We were up early this morning to finish packing and storing
the boat and caravan. It was a bit of an
effort and we didn’t end up leaving the caravan park until after 10.30am. We turned around once when we were only a few
minutes out of town so that we could retrieve the fire extinguisher to put in
the car. I wish I had have realised at
that time that we’d also forgotten pots and pans for our camping journey. Instead, Josh was able to find a Kmart north
of Cairns to grab what we’d forgotten.
Finally underway, we headed thru Mossman, across the ferry of the
Daintree River and in amongst the Daintree Rainforest driving past Cape
Tribulation (we had visited here on a previous occasion) bound for the
Bloomfield Track. This is a road for
4-wheel drives only and as we drove on, we found out why. The road itself wasn’t too bad, although
there were a few dirt track climbs and descents as well as creeks that required
crossing. There were quite a few trees
which had fallen down and Josh evaded them well. We crossed the Bloomfield River into the
Wujal Wujal community. I was surprised
to see an aboriginal girl sitting on the bridge crossing right next to the
crocodile warning sign – she obviously knows something that I don’t. We were making good time when I heard a
plastic bag rustling from the back seat.
It seemed that Sami wasn’t feeling well.
Fortunately, she opened the bag and stuck her head in! No misses this time. We pulled over where we could and got rid of
the bag (a bio-degradable one of course – thanks Mum). I made my seat available to Sami and took up
residence in the back with Zoe but not too far further along Zoe too was
looking a little worse for wear. We
stopped again and this time Zoe took up residence of the front seat (thankfully
Sami was fine for the rest of the trip).
Zoe though held a water bottle in one hand up to her lips, and a
plastic bag in the other hand, and with sheer determination that she didn’t
want to be sick made it the rest of the way until we came to The Lion’s Den
(only about half hour short of Cooktown).
There was a war still going on as we arrived, Zoe versus the rest of the
family. Zoe was sure that if she was to
remove the bottle from her lips that she was going to be sick, and it took a
lot of effort, curses and threats before she moved it away. We enjoyed a few drinks at this well-known
pub as well as sharing a pizza (even Zoe had a piece) before continuing onto
the Mulligan Highway past Black Mountain and into Cooktown. We decided to set up camp at Cooktown’s Big4
and chose a nice grassy site to set up our 2 two man tents – side by side. We spent some time tonight at the camp
kitchen watching the television where we were told by another camper that a
cyclone may have been heading for Cooktown within the next few days – not the
kind of news we wanted to hear.
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