Our short stay in Port Douglas came to an end as our alarm sounded at 6:30am and we had to get up to pack for a 9:00am departure.
After breakfast, he got the car refuelled and we were ready to depart just before 9:00am.
Before leaving the caravan park we said our farewells to Geoff and Linda who had joined the tagalong at Coffs Harbour. They had intended leaving us after Longreach but now realised the amount of additional travel required as they had always intended to return to Cairns after leaving us. They found it difficult to justify the number of kilometers required to return and we agreed with their conclusion.
As we turned left from the Captain Cook Highway just short of Mossman, we contacted a friend who has a small dog and was not able to stay with us. He was just in front of us and very soon we had a convoy of 4 vehicles.
Soon after joining the Mossman Mt Molloy Road, we started to climb and crossed the range until we reached the Mulligan Highway where a right-hand turn placed us in the direction of Cooktown. For some reason our GPS wanted us to go left, and it was telling us the destination was over 600 kilometers away. We never found our why it did this.
Soon we noticed a complete change in the landscape as we were at the top of the Atherton Tablelands. We saw several changes in the environment as we headed further north including the evidence of volcanic eruptions at the sacred aboriginal site at the Black Mountain (Kalkajaka) National Park.
We stopped for morning tea at the Palmer River Roadhouse which was situated in the vicinity of the location of an early gold rush. We experience a rain shower during the trip with cloud cover developing over our route and in the direction of our destination.
Close to 1:30pm, we arrived at the Cooktown Holiday Park and not long after, we were fully setup.
He called the operator of the air charter company we want to fly to “The Tip” with and after a short discussion about the weather and the weather tomorrow (a 30% chance of cloud preventing a low-level flight), he agreed with the operator than a decision from our end was required. He contacted all members of our group who had indicated a willingness to fly and except for one couple, we advised the operator we would go. Over the next half hour, we all paid for the balance of the flight and received all the information we needed to participate in the adventure.
Later in the afternoon we had a happy hour where we discussed the logistic for tomorrow and we also discussed and agreed on several other activities over the coming days.
We had a latish tea and an early night to bed. Television is difficult to receive, and we only have access to the channel 10 suit of channels plus the ABC.
Today we crossed another item off our bucket list and that was to drive the east coast of Australia from Sydney to Cooktown.