I have  wanted to visit Cooktown for as long as I can remember. I’m not a Captain Cook oficionado, but I have read a lot about him and his travels. His journey to Australia was epic and his ships stranding on the reef off Cooktown is a central part of his and the Australian story.

As well as my interest in Captain Cook, a trip to Cooktown provides a reason to travel through  the Daintree which is a stunning part of Australia’s landscape. To get to Cooktown from Port Douglas also took as over the Bloomfield Track which in a our previous visit to the Daintree we hadn’t taken.

Cooktown in a day makes for a long day, but we found a small tour that fitted the bill. Run by Dale Forsyth, his Air s to Cooktown 4WD Tours is his personally curated way to see the region. Our pick up at 7.45am, seemed early to us, but for those on the tour from Cairns, their trip had started an hour or so earlier.

The Daintree is north of Port Douglas and covers the area from the Daintree River to Cooktown. Bounded in one side by the sea and the other the Great Dividing Range. It is dense rainforest said to be amongst the oldest in the world.

We’d seen the Daintree on a previous visit  and had taken the opportunity on that occasion to visit the Mossman Gorge, so we were not disappointed that our first stop was the vehicle ferry across the Daintree River. To do the journey in a day a visit to the stunning Mosman Gorge is really a step too far. The ferry is the only connection to the small population that lives in the region. Without it there is a very long and difficult drive that was effectively the route of the remainder of our tour.

Thornton Beach

Thornton Peak

Our first stop was the delightful Thornton Beach. Continue reading →