Suzanne & Nic Outback Caravan Trip 2025

 June 8th 2026: met up with Roy Banjo at 8.30 am at the Quinkan cultural centre and were joined by Allessandro, an Italian Bonds lawyer working in London. We went to Split Rock along a well marked track with handrails and steep steps. Our guide Roy helped rangers and Percy Trezise build the walking track in the 1980’s. Roy explained the meaning of each painting, the oldest of which is apparently 14,000 years from carbon dating charcoal in a fireplace made inside an ant-hill. There were the bad spirits-the Imjim and the good spirits the Tamara  plus men and women and animals fish birds reptiles. We then went up to further sites with more paintings. Roy then offered to take us to the top of the escarpment via a closed off much rougher track with large rock steps then clambering over rocks and through a low rock passageway and we came out on top of the escarpment with spectacular views! On the way up he pointed our various flowers- kangaroo paw, kapok trees in flower, the bush cl...

 7th June 2026: packed up and went to the Botanic Gardens to have a look at the Vera Scarth-Johnston collection of botanical illustrations. She was a botanist and a botanical artist who moved to Cooktown in 1972 at age 60 years entranced by the natural beauty of the Endeavours River area. She made it her life’s work to find the 200 plants that Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander identified on Cooks voyage to Cooktown. She managed to locate and draw 160 of them before Parkinson’s disease meant she could no longer paint. They are housed in Natures Powerhouse at the Cooktown Botanic gardens. We then drove on to Laura via Lakelands. We set up camp behind the Peninsula Hotel and went in search of the Quinkan cultural centre. It was closed but a man named Roy introduced himself to us and offered to open it up and so we spent a couple of hours there. We asked him about seeing Quinkan rock art and he said meet me at 8.30am and I will show you some. When we googled him we found out that he was...

 6th June 2026: Did a big wash of all sheets and towels pre Cape trip. I then went to the Saturday am market and stocked up on seasonal vegies and fruit, followed by frozen Karumba Barramundi at Carrots Friut and Veg. We then drove to Hopevale, a neat and tidy town. We went into the main store which stocked a wide range of fresh produce and hardware and kitchen articles, a far cry from the white bread, white flour and white sugar in the store in 1980. We then went into search of the old health centre I used to visit but I hardly recognised it. A new health centre has been built next door. We then drove to Elim beach, a camping and fishing spot, and we went into search search of the “coloured sands” not evident where they were supposed to be. We returned to Cooktown- had a look at the Cook Monument and a collection of tiles put together for the bicentenary. The washing dried well in very strong winds! I made us an omelette and salad for dinner.          Old ...

 5th June 2026: Nic’s 76th birthday! We headed into town to the Cooktown History museum where we read all about Cooktown starting with the Gold rush in the 1870’s, including from an indigenous perspective. Two elderly women volunteers chatted with me about what Cooktown was like 45 years ago when I was there and filled me in on some people I knew then. We then visited Des Hill at his surgery. He was a resident at Cairns Base Hospital when I was there as a registrar in 1981. He has been a GP in Cooktown since 1983 but sold his practice last week and he is to work in his old surgery until the end of the year. He turns 70 in September. We then went in search of the old Cooktown Hospital where I used to work. It was sold to Jehovah’s Witnesses after been saved from demolition and moved to a new site in town. We were able to go inside the building via an unlocked back door. I found it unrecognisable. We went upstairs where there was a photographic record of the hospital being moved. We ...