Cooktown
Coastal town Coastal at the mouth of the Endeavour River on the site where Cook spent 48 days between June and August 1770 careening and repair his vessel after holing it on a nearby reef. The town was established in 1873 and grew rapidly as the port for the Palmer River gold rush in the 1870s and when the population peaked in the 1880s, one-fifth of its residents were Chinese. Costs associated with carrying freight to the Palmer by packhorse or bullock wagon prompted the community to agitate for an inland railway, which extended as far as Laura by the 1890s, but declining gold yields on the Palmer meant the line ended there. had slumped and the whole line was declared a white elephant.
Tin deposits on the Annan River partly compensated for declining gold yields and Burns Philp launched much of its New Guinea trade from Cooktown but by the early 1900s Cooktown's best times had passed and houses were abandoned as the population drifted away and the local economy relied on timber, limited agriculture, and tin mining. Interest in the town started to revive around the time of the James Cook bicentenary, and increasing interest in the extensive national parks and Aboriginal cave art in the hinterland. Relative isolation and its location on Cape York drew increasing numbers of tourists and seachangers from the 1980s onwards.
Cooya Beach
Coastal locality near the mouth of the Mossman River north west of Port Douglas where a township plan was approved in 1963, but development took three decades to eventuate.
Craiglie
Rural locality south of Port Douglas initially settled as a rest area where teamsters hauling freight from Port Douglas to inland mining areas over The Bump could spell their horses. Before the Cairns-Mareeba railway delivered regional primacy to Cairns, Craiglie had two hotels, a store and a school. When Port Douglas' Four Mile Beach was developed in the 1980s, with about two-thirds of the beachfront dedicated to the Mirage Resort and two golf courses, Craiglea was a convenient location for dormitory housing where rents were lower than in Port Douglas. .
Cranbrook
Residential suburb of Townsville on the north side of the Ross River beyond Aitkenvale named in 1968 after the home of Robert Towns.