Elliott Heads, QLD
Here’s a catch-up post. I’m going to call them flashbacks. From earlier in our trip, so the post is out of order. Hopefully I’ll be able to sneak these in from time to time and catch up on blogging about some of the places we’ve been. I’m finding it near impossible to keep up, every time I feel close to caught up it all gets away from me again! On our way up the east coast we spent a couple of nights in Elliott Heads, near Bundaberg. The beach was right across the road. We were there at sunset which made for some beautiful pictures. 
They got in the water, but then they were freezing. That sun is tricky. You arrive at the beach thinking it’s lovely and warm but then the sun goes down and the warmth goes with it. Quickly. 
TurboBug was thrilled to take his new dump truck to the beach. He’d gotten it for his birthday and hadn’t even considered that it could be taken to the beach. What a discovery! 
We drove to nearby Bundaberg and saw heaps of sugarcane. It’s plentiful as we head north. The sugarcane is often hauled on special trains which have their own tracks. It’s interesting to see the plants in all the various stages of growth. 
Family bike ride. The trail went right up the coast. It was a nice warm morning. Such a lovely ride. The kids scrambled down to have a look at a large rock pool. 
They all wanted to climb the huge rock for a picture with the tree, which wasn’t really a tree but a branch someone had jammed in the rock. 
We followed the trail up the coast where it dead-ended in a new housing development. We pondered living in Elliott Heads to enjoy the stunning ocean views. Sigh. 
Random ‘triangle’ house that LadyBug wanted a picture of. :) I’d love to go in and see how it feels from the inside. 
And that’s Elliott Heads. A small town with lovely views. 🙂
Road Tripping in Queensland
There are some great signs along the road in Queensland. Not sure where they think we’re headed! There can definitely be a lot of time between towns. 
I guess I should get a picture of a kangaroo roadsign, not sure I’ve got one of those yet. They are all over the place. I think we’ve seen more signs for kangaroos than actual kangaroos. 
When we left Mulambin we drove for several days in a row to get all the way up to Cooktown. One of our stops was in Bowen at the Big Mango. 
We’ve seen some nets crossing the roads at times, I’m not sure if they are for tree kangaroos or other animals or both. 
On days that we travel for several hours I sometimes have to get creative to keep TurboBug happy. Pictures did it this day. I’d take a picture and then show it to him. Thank goodness for digital cameras! You can see the boys playing their iPads in the background. They are not always allowed to in the car, but on days where we travel quite a way they usually get at least a little time on them. That scab on Turbobug’s forehead is from falling over into one of the bikes. Ouch!
One more roadsign. Beware of cows tipping cars over! 🙂 
Aboriginal Rock Art at Split Rock
Does this count as a roadsign for my collection? Not exactly what you think of as Australian animals, but we see a lot of these signs! So far up this way we’ve seen wandering cattle, but no sheep yet. 
After Cooktown we spent a night in nearby Lakeland so that we could make a quick visit over to Laura to see the Aboriginal rock art at Split Rock. (I never know whether I’m supposed to capitalise Aboriginal, I see it both ways and have yet to figure it all out. So I’m capitalising it, just in case. I also don’t know when to use Aborigine vs Aboriginal. Maybe by the end of this trip I’ll know!) We didn’t bring many picture books with us, but this one had to come along! This is by a well-known Aussie children’s author, and it’s about a family taking a trip around Australia in a caravan. Ahem. We also have the audio and we listened to it in the car that day. At the beginning is a map showing their route and it’s fun to see the places we’ve yet to go. 
This guy was veeerrry quiet. Turns out he was just very interested in his book. 
Tangent…Once when I was stopped for a breath test I had my three older kids all lined up in the backseat next to each other. (Breath tests are random and common here, this one was in the middle of the day in the middle of town.) Each kid had a book open on their lap. The officer saw them as he was administering my test and asked ‘How do you do that?’ I laughed, but from the look on his face he was serious. He asked again, and I laughed again. Three kids, all lined up and quiet in the backseat, happily looking at their books. How do you do that? The answer is, you give them books. Lots of books. From a young age. (Insert spooky whispers: If you build it…) But back to our story… 
This far north we pass a lot of bananas, and a lot of sugarcane. This day it was bananas. Not sure whether the bags protect from the elements or the animals, but this far north in the middle of winter I’m guessing animals. 
