Far North Queensland

So after 7,000 kilometres and seven weeks, we reached Cooktown and the most northerly point of our journey. We left the caravan in Port Douglas for a couple of nights and stayed in an on-site van in Cooktown after tackling the infamous Bloomfield coastal track through the Daintree rainforest. The alternative would’ve been a longer and much less interesting inland road that skirts around the Daintree.
The Bloomfield track was not as scary as the legend would have us believe. The several creek crossings were quite innocuous with so little rain of late, but the steep hill sections were quite extreme and tested the low range of the Pajero. Of course the coastal views were fantastic, and then the tropical rainforest would close in around us to block out the sun and create a dark, damp and mysterious environment.  

On the Bloomfield track between Cape Tribulation and Cooktown.

Cooktown was a delightful little place, quite the contrast to the commercial and touristy Port Douglas. Nearby is Grassy Hill, with a lighthouse and lookout at the top. It was from this very spot, in June 1770, that Captain Cook looked out over that section of the Great Barrier Reef and saw the several reefs just off the coast. He realised that he was in trouble and would have to be extremely careful to navigate his way back out to sea. His ship the “Endeavour” had been severely damaged by one such reef just south of here, and he had beached the ship just below Grassy Hill for seven weeks to repair it. It was on Grassy Hill that Europeans apparently saw a kangaroo for the first time.

You have to imagine it's June 1770 and Cook's "Endeavour" is right here on the beach.

Back in Port Douglas, we befriended a West Australian couple Neal and Debbie with whom we spent much of our time, and shared many meals and bottles of wine. We joined them for a day-long “Food and Wine” tour of the Atherton tablelands, and a fascinating day was had. Our tour guide, Brett, was passionate about Far-north Queensland and what it has to offer. We started at 9am with damper and bush tucker at an indigenous cultural centre (“Tjapukai”), and finished at 6pm with a wine watching for platypus beside a little creek in the middle of the bush. In between we sampled tropical fruit wines, drank locally grown coffee, tasted cheese and chocolate at a diary, and had lunch at a whiskey and gin distillery. We saw crops of cane sugar, bananas, peanuts, potatoes, maize, macadamias, avocadoes, blueberries, paw paw, mangoes, coconuts, tea and coffee.

One of many waterfalls in the Atherton tablelands.

When the time came to leave Port Douglas, we said our goodbyes to Neal and Debbie as they prepared to journey west to their home town of Perth and we headed south. We had an overnight stay at Paronella Park near Innisfail, an extraordinary park in a few hectares of beautiful rainforest. It built in the 1930s by Jose Paronella but destroyed many times over by floods, fire and cyclones. Although the buildings are in ruins, it was easy to appreciate Jose’s dream and be captivated by his vision from so long ago. He had emigrated from Catalonia in Spain and wanted to create his own little piece of Spain in Australia. We met the current owner Mark Evans, and his passion for restoring this remarkable place was inspiring.

Just of the charming buildings in Paronella Park.

Moving on the next day, we decided to pull into South Mission Beach for a few nights following a recommendation from a friendly local winery. Who should also be camped there, following a similar recommendation, but Neal and Debbie.  An amazing coincidence. The four of us did a day tour around nearby Dunk Island and some surrounding much smaller islands. Landing on one such small island for lunch, we were compelled to throw caution to the wind and take a swim in this idyllic location. We were assured that it was getting too cold for stingers now. As we sailed along the coast on the seaward side of the islands we could see several buildings, many being former resorts, that had been damaged by Cyclone Yasi in 2011. Instead of rebuilding, the owners simply collected the multi-million dollar insurance payouts and walked away, selling the properties for very little. It was quite strange to see so many unused and derelict beachfront buildings in a tropical paradise.

A swim and lunch on a remote beach.

Going cheap - one resort destroyed by cyclone.