Unsurprisingly, that's not as easy as the casual observer might think. The arrival of the Leichhardt sparked a remarkable boom, and there were at least four wharves constructed along the shore near the river mouth, which meant things like mangroves had to go, which they did. One would guess there was a certain amount of dredging and reshaping of the entrance, so the twenty-first century observer watching a fishing boat towing a string of dories coming back to port is quite possibly watching a vessel crossing water that wasn't there a hundred and forty years ago.
Still, if you couldn't quite visualise the masts coming over the mangroves, with your back to the town looking over the estuary you could imagine things from the point of view of a disembarking miner because it looks like not much has changed over on the north shore.
The stroll around the town took us along the northern side of Charlotte Street out as far as the jetty for the Pilot Launch and back along the south side, past plenty of vacant allotments.
We'd reached the original starting point just along from the Cooktown Cafe, and Madam was ready for a spell. Just quietly, she wasn't the only one, but our morning ramble had failed to reveal a Commonwealth Bank auto teller and the wallet was going to need a cash injection at some point so I went on a little further without locating what I was looking for.
I saw machines from other banks along the way, so the technology has certainly reached this far north. Obviously, in this era of rationalisation and bank super profits actual physical branches are few and far between, which explains why the Quinkan Centre has to go to Mareeba to do the banking, but you'd suspect each of the Big Four would have an outlet hereabouts, so I was hypothesising something tucked around the corner at the Post Office, or strategically located outside the supermarket.
If all else fails, of course, there's always ask a local.