2010/10 Australia trip - Cooktown |
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Cooktown only recently got its blacktop access from the south so it’s quite new to the mass tourism market, and our first 
reaction was that it’s a quirky little historic town, with some really nice spots and attractive buildings, including this bank.
We walked the “Prom”, ever mindful that there are many crocs lurking in the waters there, the estuary of the Endeavour River. This was where back in 1770 Captain Cook’s ship the Endeavour had to be beached for repairs after it had struck one of the many reefs around Cape Tribulation. There was an assortment of monuments to Cook along our walk.
Sandie finally got her barramundi from the Gill’d and Gutt’d takeout on the wharf. It was cool and windy so we sat in the Troopie looking out over the water and munching our “barra and chips”, all wrapped in paper of course.
The first campground we looked at turned out to be across the road from a pub that was already noisy in mid afternoon, so we ended up at the Peninsula campground on Alligator Creek. The facilities were nice enough but the lady in charge seemed to be a bit odd; she was surprised to find campers coming in just before dark and she was wearing just a towel.
The creek flows through the campground and is one of many Alligator Creeks in Australia. The misnaming of the crocodiles as alligators seems to have been the responsibility of explorer Philip Parker King, who used the name in lots of places in the north.
It was a cool and windy evening but peaceful until a crowd of explorers staggered back from the pub. One of them had an amazingly loud voice. Even after the drunks had been lured over to the far side of the campground by a party of girls, we could still hear him singing.
Monday October 18th
Just in case we might have fallen asleep, he was on his cell phone at full volume at 6am, reporting on the success of their expedition. You’ve got to admire someone who can be equally obnoxious, drunk or sober, and at any time of the day.
As we’d planned, it was a clean-up day for us, primarily for the fridge, but also for the Troopie’s windows and lights. We also went shopping for food and wine and heard
”Sorry sir, the rum and beer are OK but we can’t sell you a cask of wine before 6pm.”
“What time do you close?”
“6pm, but we’re open late on Thursdays.”
This was Monday, but at least it explained why they had such a miserable selection of wine! It didn’t explain however why Cooktown had such a strange byelaw, as I think they could sell bottles of wine, but we didn’t want any more glass.
We stopped at the library for Internet access, free for seniors, and checked out the Brisbane floods. These seemed to be localized, and we were at least a week away from there, so we had plenty of time to plan a detour if needed.
We went to the Visitors’ Centre, which was located in the Botanical Gardens, next door to an outdoor café. The café did Devon Teas, though they didn’t call them that. I ordered what I thought was chili soup with bread only to be served a pile of fat chips with a chili dip. We should have taken language lessons before we came.
The gardens are really attractive, started in the 1880s back when Cooktown was booming with gold rush money, and then neglected for decades while the town was in the dumps, only to be reborn as more tourists recently began to reach 
the town. They have some magnificent paperbark trees and all kinds of palms and understory, and abundant butterflies and lizards.
We found a trail that led down to Finch Beach, where our Alligator Creek met the ocean. A sign warned that a croc had been recently sighted there, so we didn’t go
for a paddle. The rocks were all massive granite so apart from the vegetation it looked a bit like Victoria’s Wilson’s Prom. We extended the walk over to Cherry Tree Bay where we saw this brush turkey happily chomping into a broken coconut.
We also found this strange tree, looking just like one of the ents (walking trees) in Lord of the Rings. This lizard hitchhiked on Sandie’s foot. After walking through some shrubs and being attacked by green ants again, we discovered the problem: the ants glue leaves together to 
make a nest and then defend it against anyone that shakes their shrub.