North Queensland Information

North Queensland

IT'S hard work getting all the way up to Cooktown in Far North Queensland – especially when you're in holiday mode and it takes all your available energy to move the sunlounge around the pool following the sun.
Boats mooreda t Cooktown, far north Queensland
But it is well worth the effort.
This is 4WD country. It is not essential, but a 4WD makes the trip to Cooktown easier, safer and more comfortable. In fact, look around the streets of this frontier town and 4WDs are all you are likely to see – not your sparkling Toorak tractors either, these vehicles earn their keep. Most visitors take the inland route north – the Peninsula and Cooktown Development Road – and the Bloomfield Track south through the Daintree National Park. It is 320 kilometres from Cairns to Cooktown on the Development Road and 270 from Port Douglas. The last 50 kilometres from Lakeland remains unsealed (although there are plenty of big diggers at work) and it's quite rough. The Bloomfield Track is a slightly shorter 250 kilometres from Cooktown to Cairns but it is rough, there are creeks to cross and it is suitable only for 4WDs (hire car companies won't even allow their conventional 2WD vehicles to tackle the Bloomfield Track). Taking the round trip gives visitors a good look at the dry outback area between Mt Molloy and Cooktown then the contrasting lush greenery of the coastal track. What is always evident driving through the inland areas, where cattle stations are measured in hundreds of square kilometres rather than hectares, is water. In the dry season from April to December it is not water itself that you see but heavily eroded evidence of where it has been. In the wet season the region becomes a huge catchment, filling the many usually dry creeks that flow from the higher country to the coast.
Huge signs indicate which roads are closed by floods during the wet season and locals point out debris high up in trees along the riverbanks that show just how high the last flood was. It is not unusual for Cooktown to be cut off for days at a time during "the wet". At the base of Cape York, Cooktown boasts a population of 1500.
It was first colonised – however briefly – by Captain Cook in 1770 after his ship, HMS Endeavour, ran aground on a nearby coral reef. The connection with the captain is strong and the James Cook Museum is a splendid and educational monument to the great seafarer. The museum opened in 1970 in the 1889 Sisters of Mercy Convent.
The Endeavour Gallery, added in 2001, brings to life the visit and enforced stay of Captain Cook's HM Bark Endeavour. It features the original anchor and cannon from the vessel and jounal entries made by Captain Cook and his crew on the fateful night of the grounding. There is an extraordinary "first-hand account" of the encounter between Cook and his men and the Guugu Yimithirr Bamahe people, the area's first inhabitants.
Extensive documentary and photographic records of Cooktown and Far North Queensland date back to 1880.
After a visit to the museum walk along the foreshore and see the large granite rock that marks the spot where Cook beached Endeavour and the James Cook statue that was donated to the people of Cooktown. A litle further along the foreshore is the charming Milbi Wall (the Story Wall) built by the Gungarde Aboriginal Community.
The wall tells stories of the region through the eyes and art of young Aboriginals.
On the Cooktown Wharf where the prawn trawlers and fishing boats tie up, the locals gather to wet a line.
The restaurant Gilled 'n' Gutted is built right on the waterfront and its veranda opens onto the wharf. Order prawns and be delighted – there is no way they could be any fresher.

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