To Cooktown

Wednesday 30 September… Well here we are in Cooktown, probably as far away by road as we can get from Perth where we started from nearly a year ago. From Wonga Beach to Cooktown, via Cape Tribulation and the 4 WD track it’s 140K’s, the way we came, the scenic route, it was just short of 300K’s. First we had a long, steep climb out of Mossman up to Mount Molloy then along the mountain ridge to Mount Carbine. This is the Mulligan Highway probably named after someone! After the lush rainforests of Daintree we have now gone bush and there would be some spectacular views over the remote harsh savannah of Lower Cape York but the dust haze is with us yet. The forecasters keep saying it will blow away by tomorrow which is like saying “free beer tomorrow”! We will probably stick around Cooktown for a couple of days and hope the dust shifts so we can get some decent photos of the area and especially on the way back down to Cairns. On the way here we stopped for a coffee at Palmer River Roadhouse which is an old goldfield of the late 1870’s, it is said there were as many as 17,000 Chinese miners here, who told them about it we’d like to know! We were going to stop at Annan Gorge which we had read a little about but thanks to Aussie non signage we were past it without realising. We will stop to look on our way back south. We did manage to spot the Black Mountain as it’s rather large and very dark in colour. It did remind us a bit of the slag heaps of Blaen---Blynne----Bl--festinog----that mining town in North Wales!
All the way Peter battled with a side wind which continuously tried to push us off the road. Now we are here in Cooktown it’s very hot and blowing a hooley, this should clear the haze!
It has just occurred to us we should be in Dubai right now on our way home. Bugger it!! Missed the plane!!