On Top Down Under – Cooktown Terminus…

Captain Cook and that other explorer fella....!!

Cooktown is as far north as we go on the eastern coast of Australia…

“Why…?”

Because if this is as far as Captain Cook went, then that”s good enough for me…!!

I had considered riding from here to Darwin, to “close the gate” on my circumnavigation of Australia, but in the end, the high cost of air-freighting the Big Fella from Darwin, put paid to my plans…

That, and the very real possibility that I would have to go head to head with Paul Dickenson, in the Darwin Drinking Championships once again, made me pause…., consider…. and disengage…!!

I had been to the southernmost tip of Australia (one day I will write about that little ride down 40 km of marble-covered dirt road…!!), and although I would have liked to get to the top of the the Yorke Peninsula, the chance of being trapped there by flooded rivers at this time of year, was one that I was not prepared to take…!!

And did I mention that the road from Cooktown to Punsand, was a mere 850 km of dirt roads, half of which were only accessible by 4 X 4…? I didn’t…?? Well, I don’t normally share my worst nightmares with complete strangers either, do I…??!!??

At the end of the peninsula on which Cooktown was built, is a low hill known as Grassy Hill… It is from here that Captain Cook found Cooks Passage – the route through the mouth of the Endevour River, out among the many coral reefs that line the shore, and out to the open ocean and safety…

After a quick cup of coffee at a local cafe, I rode up to the top of Grassy Hill, to take in the views of the surrounding town and the countryside that stretched beyond it…

I was the only person up there, and the silence suited me… I sat looking out to sea, and then back down to the town behind me and the wide river alongside which it was built; imagining the Endevour hauled up on the beach below…

In my mind’s eye I saw men chopping down trees, sawing the planks to repair the ripped timbers of the hull… Doing their best to survive in a hostile country they knew nothing about… Seven weeks after the boat was beached, the job was done, and the ship left present day Cooktown, following a route that James Cook had mapped out from the very place I was now standing…

Knowing that, sent a shiver up my spine that I cannot properly explain… The same feeling I had felt in other historical places I had visited on my journey… I stood grinning up on Grassy Hill, feeling history swirling about me…

The next Europeans to set foot here arrived more than fifty years later…!! And fifty years after that, gold was discovered in the Palmer River, south east of the settlement, and a gold rush began that forever changed the face of the northern reaches of Australia…

Cooktown from up on the lookout point above the town...

The wide Endevour River that empties out into the Pacific Ocean a short distance to the east of Grassy Hill...

I was keen to visit the Cooktown Museum, which many people had suggested I should not miss…

I wanted to find out more about the area and the people who tamed this wilderness…

It only opened at 10.am, so I tootled through the streets of Cooktown, enjoying the long silent stares from the many locals who sat on their porches enjoying the early morning sunshine…

A number of early morning coffees were halted midway between table and lip, as people’s eyes swiveled to take in the sight of me standing up on the pegs as I dodged potholes and deep cracks on the back streets of what is probably the only suburb in town…!!

The old lighthouse on Grassy Hill is in the process of being renovated...

The James Cook Museum was once a convent...

I was at the museum as it the curator, a very friendly Aboriginal woman, opened the doors and began preparing for visitors…

She explained that this used to be the Sisters of Mercy Convent, but was abandoned after the 2nd World War, and stood derelict for many years, until it was decided to renovate the building and turn it into the museum it is today…

It was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970, and houses artifacts dating back to the arrival of Captain Cook, including the anchor and one of the cannons off his ship…

A large model of the Endevour stood in one corner, and behind it the words uttered by the explorer before he left England :

“I have ambition not only to farther than anyone has been before, but as far as it is possible for man to go…”  Words that struck a chord with me, and I am sure, any other long distance traveler embarking on a journey of discovery, in one form or another…

The first five nuns who started the convent, were recruited form Ireland...

Artisits impression of Captain Cook's Endevour, beached where present day Cooktown stands today...

A large section of the exhibits cover the influence that the Chinese have had in the northern reaches of Australia… They arrived here in their thousands after gold was discovered, and at one point outnumbered the European population in the area by four to one…!!

They came from Hong Kong and Canton in southern China, places that had proud traditions of trading over long distances, long before Europeans ever set foot in the region…

When the gold petered out, many of them stayed and became traders and farmed small patches of land, making an enormous contribution to the growth and prosperity of the region…

Others became involved in the Pearl industry, establishing a culture that grew across the northern reaches of the Australian coast, all the way to present day Broome in Western Australia… Some moved south, and established trading houses and companies that are still in existence today…!!

Stately old building on the town's main street...

For the most part, I had the museum to myself, and although I expected it to be far larger, and to take me far longer to work my way through it all, by 11.30 am, I was back at the hotel to collect my gear and head out of Cooktown and back to Cairns….

It was blisteringly hot, and the sweat poured off me as I handed in my keys and left the Seaview Hotel… Considering it’s small size, Cooktown has a long and rich history, one that I would have liked to explore further, but as the days flash by, I am becoming more and more concerned about the time I have left to get to the southern tip of South America by the end of the year, if not sooner…

And to do that, I had to get back to Brisbane first, which lay over 2 500 km to the south of where I now stood…!! And that was via the most direct route… I wanted to ride through the interior of Queensland, and stay off the main coastal Bruce Highway, which I had found to be too boring to do a second time…!!

©GBWT 2011