-- From Cooktown to Normanton
The road tracklog
From
Cooktown to Normanton
from 2010/07/19 to 2010/07/25
In this first day of the week and by waiting for the opening at 10am of the library for Internet I returned to take a photograph of “Mick the Miner”, statue commemorating the arrival of the gold diggers on October 24, 1873; thus started the Palmer River Goldrush: “Off to seek his fortune”.
Mick the Miner
Cooktown
19/07/2010
Left tardily from Cooktown I decided to bivouac again at Mt Molloy. On the way the long straight lines always stumble over a mountain, in Australia it is a commonplace.
Strait line!
en route
19/07/2010
I left the bivouac as of early dawn to arrive in the early morning in Port Douglas under a beautiful morning sun putting the church of St Mary's by the Sea in beauty inserted in a palm tree case. I was not delayed in this seaside resort where restaurants, bars and shops for tourists occupied the main street lined with palm trees. In Cairns I went shopping of food both for truck and its driver.
St Mary's by the Sea
Port Douglas
20/07/2010
After having taken a booking by Internet at the Downfall Creek campground in Danbulla State Forest I went there to arrive in the late afternoon in a paradisiacal place at the edge of an artificial lake where only songs of birds disturbed silence, fairy-like. I remained two nights there.
Downfall Creek
Danbulla State Forest
20/07/2010
Morning sun
Danbulla State Forest
21/07/2010
The day of July 22 was particularly gloomy without rain but with a dark sky and fog in mountains. I did not visit less than nine water falls of which most remarkable were Millaa Millaa and Nandroya. The landscape is very tormented by abrupt mountains and volcanic circuses. I bivouacked at Henrietta Creek on a muddy campground.
Yungaburra
22/07/2010
Millaa Millaa Falls
Teresa Creek
22/07/2010
Mungalli Village
22/07/2010
Nandroya Falls
Henrietta Creek
22/07/2010
The day was after a long driving day heading from the Tableland, with its rainforest and its morning fog, to the Outback, with its red grounds and its sky of a limpid blue, starting from the junction of the Kennedy Hwy with Savannah Way going westards. I found the alternation between the two-lane roadway and the one-lane.
En route
23/07/2010
Still a long day on Savannah Way to reach Normanton then the Point of Karumba where all the caravan parks were booked. I bivouacked at the edge of the beach.
Big Croc
Normanton
24/07/2010
On Sunday 25 I returned to Normanton to find a caravan park, to publish the pages of my website and for reading, perhaps good news for the continuation of the voyage, on Monday morning at the opening of the library, 10am.
