Mount Unbelievable

Thursday 15th June. Next entry NO. 1
After a great night’s sleep and breakfast, we hitched up the caravan, said farewells to our lovely neighbours next door, Grant and family in the New Age caravan who have been on the road for 14 months, originally from Rosebud, Victoria, then left our amazing campsite.
While we were packing up, we noticed that the unfriendly neighbours on the other side had also partly packed up and we were to learn from Ivan Deemal when we spoke to him before leaving, that they had requested to move on to our site. Seems that they were watching and waiting until we moved out. Who could really blame them, after all we did have the prime, best beachfront site at Elim Beach, site 1A.
On the road out, we drove over a wooden bridge where we stopped to take a photo of the original post and beam bridge below which was falling apart. Even when new, it would have been rickety driving over it. The new bridge was rated at 2.6 ton, and on the way in to Elim Beach, we drove the longer bypass around the bridge as our weight is 6.5 ton, but after talking to Ivan who said that trucks drive over it, we took the shorter route on our way out.
We arrived in Cooktown about lunchtime and refilled our water tanks, used the dump point, went to the hardware store for some parts we wanted, walked along the waterfront brought fish and chips for lunch, visited the Tackle Shop, IGA and liquor store, and we were happily back to being fully stocked again and ready to hit the road.
As we had no internet at Elim Beach, but had prepared and typed up our diary, we posted two blog entries while in Cooktown.
We decided to stay at Endeavour River Escape camping ground about 10 minutes north of Cooktown, on the other side of the Cooktown Airport, which we had read good reviews about, driving for 5kms on an unsealed road until we got to the homestead. Owner Terry went ahead on his quadbike while we followed him to Campsite No. 12. It was a lovely green, treed, shady camping ground with 32 campsites, all set spaciously apart. Hot showers and flushing toilets, camp kitchen, firewood for sale and some rainforest walks to the Endeavour River. Cost $30 a night. We sat outside for a while and walked to the boat ramp but there were lots of mozzies buzzing around. We had sprayed Bushmans and the mozzies gave us a couple of bites, decided not to have a campfire due to the mozzies and insects, and cooked a quick dinner outside on the induction hotplate, then retreated inside to shower and have an early night. One night at this campground is enough for us. It is nice and green but it is far too shady and rainforest-y with too many mozzies for us. Not enough sunlight.Read more