Cooktown

Last year’s floods following Cyclone Jasper destroyed many of the roads in this region, and there are a lot of roads with only one lane open. As a result, the road from Daintree to Cooktown is not currently available for buses, so we needed to go back to Mossman and take the inland road to Cooktown. This took most of the day.

After we got back to Mossman, we drove through even more cane fields as we went further north.

But soon the fertile wet tropics made way to savannah.

We passed the most productive tungsten mine outside China.

At lunch, we stopped at the Lion’s Den - a typical outback pub. In the Jasper floods, the tavern had been 3.5 metres under, and six people were rescued by helicopter from its roof, as commemorated by the signs in the photos.

Eventually we reached Cooktown, where our first stop was a museum in a building that was originally a convent which taught girls. The children lived in.

The museum had a lot of Cook memorabilia, including the main anchor and a cannon which they threw overboard when they were wrecked on the reef and were trying to free the Endeavour from the reef. 

It was quite an interesting place, with lots of other exhibits, but it mainly concentrated on Cook (as does the whole town).

I took a walk along the path on the bank of the Endeavour River (where we were told salt water crocodiles have recently killed people)

and saw the exact place where Captain Cook landed (in the middle of mangroves - a great place for crocs), 

a couple of statues dedicated to him, and the place where ships landed to build a path to the Palmer goldfields.

Daintree

Today we left the resort early so we could arrive at Mossman Gourge for an aboriginal walk through the forest being told about many of the food and medicinal plants. 

We saw a red cedar.

We saw a place where newlywed couples spent their first night.

Afterwards, we could walk to the lookout over the Mossman River.

I went further to a mountain lookout.

Then we cruised down the Daintree River where they had their biggest flood ever last year. The sign is at least ten metres above the current water level.

We saw several crocodiles basking by the river.

And some birds.

We stayed in the heart of the Daintree.

Port Douglas

Today I met a bus at Cairns airport 

and started my trip up Cape York. 

Today’s section didn’t take long, as we ended up at the most luxurious place I’ve ever stayed in. 

Quite a number of the rooms have a balcony over on of the pools and a set of steps to the balcony from the pool.

The golf course is one of the best layouts in Australia, 

and the clubhouse is about a kilometre from the reception and beautiful gardens. There’s also beach access.

Cairns

For the following two days I was in Cairns and didn’t do much. The pop up was at the campground.

Yap - last day

We arrived in Yap, and left the ship by 9:30am. To go on another tour of parts of the island. The highlight for me was visiting a different money bank to the one on the first day, and having the village chief explain about Yap money.

There was an outside meeting area next to the community meeting house, where rocks were planted in the ground as backrests.

We went to another village for lunch, and were then taken to the airport to catch our charter flight to Cairns.