We spent yesterday looking around town and ventured out on the sunset cruise last night. As we all know 2020 is the 250th anniversary of Captain Cook’s voyage to Australia. Cooktown had a big celebration planned in acknowledgement of this and unfortunately like all other plans around the country, COVD basically stopped everything.

Just a little bit of history. It was June 1770 after his visit to Botany Bay, Cook in HMS Endeavour was sailing up the east coast when they hit the Reef. Despite being badly damaged they managed to sail the Endeavour further north into a river opening and beach the ship and spend the next 6 weeks repairing the ship.

Of course we now know those places as Cooktown and the Endeavour River. It was 250 years ago on the 4th of August that Cook sailed the Endeavour back out to the ocean. The celebrations planned was to acknowledge this occasion and the “Young Endeavour” (HMS Endeavour replica) was to sail up from Sydney for the event, unfortunately this has not occurred. There are hopes the celebration will happen next year although on a lessor level for obvious reasons.

We are really enjoying our time here, the weather is a big plus of course, around 29/30 each day and about 20 overnight. So comfortable weather, much better than the single digits and rain back in Melbourne.

A little bit more exploring over the next couple of days before we head south and begin our long trek down the east coast and home. Susan and Andrew are hoping to get some fishing in here, so we might still get to have freshly caught fish for dinner yet.