Our first stop was the Quinkan and Regional Cultural Centre in Laura. The display there is really very good and worth visiting. There was a small fee to enter. The kids loved this display on guessing the animal tracks. 
And this one with the grinding stone and information on how they made paints. 
And I loved all the information on the signage. They were really well done. 
Then I realised some kids were missing and I found them inspecting the termite mounds out back. 
Which are very interesting also, especially if you find a broken one. 
Some of them are quite large, which makes them especially fascinating. 
But, back to the museum! Of course there was information on interpreting the rock art. 
And on how the paintings are made: the paints and tools. We also watched a video that interviewed some of the Aboriginal guides in the area. 
Laura is famous for its Aboriginal Dance Festival. We missed this year’s by a few weeks. I loved this room with the giant pictures and mirrors, we tried out the various dance poses. 
The spelling of kangaroo came from Captain Cook and Joseph Banks. They did their best to interpret the Aboriginal word into English. They originally spelled it kanguroo. Aboriginals in the area spell it gangurru. 
Something I’ve never imagined before: the first car to make the trek to the tip of Cape York. I would not have guessed it was as early as 1928. 
Part of the rock art is free to view, you just have to be able to walk up to it. You can also pay for a tour which will take you to even more rock art and engravings. The site is about 11km outside of town. 
There were three different galleries to view. 
The flying foxes were my favourite. 
There was a bit of a walk up to the sites with a couple of steep spots but otherwise not too bad. It gave a good view of the surrounding area so you could see why Aboriginals would spend time up here. 
This was our first viewing of rock art on our trip, we hope to see more in the Northern Territory. We’ll be heading back down the coast then inland to Longreach and eventually Alice Springs and Uluru, then north to Darwin. We can’t wait to see more of this great country!
All those historic sites in Cooktown
Cooktown is as far north as we made it on Cape York. This is about as far as the bitumen goes. I was expecting to see a town that catered to 4WD adventures and such, but instead it felt very much like many other small Aussie towns. 
Lots of historic sites in Cooktown. This is a fountain in memoriam of Mary Watson, the very definition of irony since she died from lack of water after an Aboriginal attack. 
This one is in memoriam of Captain Cook. 
This one is to a British explorer, Edmund Besley Court Kennedy. According to the plaque he was speared, only a few of his party survived. 
This was a day where we attempted to go to a waterhole for a swim but couldn’t find what we were looking for. So to help the kids forget we gave them ice cream. 🙂 
This is a cannon that had been given to Cooktown for protection during World War I. 
One of our favourite things in Cooktown was the musical ship. So, so fun to try all the different ways to make music. 
We’re fascinated by all the large termite mounds. 🙂 
Here it is. Or here he is. 
James is a family name, common on both sides of our family. 
Look at TurboBug. ‘Who is this guy anyway?’ 
Along the path were all sorts of tiles telling the history of the town. 
Look, the lighthouse on Grassy Hill! 
We came across the Milbi Wall which tells the story of European settlement from the Aboriginal point of view. 
It begins with lovely stories and legends. 
I had each of the kids find a section they wanted me to read. This one was about why the emu can’t fly. 
Then the stories turned into more concrete history and information. 
We found this rather large rock marking the exact spot where Captain Cook came ashore. 
A few steps lead down to it, but it pretty much blocks the path to the beach. It seemed a bit odd, I suppose they are trying to protect the spot a bit. 
On the town map I saw something that said ‘The Queen’s Steps’. Since Queen Elisabeth had visited Cooktown during her 1970 trip to Australia they had erected some steps for her to use when she disembarked. I imagined these elaborate steps and I really wanted to see them, but couldn’t find them during our walk. I started asking random people and no one knew what I was talking about. Finally a local woman realised what steps I must be referring to, she didn’t know they were even called the Queen’s steps and had even sat on them the day before while she sipped her coffee. After much wandering around, I found this. 
Um, yeah. I pretended like I was taking a picture of the sign so no one would think Mr Fishing Man was my focal point. 🙂 The harbour is nice, but this far north there are too many crocs to worry about so no swimming beaches. 
One last thing about Cooktown…when we were driving into town we were lucky to see a dingo cross the road in front of us. A wild dingo, how cool is that???
