the coast by enjoying a lovely meal at the 1770 Restaurant located right in the harbour. I had the most amazing Terriyaki Wagyu Beef which was just stunning and Steve enjoyed a Baby Squid Gnocchi. Even Midget was allowed to stay under our table. Its great, being outside the big cities we’ve found most places to be quite dog friendly. It seems its just Noosa that doesn’t like dogs. In fact most places we’ve been has had many a happy pooch off the lead and running round saying hi to all and sundry it cares to pass.

We drove out of town and slept on the banks of the Barron River.

Well the drive was really quite interesting. I guess we were both expecting the lush tropical stuff to start once entering the Cape. We couldn’t have been further from reality. The tropical palm tree look we were expecting to see just isn’t the case. I am really blown away. Apart from the fact that Climate Change is alive and well up here. Its as dry as dry can be. There have also been lots of fires that we’ve seen on the drive up.

Stopped off at Blackrock Mountain on the way through. These were originally old volcanoes that erupted and as the waste built up around them, they became smaller and smaller. As the magnum set and cracked in the cooler air outside, the water eventually got in through the cracks causing erosion and then they have eventually turned into rocks and the sand had fallen through the cracks causing the collapsed look on top.

It was mentioned on the signs that several people have disappeared and have never been seen of again. It’s an eerie place. We took off pretty quickly.

Arrived in Cooktown and were hit with a blanket of humidity. What a shock. It was hot and humid all at once. What a cute little spot. There is a lovely inlet that makes for an nice boat landing, I guess hence Cooks landing here in 1770. They have a nice little harbour and a few lovely heritage buildings. Being Sunday nothing much was open. Ended up in a caravan park, and paid for our first powered site so we could put the airconditioner on. I had a swim and hid in the van. Steve went fishing. Didn’t get much sleep. It was hard to regulate the AC temperature properly so ended up turning off the AC. It was weird as we’re so used to free camping, it was strange listening to the guy in the campsite next to us snoring. Cant wait to be on our own again. @ $26/night it was the most expensive park we’d been in.

Locals have said the weather is better in Cooktown than Cairns as they get the sea breezes that Cairns misses out on. They did get lots of wind. It certainly cools things down no end when you get a breeze.

As the dense rainforest slowly changes into rainforest grassland, and we leave the mountains behind, we really start to notice the change in the scenery. We were expecting a bit more from Atherton. We’d heard it was great, but perhaps they were talking of the surrounding hills and the tablelands. We then moved on to Mareeba and this wasn’t much more exciting. We noticed the weather starting to get more and more humid.

Decided to head on out to Mount Molloy. The population is 300 so not a big place, but really cute. It is almost just the turn off to either the Cape or the coast and the Daintree. We decided to stop here for the night. It was a cute little town. Stunning views over the ranges and the obligatory two storey weatherboard hotel with XXXX signs plastered all over them, a cute little post office and another Pizza shop that supposedly does the best burgers this side of Townsville.

Found a lovely little stop (out of our book Camps 4) just 1km past the town. It was situated on a creek in thick forest with large trees and toilets and cold showers. All they asked for was a small donation to stay. Would recommend that to anyone passing.

Today we got up early to the lovely mountain light and an early breakfast, then a paddle around the lake. Steve went on further and returned with Midget to sit under the awning and read some more of my book – Kings in Grass Castles by Mary Durack.

What a peaceful spot. Nothing to listen to except the birds in the trees. It was so relaxing. We finally had to drag ourselves away after a peaceful lunch on the water’s edge.

[the view from our van out across the water - simply heaven!]

Headed back into town for supplies for the next few days and hit the road. We were quite taken by the beauty of the place, and the very affordable lifestyle blocks available. Its only just over an hour to Cairns, so you can get out easily when you need to.

Anyway we headed off into the sunset. Arriving after many windy roads up and down the side of the tableland mountains and ended up in a State Forrest just outside of Atherton.

Took a lovely rainforest walk at dusk getting home just after dark. What a very beautiful place. Shame about all the dairy farms though. They’ve obliterated all the trees in sight.

