Staying at a friends’ brothers property just outside Cooktown.

Cooktown is a beautiful town it has a great botanical garden that was established in 1887! Captain Cook landed here in 1770 when their ship was damaged on the Great Barrier Reef and they managed to sail it into Cooktown and beached it on the banks of the Endeavour River for 6 weeks whilst the crew fixed the damage.

The esplanade is lovely and looks really new with a water park for kids lots of places to fish. Fishing seems to be very popular here and there seems to be plenty of fish. Whilst I sat for my lunch one fisherman caught 2 decent sized Mangrove Jacks in less than 10 mins and another fisherman showed me a picture of the barramundi he caught the day before it was up to his waist – huge. It would be nice to be able to catch your own dinner but Simon and I don’t have a clue about fishing. We keep changing our minds on whether we should try it and see how we go. I am not keen on standing at the waters edge for a log time if there are crocs about.

I explored the botanical gardens and did the walk to Finch Bay. The beaches are awesome but again its croc country so no swimming plus you have stingers.

There is a museum, a lookout and an old train station that used to run to Laura back when gold mining was big around here.

In the evenings Rick and Di who are looking after the property where we are staying on have us over for drinks around a camp fire which is really nice. They have plenty of stories to tell us.