Jul 24

E.R.E

Endeavour River Escape is a camping just north of Cooktown, the place where Captain Cook landed his ship “The Endeavour” for repairs after he put a dent in the Great Barrier Reef.

We made the 300 km trek from Mareeba to Cooktown with a few stops. The road is not very attractive and the campsites along it in Mt Carbine (originally planned) and Lakeland are straight along the highway (well there is only one road really). The road is in very good nick, very different from the Bruce Highway on which you have to continuously be weary of – sometimes pretty serious – potholes. Our first stop was at the Mareeba mechanic to make an appointment for next week when we stay again at Granite Gorge with Berna and Jos. They will then give the bus a service before heading inland.

Then it’s off to the Coffee Works, a very touristic coffee shop, actually very nicely set up. Prices are very touristy and Marjo made sure she nursed her large skim cappuchino over about 150 km so it cost only 4 cents per km.

Then we stopped at the Mango winery which just doesn’t work. I understand now why most wineries use grapes instead of mangoes. Still when there’s free wine tasting we’re there. So the disappointment was understandable when we had to pay for the mini gulps of dry, medium, sweet and sparkling mango juice (wine). In the end we bought sweet mango dessert wine. Not bad.

Then it was on the road to Cooktown. We still had 300 km to go and with the few hills in between where the bus slows down to 40 kph or even 20 kph at 10% steep hills. A very dry landscape with a perfect road across massive paddocks (including cattle grates). Also there were picture moments that we didn’t miss.

It was about 4 pm when we arrived in Cooktown and we headed straight for the camping. Everything’s called Endeavour here so no surprise that the Endeavour River Escape camping was in the Endeavour National Park along the Endeavour river.
It is a nice camping with massive sites (you could fit whole campings we have seen on a single site of this camping) and it is well organized.

We had a walk down to the river, a bit nervous because after the 10th sign explaining that crocs lure everywhere along riverbanks and here we were in half dark exploring the riverbank. Certainly when we reached the spot where the fisherman was taken by a croc, Marjo had enough. No tempting faith.