Black Mountain & Keatings Lagoon
Not too far from Cooktown are a couple of mountains covered in heaps and heaps of black rocks. It looks like at some point in the past it must have rained black rocks all over these mountains. It’s named…are you ready? 
Black Mountain National Park. Because, you know, the mountains look black. 
You can’t really hike the mountain, you can only observe it from the lookout. Underneath all those rocks there can be gaps and people have been injured in the past. 
It makes for an interesting sight, the mountains are very striking against the surrounding landscape. 
Also near Cooktown is Keatings Lagoon which we stopped to have a look at. There was a crocodile warning sign, but there was a well-defined path and other people coming out with no mention of croc sightings. We just stayed away from the water. 
As we walked along the path we were lucky to see a green ant nest right at a good viewing level. They were very busy. 
We got to the viewing area and were blown away by the sheer number of lily pads. I have never seen so many lily pads! They stretched as far as we could see up the lagoon. 
Every so often a breeze would come through, sending all the flowers into motion all across the water. It was almost eerie, making you think something was moving under the water. Please excuse all the lily pad pictures, I was slightly fascinated. 
We watched from the safety of the platform. 
Some of us enjoyed running up and down the bridge instead. 
Two quick stops on our journey that are unlike anything else we’ve seen! So much to see in this country, and we aren’t even halfway.
The James Cook Museum in Cooktown
While in Cooktown we had to visit the James Cook Museum. It was a must-see on our list. I’d read that it was one of the best small museums in Queensland, so I was really looking forward to it. So much history to take in here! 
The museum is in an old convent built in the late 1800s. Part of the museum is dedicated to the history of the convent. I wish I had a picture of the staircases inside. There was a sign with a quote from a former student talking about how only the nuns were allowed to use the main staircase. There was a very narrow spiral staircase for the children. It was the narrowest spiral staircase I’ve ever seen, and very steep as well. 
We had an extra child along with us that day, which totally threw off my whole navigate-the-museum-with-kids game. It was much harder to wrangle the kids with another one thrown into the mix! She was a friend they’d made at the caravan park. 
Another reference to the Queen’s visit in 1970! She opened this museum, who knew? They gave us a list of things to find, like a scavenger hunt, and this was the first thing on the list. 
After visiting the mint in Canberra we love to see coins on display. They actually had quite a collection at the museum, many older coins from before Australia had their own money, but I only have a picture of the more recent ones. 
Lots to see! This was a model of the Endeavour. Or a ‘boap’ as TurboBug calls it. 
The actual tree that the ship was moored to. Interesting, isn’t it? When the Endeavour left I wonder how long it was before the next visitors came to this area who would have cared enough to mark which tree it was. 
In 1971 they found the Endeavour’s anchor. What history! Captain Cook spent about seven weeks here while the ship was being repaired after hitting the reef. 
Some quotes about Captain Cook. The children’s rhyme at the end is the best…
Captain Cook chased a chook
All around Australia
Lost his pants in the middle of France
And found them in Tasmania.
Upstairs I found a map of Aboriginal Australia- showing tribes/language groups and regions. 
Here’s a map of just Cape York. Look how many different groups! 
I loved this sign with the story of Captain Cook’s landing from the Aboriginal point of view. They’d seen visitors before ‘But they were transients. They did not intend to stay.’ They saw the ‘strange large canoe’ and ‘considered that these boat people like others who came and went would not cause problems.’ 
I don’t know what the story was with these canoes, but aren’t they cool? 
Upstairs they had heaps of things on display. See those drawers at the back of this picture, off to the right? Each drawer contained items, and they had drawers like this all over the place. So much to look at. 
Yeah, yeah, there’s a boat behind me. But did you see my cool truck? That’s what you want the picture of, right? 
You could go out on the balcony and look out to the river. By this time the kids were pretty much over the whole museum thing. 
One last quick run-through downstairs and I found this diary entry describing Captain Cook’s first sighting of the kangaroo, ‘the full size of a greyhound and shaped in every respect like one, with a long tail which it carried like a grey hound, in short I could have taken it for a wild dog, but for its walking or running which it jumped like a hare or deer…’ Joseph Banks says ‘What to like it to I could not tell, nothing certainly that I have seen at all resembles him.’ 
An early sketch of a ‘kanguru’. 
I could have spent hours here soaking up all the information. Sigh. That’s impossible with kids sometimes. Okay, most of the time!