Cooktown

Captain Cook’s Landing Point & Mt Carbine

Getting up in the morning we had a nice cooked breakfast before checking out the river next to the campsite before packing up and heading for Cooktown, the place where Captain Cook first landed in Australia on the Endeavour.

Turning out onto the road from The Lion’s Den we got our first siting of live Wallaby’s in the wild that were not squished in the road, which was a nice start to the day.

A 20km drive later and we found ourselves arriving in Cooktown and parked up.  The first thing we did was visit the Captain Cook museum that housed the original anchor and one of the cannon’s from The Endeavour.  It was very interesting as it had plenty of stuff to read, most notably some of Captain Cook’s diaries which mentioned the first meetings with the indigenous people and their first sitings of kangaroos (they likened them to greyhounds)

We wandered around the museum for about an hour then headed for the harbour area where Captain Cook first moored his boat.  There was a nice little park area  that ran alongside the harbour where we found a statue of Captain Cook and took some photo’s.

After wandering around the harbour for a short while we stumbled across an electrical shop where we picked up a fan for Muriel to address the heat problem at night.  We then went across the road to a traditional colonial pub where we stopped for a cold schooner.

Feeling suitably refreshed we then headed in search of Cook Hill, where Captain Cook ventured up so he could see the safe passage for The Endeavour through the local water channels.  Poor Muriel struggled up the hill and then we got out and had a great view over Cooktown and the harbour.

Coming down the hill again we then stopped off to get some fuel and restock our fridge at a local supermarket before heading back on the road again.

Our plan was to travel back through the Daintree national park to find a halfway point for our next destination, so again we had a pretty long drive ahead of us, stopping briefly at a viewpoint for a rest where we had a fantastic panoramic view over the land.

Again we had around a 200km drive on endless roads that were very sparse of traffic and on our new campsite phone app we headed for a campsite at Mt Carbine which was a good stop off point

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Arriving at the campsite we checked in and found a lovely old couple that ran it and the gentleman showed us to our plot, here we learnt that you parked next to the concrete slab and not on it (so you could set your tables & chairs on a flat surface ….doh!).  He also told us that he did talks down by the reception about the area and history every afternoon if we wanted to come along.

The site itself was right in the mountains and had a nice orchard feel about it with pretty pink parrots flying all around.  Also there was a lot of room for everyone and the bathroom block was immaculately kept. So far this is our favourite camp site to date.

Whilst washing up after dinner I got chatting to some fellow campers who were drinking around an open fire I asked if it was OK to join them, which they said we were more than welcome.  So washing done and put away we grabbed a bottle of red wine and joined three couple round the fire for the rest of the night, gassing away and Shell and I getting taught all the Aussie slang.

We had a really nice night chatting away in front of the fire and under the stars until finally our wine ran out at which point we thought we should turn in for the night.