Green, green grass!

Here we are in sunny Cairns. You just cannot imagine the rejoicing when we left behind the corrugated roads and red dust of Cape York Peninsula. In fact, when we spent the night in the camping ground next to the Lions Den Hotel, just south of Cooktown (more of that later), the grass was so green we almost felt like rushing out and rolling in it!

We had left Coen, aiming to stay in Cooktown, then the next day go south through a rural valley to start the Bloomfield Track to Cape Tribulation, Daintree and places south.

When we hit the bitumen just south of Laura . . . and the construction the locals are calling the Laura Harbour Bridge, it’s so big . . . we just couldn’t believe that the days and days of red dust were over. Without really counting it up, I think we did about 1400 km on those dirt roads to the Tip and back.

The musical ship at Cooktown that one
can climb into and make music.

Anyway, off we sped to Cooktown and on the way I was reading a tourism booklet which mentioned that the historic Lions Den Hotel, established for miners in 1885, also had a campground with powered sites. We would have gone past it the next day anyway on our way south, so we phoned from Cooktown and they guaranteed us a site after we’d finished sightseeing in Cooktown.

It’s a nice little town, full of references to James Cook, including a wonderful monument that almost equals Nelson’s Column for Victorian pomp and ceremony. It has water fountains on all 4 sides, with the water coming from four different animals mouths . . . a rabbit, a pig, a deer and what looks like a cat but may have been intended as a koala. Those water fountains don’t work now, but nearby in the park is a very modern installation, a musical ship. There are all kinds of things on board to play, from a marimba to pipes to tuned bells.

We nearly got blown off the top of the hill Cook had climbed while his vessel was repaired below on the river bank. He was fairly depressed by sighting nothing but sandbanks to the south and knew his only way out was northwards.

The entrance to the Lions Den Hotel, complete with a
fairly mangey lion, under one of the huge mango trees.

After that, we fuelled up and set out for the Lions Den. The campground was gorgeous, lush green grass, some of the biggest trees I’d seen in weeks, including a mango of venerable age in full flower. A great little creek runs at the bottom of the campground, perfectly safe for swimming, unlike so many others we’d seen with warnings about crocs.

We ate at the hotel that night, which has had a modern deck put on it to cope with increasing popularity and seemed to be staffed entirely by British and Irish backpackers.

In an aside, everything in northern and western Qld seems to run on the work of these young visitors. The Bramwell Junction roadhouse had French and Scottish girls (because the owner couldn’t get Aussies to work there); an Irish lad served us coffee at the Musgrave roadhouse further south; and the barmaid at the Coen pub was from England.

Off we set the next morning for our date with the Bloomfield Track. It’s only 34km from what used to be called Bloomfield but now has the name of Wujal Wujal and has a great Aboriginal art gallery (where John bought me a necklace made by a local). But those 34km are very slow, very rocky and certainly only suited to 4WDs.

The causeway over the Bloomfield River that marks the
northern end of the Bloomfield Track. After that I was
 too busy holding on to take photos.

At one creek crossing through shallow flowing water over large river stones, we saw a trail of something liquid well away from the water, and just ahead we found an ordinary Magna sedan stopped, leaking oil from underneath. There was nobody with it, but the back seats were still piled high with belongings. We just couldn’t imagine the cost of getting such a vehicle retrieved from such a place.

The track ends at Cape Tribulation and after we’d become used to being back in civilisation, with clean cars all around us, we spend further south to Daintree where we decided there was no point staying, so went on to Cairns.

We’d chosen a particular caravan park as it was close to the CBD and the Isuzu is booked in for a service on Monday; AND we needed to replace the house battery that had cracked.

As we entered through a boom gate, who should be coming out in his little 4WD but Rick Blatchley. We hadn’t seen him and Barb since Winton and we knew they would be somewhere in Cairns, but had no idea where.

So lots of socialising last night and this morning, while they went off to Kuranda, we went in search of batteries. These we found, had to get 2 (at fairly vast expense) as they operate everything in the ‘house’ part in series, from the solar panels, and John and I managed to get them out of the motorhome entrance where the lads had put them (they weigh 75kg each), ready for him to put in tomorrow, probably with Rick’s help.

We took the vehicle to a truck and car wash where John scrubbed the dust of Cape York off it and from under it, we did some food shopping and returned to our shady spot where we’re booked into until Tuesday morning.