Mon, 5th to Tues, 6th September - Cooktown

What a wet and windy night!  We woke on Monday to an overcast day with strong gusts of wind.  As the morning progressed the rain eased and we ventured down the main street.

We think we found the place where John stayed when he was up here about 7 years ago.  We wandered down to the wharf area and watched for a while but we didn't see any fish being pulled in.  We then headed up to Grassy Hill lookout and lighthouse where we could see for miles!  This truly is a beautiful place. We drove out to Finch Bay which is another lovely beach area on the other side of the peninsula and we think we've seen this in one of John's photos too.

Lunch was a terrible pie from the local bakery before we headed to the Botanic Gardens and Nature's Powerhouse.  The Powerhouse provides visitors with general information about the area as well as the natural history of Cape York Peninsula.  The snake and 'creepy crawly' exhibition was fascinating.  Another permanent exhibition is Vera Scarth-Johnson's botanical illustrations of local flowering plants which are beautiful.  The Botanic Gardens were established in 1878 and are among the oldest in Australia and we enjoyed a walk in the shade.

We decided we would try the Italian Restaurant in town for dinner.  When we arrived the lights were well and truly out even though the opening hours showed '7 days a week'.  Driving down the main street, we found most of the restaurants were closed, so we settled for some fish and chips instead.

Tuesday was day 200 of our trip!!  We decided to try our hand at fishing from the wharf.  We managed to pull in 3 bream but unfortunately they were just a 'tad' under the legal limit of 25cm.  Never mind ... we had a bit of fun and more luck than the others on the wharf.

After lunch back at the van we went to the Captain Cook Museum which is housed in the old Girls' Convent building.  Here we saw the Endeavour's enormous anchor and one of the ship's original cannons, both rescued from the sea at Endeavour Reef in 1969.  Queen Elizabeth II opened the Museum during her visit in 1970.  After a leisurely couple of hours in the museum we headed back to the van to have roast beef for dinner.

Is this familiar John?

The view from the Grassy Hill lookout

The wharf area

Looking down over Cooktown

One to be cautious of

The Endeavour's anchor ... too big to fit into a photo

The view from the top level of the old Convent