Wednesday, 16 May 2012
After the previous day's exertions an easy stage was definitely the way to go, and we headed off from Lakeland just after eight, following a brief discussion about breakfast options. The nearest source of morning nutrition was the roadhouse at Lakeland, which involved a right hand turn and a short southward stretch past the Laura turnoff. The alternative was, of course, to head straight into Cooktown and do the brunch bit there.
The brunch bit there, predictably, won.
Travelling on the ground thirty-five plus years after my Cooktown Frontier conflict research I was interested to spot anything that more or less tied in with that generation-back reading, and it's not too surprising to learn there wasn't much of it around until we hit the rivers.
We must have sailed past a turnoff to Kings Plains, since I subsequently spotted the name on the map but it wasn't until we hit the Normanby and the Annan that I found things that coincided with distant historical memory.
At this point, given the fact that the next bit of the narrative is more or less we got to Cooktown, had breakfast and a good look around, grabbed a spot of lunch and headed off to the accommodation and took a break until dinner time, it's probably time for Hughesy's Cooktown history lesson, which might differ from what readers are accustomed to seeing. predictable, since much of what actually interests me hasn't been written (much). So if you’re interested in the chain of events that brought Lieutenant Cook (he was promoted to Commander in August 1771 and made post or promoted to Captain in 1775) to the Endeavour River in June 1770 you can click here.