Got an early start mainly due to the cold! It was our first cool night since leaving Gascoyne coast in WA. We slept on a bank on the side of the road, and woke up in the morning to find a ute parked behind us. They had 4 or 5 dogs running around having a early morning walk before going off pig shooting. We worked it out as all the dogs were eventually wearing a strange padded jacket. It was strange because it was short and seemed to only protect their neck and chest below. Steve asked someone along the way and our suspicions were confirmed. We have seen a fair few pigs dead on the side of the road since entering QLD and for that matter I think the more remote parts of NT too. We did actually see our first live one only a few days ago fossicking on the side of the road. It ran off when we passed.

Innot Hot Springs sort of reminded me of the Katoomba area around the Blue Mountains. A sort of place stuck in a time warp from the 60s. The signs were so old they were mostly unreadable, and the buildings and accommodation were still painted their sad and tired old 60s colours. You could pay to take in the springs in pools in the caravan park, but the backpackers told us you only had to walk down to the rivers edge and it was hot just 100m from where we’d parked. We strolled down, and of course Midget jumped straight in. She chose the hottest part to jump into and squealed and jumped straight out. It was a funny sight! She was strolling up and down in the stream looking for the few fish that were living in the cooler part of the water. You could see the steam coming off it and it was even hot in the sands at the water’s edge in the hotter parts. Steve stepped into a few that were too hot to handle and he danced his way further down away from what appeared to be the main spring.

We then headed out further down the road towards Ravenshoe and saw a sign to Millstream Falls National Park. We drove in and had the carpark to ourselves, so we wandered down the magnificent sealed path 340m to the falls lookout. We were well and truly into the forest now. The scenery was breathtaking. The views were amazing!

We then headed further up the road to Ravenshoe. What a cute little town. Full of great old timber houses, two timber two storey pubs dating from 1900 – 1920s and the traditional wide main street manicured with annuals and obviously well cared for.

We checked out the real estate in the windows of the shops. The places were very well priced. There were many average looking houses around the town on 3-5 acres for around $300-$350k. We saw 115 acres that backed onto the river we’d just visited for $500k with sheds, solar power and batteries and more. The weird part is that its in the tropics but its 900m above sea level. So it gets down to -7 in winter and we did hear in the low 40s in summer. But as its mostly all part of a world heritage area, its well protected from over farming and over development. I’ve never seen so many tress as we have since driving in from Undara (turning onto the Kennedy Highway). Its truly a magical place. A lady we met in the street said they’d moved up from Surfers Paradise to retire here. They had 5 acres about 14kms north of Ravenshoe. She said they were only 120kms from Cairns where her husband was now commuting to work almost every day. She said everything is really quite close, which it is appearing to be now we’re closer to the coast.

Steve then suggested we head on out to Tully Falls. Its only 24kms on sealed roads from town. We were then going back into town as they had a campsite right in the centre of town located at the railway for a small donation. Since the town was so nice we thought that this was a great town to support. So we headed off to the falls. We had a fit of athleticism and Steve went for an hours run, and I got out the skipping rope and did some abs for a while (yesterday). Steve could hardly walk today, and was finding the walk difficult and couldn’t do the 2kms to the lake, so I finished on my own. The falls were gorgeous. Well most of the falls weren’t working as they dammed up further to create a hydroelectric scheme. Apparently it generates enough electricity for the northern end of QLD so is quite efficient.

We then headed further down the river to Lake Koombooloomba, where the hydro dam is located. Unbeknownst to us, we stumbled into a great campground. There were people with dogs around – even more strange for QLD the dog unfriendly state. We had to stop and ask, and were told that it was State Forrest not National Park, and therefore camping and dogs are permitted. We were instructed that a great place to camp and park was just over the ridge down a little lane way. We had to snap a branch off a tree to get in, but boy was it worth it! We had the lake’s entrance to ourselves! What a view to wake up to in the morning! We pulled the kayaks down immediately and went to meet the neighbours.

Interesting visitors. Just a few people know about the wonder of this place. They have travelled from Cooktown, Brisbane and as far south as the lakes in NSW.

We returned to the van to watch the mist come over the hilltop and over the trees to land on the lake for the evening. We relaxed in the peace and quiet of our marvellous spot for the night!