To Cooktown.1

To Cooktown.1

Posted on 18 Jan, 2009 8 comments

3.8 Sun rises around 6.30 am and by 7 I was dressed and was walking the dogs, exploring the streets of Laredo ( Cooktown ). Hills everywhere, so good excercise. Another beautiful day, nice temperature and blue skies. Breakfast on the terrace ( sounds great ) and even without flies. I noticed the lovely green white lipped tree frog, around 15 cm, sitting on a palmleaf, eyes closes swaying to and fro, again. I took some pictures of him. He was gorgeous and such a good poser too. He sat there all day, every time we returned to the unit he was still in the same spot, but in the evening he’d gone. Out for dinner I suppose.
Well, after breakfast we went to the beach, drove there first and then walked along the mouth of the river ( watching for crocs ) and onto the beach. Not a long stretch, but wide and lovely with huge grey boulders and rocks. Of course we took pictures there too. A few people had also ventured there plus some locals walking their dogs.



Back to the unit for coffee and off to the Botanical Gardens. Care had been taken to place nameplates underneath each species of tree and shrub, so that was educational. Haha, I knew so many already from my studies in Darwin as I had some in my garden there. After checking it all out ( not a large and not too well kept, but charming ) in the gardens we went to the information centre cum restaurant where we politely asked if the dogs could sit with us. Everything was outside anyway. And yes, to our surprise they could sit tied up next to us. So we ordered lunch at the counter and they brought it to our table. The tables had some original idea: botanical pictures glued on them, clear varnished table tops. I had Turkish bread with something on it I can’t even remember, Paul had a smoked salmon wrap with salad. We had iced tea with bush limes, well strangely bitter, but quenchy just the same.
Back to the unit again after that and onto the next tourist attraction: The Cemetery. On our tourist guide it explained that you could follow a pathway through the mangroves to the Graveyard at low tide. But when we reached the mangroves after the first lap of the pathway I refused to go on. Firstly I was thinking of all those lurking crocs, secondly I couldn’t see the path on the other side of the sandy creekbed/mangrove section. I was not going to get eaten nor lost! So Paul just had to listen to me this time but could not understand why I wouldn’t follow him. So we went back to the car and took the road to the Cemetery. It was a huge cemetery with a wrought iron, nearly rusted away kind of fence, but a clear map and layout of the graveyards. Catholics, Heathens, Jews and Presbytarians all seperated in different bushland. Haha. Anyway, we read the names of many headstones, very interesting as they dated back to the late 1700’s. Some new ones too, some large, some small, some family graves etc. Cracked and illegible, some shiny and behind glass. You could walk there for at least 45 mins and the path lead you through the bush. Oh and I forgot, of course the Chinese graves and Shrine. There was a small area where accident victims where burried, young people of whose families had a weird sense of humor: full beer bottles of which the bottlecaps were now rusted, placed around the grave, wine bottles etc. I had never seen anything like it. Anyway, the whole Cemetery experience proved to be interesting and it was a nice bushwalk too.
In the evening we walked to the Sovereign Hotel for dinner. Prior to that we had asked nicely if our dogs were allowed to be tied up under the table and yes, they would. So here we sat outside in the tropical evening amidst the palm trees and ordered our dinner. The dogs behaved well. They were just so happy to be with us, they were silent. We had the best fish and chips ever. I never like battered fish, but this one was done in apple cidre batter and it was light and thin and crisp. The salad was devine and we didn’t have to wait too long either. So that was a succes and much better than the night before and even without the blowies.

More blog posts by Marguerite