2012 Recovery and off to Cooktown

2012
  01/01/2012
  Not much action first thing as you would expect and even the full greasy flourish didn’t do the trick. By 3 o’clock we were well enough to visit Kevin and Joans house for new year recovery drinks. They are the couple with the most wonderful house in the whole of North Queensland, and we have seen some of the best. They live on the side of the range overlooking the Coral Sea, the main house has a walkway to a pavillion which has a water tank under the deck. A huge glass table covers part of the tank in which there are lots of little fish and even a canoe to get around the tank. It used to be the water supply for Clifton Beach at one time. It would take page s to describe this place, it’s just fabulous. They are just lovely, ordinary people, tho Kevin was the world champion spear fisherman and at nearly 70 he is still Aussie champion. They did feed us some foreign tack, that sushi stuff, it’s alright.  But get this, they are very interested in doing a house swap sometime with us at some stage, and No we haven’t told them that we live in a castle!!

 02/01/2012
  More movement today as we are taking Barry up to Cooktown for a couple of days. We also have to move out of our penthouse suite (upstairs)and back to our original unit. It’s a bit of an embuggerance but we can’t complain as we are living here for free. All our stuff, except what we are taking north has gone mainly into the store room with the rest in the van. We are not going to use the van to sleep in which is just as well as it is full of stuff we have chucked in.
 The journey up to Cooktown is good in parts, some very beautiful scenery, much greener than it was, followed by miles of scrub, then more fantastic views. Cooktown is as far as you can go in Northern Queensland on tarmac, after that it is 4WD only until you reach it’s most northerly part, Cape York.
 We pulled off the road 20K short of Cooktown to visit the iconic Queensland pub The Lions Den, where we booked our second nights accommodation, to stay in a safari tent. We had looked it up on the shiny thing, it looks really bush.
 In Cooktown we booked into the Top Pub, where the annual hog hunt has it’s HQ. The rooms are just about basic, a bed being the main feature, a sink with cold water, fortunately no plug as it would have fallen off the wall if it was filled with water! The fan had an inch of dust on it but it had obviously been there for some time as it didn’t dislodge when turned on.
 Downstairs the bar is patronised by locals, a ragbag of hillbillies, but the beer is cheap. Decided to do sightseeing tomorrow as it got late and after such a long drive I was knackered. Despite the general state of the pub and accommodation, we had an excellent dinner there, and drinks on our veranda afterwards over looking the Endeavour River and Cooktowns main street. We are thinking this is a whole new learning curve for Barry but there is more to come!