Friday 19th August – Day 27
Beryl’s birthday! As it was her birthday, she got to choose what we did today.
First cab off the rank after brekkie was to do laundry. Wow Beryl, you sure pick all the fun things to do. After the washing was done, and hung out, we prepared for a day out on the town.

Second event for the day was Devonshire Tea at Vera’s café. We weren’t sure where it was, but had an idea where it could be, so we headed off to the tourist info centre at the Botanical Gardens. Yes, that was where it was. As it was noon by now, we decided to make it lunch too, but unfortunately there were no cooks on duty, so we had just the scones, jam and cream. After that we did a quick whip around some of the gardens, looking at plants and the butterflies. Again, there were butterflies everywhere.

Following on from there, we went over to the James Cook Museum. We were there for about 1 ½ hrs as it was quite comprehensive about the history of the area, as well as his feats and accomplishments. It was a lovely old building, and was originally built as a catholic school.

From the museum, we went home to take the washing down, and then headed up to Grassy Hill, for a 360 deg view of the Cooktown area. It was a great view, but was also very windy. After the lookout, we headed back to the main street to check out the Arts and Crafts store, then down to the Croc Shop to look at all the wonderful tourist goodies. We also went down to the wharf area to check out the restaurant that we were taking Beryl to. They told us we had to book, and the first sitting was at 6:30. So we booked a table for 6:30, and hoped if we got there a bit early we could get a window seat looking out of the river.

We arrived about 6:15, missed the sunset by a couple of minutes, but we got our table by the window! As it turned out, we could have picked any table, as apart from 2 other people who came in just after us, we were the only ones there. Anyway, the food was good and the company was better. Wendy had Thai Coral Trout, Mark and I had eye fillet, Marg had a Lamb Rack, and Beryl had Grilled Coral Trout. Of course we all finished the meal with a desert each.
Tomorrow we hit the road again, but not too early as the girls want to go to the local markets, as well as do some grocery shopping for the next few days. Marg also wanted to go to the camping shop to try to get some fibreglass rods to repair her tent poles.

Saturday 20th August – Day 28
We packed up and headed into town to do the markets.

We then headed out of town, down towards the turnoff to the Bloomfield track. On the way, he hit Black Mountain lookout, which overlooks a black granite mountain made from large boulders. It is quite imposing in the middle of all the green surrounding rainforest.

While we at the lookout Wendy found the directions to Trevethan Falls, which was just a few kms back to the turnoff, and then down a dirt road. We headed back, only to find the road went on and on, and got smaller and smaller until we finally found it, after a 200m walk up hill at the end. The falls were certainly worth it.

Nestled in a small ravine, water poured down about 15m to an inviting pool, and then bubbled down a boulder strewn creek. We spent about 30 mins there, just admiring and walking around. Back in the car, and then back past Black Mountain revealed a 34km detour! By now it was about 1:45 and we were supposed to call into The Lion’s Den Pub for lunch. It was still 20-odd kms away down the dirt. We got there about 2, and pleased to learn that lunch was served until 2:30.

We had lunch under a Cannonball Tree. This was a normal looking tree on the bottom and top, but in the middle it shot out weird looking branches where bizarre flowers and round, large coconut-like balls. It was very strange. Also hanging in the nearby tree was a Jade vine. This was a jade-like coloured flowered vine. It was really beautiful.
After lunch, we got serious about the Bloomfield track, and headed down with great gusto. It wasn’t hard going, but was windy, and bumpy in spots.

It wasn’t until we got near the town of Bloomfield that it started to get pretty. We ran along the Bloomfield River for quite a while. This was very wide, and had sailing and power boats on it. It looked very nice and enticing. When we got the aboriginal community of Wujal Wujal we were near the Bloomfield falls so headed down another dirt road for about 2kms and found a car park. We walked about 400m down a very rough track and it opened out into a very spectacular chasm where bucket loads of water plunged 50m down a sheer rock face. It was amazing. We clambered over rocks and saw this spectacular falls in their glory. We could also see how far the driftwood was perched in the rocks and it was hard to imagine the water level up at the height of the driftwood. The wet must be amazing to experience.

From the falls, we went back to the Bloomfield River causeway and headed on further. As soon as we crossed over, the road changed. It was white dirt and it went straight up and over the mountains that came toward the sea. We were down to first gear, and low range to get up some of the hills. The worst one had been concreted luckily. I would not like to try to do this road in the rain. It would be near impossible, as the hills were so steep and long. We went up and down for a long time before we finally hit the coast just above Cape Tribulation. Unfortunately there are no lookouts anywhere along the windy road which has been cut out of the near vertical cliffs, with drop straight down to the ocean. From there we drifted into Cape Trib and found some un-powered sights in the Cape Trib Camping ground.

We got in about 5pm so didn’t have time to fix Marg’s tent pole.