26 August 2011 - Cooktown Orchid Travellers’ Park, Queensland

It is now late afternoon and still very warm however the wind has abated or perhaps just swung around to a different direction; awnings and trees are not being buffetted to the same degree as this time yesterday. We have returned from our day’s outing empty handed as far as anything interesting for dinner and Chris is anxiously considering the dinner I have planned; tuna and potato cakes created from the remaining cans of our expedition. We have in fact returned from the Far North with dozens of canned vegetables, fruit and soup, and will be making our way through them for some time to come. The cans of meat style meals have however been consumed and we will have to resort to re-provisioning from the local IGA when it reopens tomorrow.

As so many times in the past we have arrived at a place in time to share their annual show day holiday. It seems that here in Australia, there are the statutory holidays you would expect; Christmas, Boxing Day, and the days that follow, then Easter, New Years Day, Queen’s Birthday, then there is Australia Day and then a Show Day that seems to be isolated to the shire or town rather than state.

This morning immediately after breakfast we headed up to the “Events Centre” to check the annual Cooktown & District Country Show out, to find we were about half an hour early. The sausage sizzle was underway so Chris was able to do his bit in supporting the local lifesaving club. (That actually is rather strange because I do wonder where the club do their saving. All the beaches around here are crocodile infested and thus swimming is not encouraged) The snack was a more reasonable $2 rather than the inflated price encountered on Thursday Island, and was of at least equal quality. We decided to return later in the day when everything was swinging and check out the locals in their leisure mode. Somehow that never happened because we found ourselves engaged in other pursuits.

The wonderful James Cook Museum

The James Cook Museum was on our must-do list, with its reputation having preceded our arrival here. Obviously the main theme is all about Captain James Cook, but it proved to be so much more. The museum is housed in the restored Sisters of Mercy convent school building, a grand two story building built in 1889, and restored more recently after it fell into disrepair.

We spent the morning sitting in front of a television watching a very long DVD, and actually tore ourselves away before it had finished, returning to the camp for lunch, then back to the museum to watch the end of the film. The film is a brilliant Australian production about James Cook, the man, and what he was like rather than just the places and events that occurred under his command. We were keen to lay our hands on a copy but unfortunately the curator’s requests to the ABC have been ignored or dismissed as trivial, and the well stocked museum store is still without this excellent potential gold mine. We will however look out for our own copy the next time we are in a large shopping mall that sports an ABC shop. (ABC being the Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

We spent a good part of the afternoon delighting in the rest of the exhibits, apart from the exhibits around the Endeavour’s adventures around Cooktown. Obviously there was much about the Palmer Goldfields, the large Chinese population and society that grew up around that mass immigration (albeit much of it fairly temporary), the convent’s history itself, aboriginal culture and stories of the impact of white settlement on that, and stories of local identities who have helped make Cooktown the place it is. I was interested to learn that road access to Cooktown only came in 1937 and the Mulligan Highway was only sealed in 2006. This emphasizes the isolation of the place and helps justify the fact that today’s Cairn’s Post marked with a retail price of $1.10 sells for $1.45.      

From the museum we drove across to Finch Bay on the Coral Sea coast, a lovely sandy bay lined with mangroves and coconut palms, where I walked barefoot along the beach.

Just half a kilometre back along the road toward town, we stopped and walked around the Botanic Gardens, one of the oldest in the country. These were originally established way back during the gold rush years but neglected once the gold ran out. Subsequent bush fires and cyclones did further damage, however in the middle of the last century when Cooktown was having a facelift in preparation for selling itself as a tourist destination, many wonderful specimens were rediscovered, and with new plantings, nurtured to health once more. While not a great park, we did enjoy the shade and shelter from the relentless wind in the shelter of Grassy Hill.

After the variety of the day, we thought better of returning to the crowds at the show and returned for a quiet afternoon coffee and to read the newspaper.