Cooktown

Endeavour River

Bloomfield Falls

We were out and about exploring Cooktown by 9am. We drove up Grassy Hill for views over Cooktown, the Endeavour River & Coral Sea. The very small lighthouse was shipped to Cooktown from England in 1885. We drove down to the wharf which was once one of the busiest ports in Queensland during the Gold Rush of the 1870s where there were an estimated 15000 miners on the Palmer River, of which ten thousand were Chinese. In 1770 Captain James Cook and his crew spent 7 weeks here while repairing the Endeavour which was damaged after hitting the reef. Along the waterfront was a James Cook statue and monument and also a cairn marking the spot where he beached the Endeavour. The kids had a play on the musical ship and the playground. We then walked up to the James Cook Museum which was a restored convent orginally built in 1889. The highlight of the museum was the orginal anchor and canon from the Endeavour which had only been found in 1971. From there we had a quick walk around the botanical gardens and a bite to eat before heading back down the Bloomfield road after deciding against going the inland road because we had to go back to Mossman where the van was stored. We stopped at the Wujal Wujal (Bloomfield) Falls before continuing on to Cape Tribulation. We did the short boardwalk at Kulki to a viewing platform and Myall Beach. Cooper and I saw a lace monitor on the way back to the car. Before heading back across on the ferry we had to visit the other ice cream factory where we sampled the flavours of the day which were wattle seed, blueberry and mango. Back in Mossman we picked up the tent poles out of the van and continued on to Cairns Coconut Resort. Rick had to pick up the part for the car in the morning so we decided it would be easy to keep the kids entertained here while he sorted the car out. It was nearly 6pm by the time we checked in and it was a bit of a job trying to put the tent up in the dark especially only having only erected once before. We got there in the end but then we had trouble with our dodgy airbed and Rick had to rebuild the motorised pump!