Lion's Den

One Days Journey Towards Cooktown

Before breakfast we decided on going on one of the rain forest walks right next to our camping spot.  We walked around in the forest for a bit hoping or not to catch sight of a Cassowary (although we had no idea what to do if we came face to face with one!).  There were a lot our unusual bird calls and quite a few mosquito’s on our walk but no sightings of a big bird or any other notable wildlife.

After breakfast and packing up the van we headed to reception where at ten o’clock we were told that the owner was going to do a feeding run of his wildlife.

He promptly turned up and along with a few other visitors he first of all took us to the croc area where he showed us a couple of smaller rescued croc’s before getting in a large cage with a large pond.  Here he took a pole with some meat dangling from it and began a cat and mouse game with a massive croc, fortunately he could gauge just how far the croc could launch itself to, which was good as he only had a new apprentice with a cattle prod to help him if he did get caught.  It was quite amazing to see how explosive and fast these beast are in real life (apparently Aussie Salt Water Croc are the most dangerous and aggressive in the world!).

Having survived the croc cage he then led us to the wallaby enclosure, which wasn’t a cage as they could go into the forest as far as they wanted, but chose to come back here to be fed.  Most of them were rescue animals that had been rbought here and we were given the opportunity to hand feed them with sweet potato, which was great as it was the first wallabies we had seen on our trip so far.

After the feeding session we then headed off for our next destination of Cooktown, unfortunately there was a short cut but it required 4x4 capabilities that Muriel does not possess.  So going back, slowly, the way we came we stopped off at a local viewpoint over the whole of  the Daintree area, we headed back to the ferry to take us back over the river.

We now had a long drive, 3 to 4 hours, through the Daintree national park to head for the night at a place just before Cooktown, the Lion’s Den Pub.

The journey involved travelling through some fantastic country including mountains (sorry Muriel), rivers, creeks and long roads that went on for as far as the eye could see.  The only disappointing thing was we were hoping to see kangaroo’s along the way, unfortunately the only ones we saw were roadkill and a lot of it!!

About 2 - 300km later we eventually made it to the Lion’s Den pub which is an iconic Aussie Pub/camp ground that dates back to 1875.  Again the campsite was a bit more basic with our site being little more than a field, we found our plot was on a slope if we wanted to be able to plug in the electric.  Setting up we realised that blood was going to run to either our head or feet during the night, but thankfully a fellow camper and onlooker came over and helpfully offer to lend us some tire ramps so we could level Muriel up, which was great.

Sitting around enjoying the weather and a cold cider we were then visited by the resident Kookaburra’s  who were busy feeding and singing, which gave us a chance to see them close up.

In the evening we went to check out the famous pub and as it had mentioned in the guide book it had quite a few colourful local Aussie characters sat around the bar.  We stayed there for a couple of cold ‘stubbies’ whilst people watching, then we thought we would eat there rather than do a camp cook.  We were quite proud of ourselves as this was the first time we had eaten out for over two weeks, but although the food was OK  and fairly cheap we concluded that our camp cooking was better!!

A couple more beers and then we headed back to the van and cracked open a bottle of red before turning in for the night.