Cooktown and the Lions Den

 03/01/2012
An uneventful sleep time overnight. We had an  aircon that worked after a fashion, combined with the mucky fan, Barry just had a fan! It’s a bit of a wander to the toilets and shower. Breakfast in the local café, full greasy flourish for Barry, silent toast for us. Then a tour of the hot spots of Cooktown.
 We visited the lighthouse overlooking the Endeavour river and out towards the reef, the mooring point where Cook tied up his barque, The Endeavour. The statue of the famous man and of course the story of the event from the Aboriginal point of view. Incidentally, the lighthouse is set on the highest point in Cooktown and Cook climbed up there several times to plot his course out of the reef after the ship was repaired. He must have been a master of his trade finding a way to navigate the reef.
 We visited the museum in town which is very interesting, especially now they have a dedicated area about the history of Captain Cook. They even have the original anchor and a cannon from the Endeavour.
 Having done the touristy bits (we missed our the Pioneers cemetery), we set off to the Lions Den, a pub some 20K out of town where we booked a safari lodge,an elevated tent next to the River Annan. It’s a beautiful spot but the tents were very shabby, grubby and damp. We are all sharing and there isn’t a  modesty screen. We had intended to swim in the water hole behind our tent, but somehow we got tangled up in the Lions Den bar and never did have our swim. After dinner we sat on our deck with a bottle or two and watched two enormous monitor lizards mooching about below us, they were both well over a metre long.


 04/01/2012
 Yesterday was a glorious day, hardly a cloud in the sky and a gentle breeze, but this is the tropics and it poured down most of the night.  Our tent on legs felt even more damp this morning but we were leaving anyway. Breakfast on the deck of the Lions Den under an awning, Barry having the compulsory full English before we moved off south, still not having a swim in the Annan River, maybe another time.
 As we drove south we ran out of the rain and decided to continue along the top of the range to Mareeba then turn towards the coast. The plan was to stop at the touristy town of Kuranda for lunch. Again Kuranda didn’t let us down….chocka block with Asian tourists and then to cap it all, the pub had stopped serving food 15 mins before we arrived.
 A quick beer then down the hill back to Clifton were we got a welcome home greeting from Phil and Julie (we have only been away2 nights) Welcome home celebrations continued around the BBQ with a wine tasting of fine wines of which, naturally, we were all connoisseurs, followed by the conversation turning to complete rubbish as we discussed the finer points of each one, such as “ is it white or is it red?” The evening finished very late.