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We packed up a very wet camper trailer in the rain on Tuesday morning and headed up to Port Douglas. We stopped briefly at Pebbly Beach, which is appropriately named with millions of smooth pebbles with varying colours. At Port Douglas we drove up to the town lookout and then passed all the resorts again on our way out with just a small tinge of envy, given that it was still raining and we had a soggy tent to look forward to. Oh, the joys of camping! We continued up to Mossman Gorge in Daintree National Park. We walked down to the Mossman River and completed the short River Circuit Track, but the longer Rainforest Circuit Track was closed. It had stopped raining by now although it still looked threatening, so we probably wouldn't have done this walk anyway. We headed up to Daintree Village and found a sheltered picnic table for lunch.
After crossing the Daintree River on the ferry, we headed out to Cow Bay Beach, mainly because this is one destination where the family visited in the book “Are We There Yet” by Alison Lester, which Thomas got as present on his 5th birthday. On our trip,
Speed hump sign
Turtles, what turtles?we've visited quite a few of the same locations as the family from this book. We enjoyed the drive into Cow Bay as most of the speed humps were accompanied by an 'artistically enhanced' sigh - see the photo. Unfortunately it was very windy and it began to rain again, so we didn't spend much time at Cow Bay Beach. We continued north and not far from the junction, spotted a cassowary near the turn-off to the Daintree Ice Cream Company. If it wasn't for the cassowary, we would have kept driving north, but seeing as we had already turned into the road to the Ice Cream Company, we felt obliged to try them out. We bought two cup, each with 4 different flavoured scoops (Mango, Raspberry, Sugar Banana and Wattleseed). Although it wasn't really the right weather for it, the ice creams were still delicious. We also tasted Soursop and Alex bought some Daintree Tea.
Afterwards, we headed into Noah Beach camping area, run by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service. Self registration is not allowed here and there were lots of signs insisting that you pre-book by phone or internet. As there is no mobile coverage here, we
had to drive up to Mason's Shop, about 5 km north to find a public pay phone to book our spot. Amazingly, the public phone worked! After booking, we drove back to Noah Beach to set up camp. It was a nice spot only 50 m from the beach, but we decided to stay for just one night as the weather wasn't expected to be much better the following day.
On Wednesday we packed up another wet camp and drove up to the Dubuji Visitor area near Myall Beach. We completed the Dubuji Boardwalk through the rainforest and mangroves and saw lots of Quuensland Fan Palms (Licuala Ramsayi) which we have in our garden back home, as well as a lot more of the 'Lawyer vines' (genus Calamus), also known as 'Barbwire vine', that we had a photo of on our previous blog and fortunately don't have back home! We also walked out to Myall Beach and then drove up to the Cape. Here we went on the Kulki Boardwalk to the lookout over Cape Tribulation Beach. On the way Mark spotted a Ulysses Butterfly posing serenely on the sand. We then hit the coastal 4WD Bloomfield Track, which
passes through 'Blockade Creek', the site of the 1983 blockade trying to prevent the Queensland Government from constructing a road from Cape Tribulation to Bloomfield. For an interesting account of this blockade, see http://www.daintreecoast.com/daintree-blockade.html. A sign at the Dubuji Boardwalk had an interesting quote from Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the Queensland Premier at the time: “With a bulldozer, you can do anything”! We followed the track up through Wujal Wujal to come out on the Mulligan Highway near Black Mountain National Park. The track was very steep in parts and had several shallow creek crossings, but it was in good condition and we enjoyed travelling it. We stopped briefly at the lookout to Black Mountain, which consists of giant piles of black granite boulders. A blue-green algae on the boulders causes the black appearance, while some large white sections are caused by boulders exploding during times of extreme heat.
We drove into Cooktown and visited the Information Centre located at the Botanical Gardens. As well as finding out information about caravan parks and local walks, we learnt that walking and vehicle access to Grassy Hill lookout and Lighthouse is currently only open on weekends or after 5 pm weekdays due to
roadwork upgrades. We also bought a light-hearted non-fiction book about early Australian explorers in the 'It's True' series, titled “Burke and Wills Forgot the Frying Pan”. We'll have to keep an eye out for other books in the series as Annelies and Thomas really enjoyed this one. We set up camp as the Cooktown Caravan Park which had a nice bush setting feel about it and apparently is the only sandfly-free caravan park in town. Their claim seemed to be justified as we didn't encounter any in the park but there were some in town. This park was considerably cheaper for a family of four than the others, probably because it didn't have a pool or playground. This didn't concern us as we often find some of the bigger resort-type caravan parks more sterile anyway. After setting up, we hopped in the car and drove up to Grassy Hill for great views of Cooktown and surrounds, including the Endeavour River, as the sun slowly set.
On Thursday we drove into town and visited many of the attractions along the foreshore. These included the Musical Ship, James Cook Monument, James Cook Statue, the Cairn commemorating where Lt. James Cook Beached
Pebbly Beach
Thomas' toys amongst the pebbles HM Bark Endeavour in 1770, and a canon dating from 1881 that was given to protect Cooktown from a Russian invasion! We also looked at the Milbi Wall, a series of colourful tiles made by local Indigenous artists to tell local history from an Aboriginal perspective from the creation of the Endeavour River to the present day. We visited Finch Bay and had morning tea back at the Botanical Gardens. Afterwards we drove out to Endeavour Falls, located 32 km northwest of Cooktown on the Battle Camp Road which continues on to Lakefield National Park and Cape York. You access Endeavour Falls through the tourist park, which looks like a nice place to stay and worth remembering when we come back this way one day to travel to the Cape. Unfortunately we don't have time to go up to the tip on this trip as we have to be back in Darwin in a couple of weeks and there are still a few places that we want to see along the 'Savannah Way' such as Lawn Hill. At Endeavour Falls you can usually swim at the waterhole below the falls. However, a recent crocodile sighting meant that this was not
recommended. The water wasn't very clear either, so we probably wouldn't have swum anyway. We had a picnic lunch at the tourist park and then headed back to Cooktown. Here Mark, Thomas and Annelies went in search of sea-beads' along the foreshore while Alex visited the local art gallery and library. We didn't have any success with the sea-beads, so spent a bit of time in the playground instead.
On Friday we packed up and headed out on the sealed Mulligan Highway down to Danbulla National Park and State Forest in the Atherton tablelands.
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