“This is dinosaur country,” says our guide Pete Baxendell as we enter Daintree National Park, heading north from Port Douglas to take the 4WD-only Bloomfield Track between Cape Tribulation and Cooktown.
Still on the sealed surface, just north of Cow Bay on the northern side of the Daintree River, we round a bend in the road and gasp in astonishment. As if on cue, a cassowary is walking ahead of us along the road, moving aside to paddle in rainwater as we draw close.
There less than 1500 cassowaries still roaming the 960,000 hectares of the Daintree National Park, and sightings are rare so we feel privileged. He is in no hurry to move along, posing carefully for our cameras before we move on reluctantly.
Pete, who has been running tours in this area for many years, is as excited as his passengers at this unexpected turn of events.
Tropical North Queensland is a place for the unexpected. Whether you are hugging the coast, touring the undulating tablelands or striking out west to less travelled places, you will find much to surprise you.
Driving is the best way to see this region, and we’ve headed north to explore some of the new touring routes linking the far north’s many attractions. From a base in Cairns, it’s easy to chose one or more of the driving loops and see more than you might have banked on.
Most visitors to Cairns are there for one thing: the Great Barrier Reef. The swish Reef Fleet Terminal is awash with tourists waiting for their boats to the Outer Reef, but we have wheels rather than water on our minds.
We are keen to experience several of the Great Tropical Drive’s touring routes, sampling parts of the 13 routes, mix-and-matching them to suit our time frame and interests.
First up is part of the Reef to Rainforest trail, taking us up the coast from Cairns, past the scalloped bays of the northern beaches. The Captain Cook Highway leads to Port Douglas, and from there, it is on through the cane fields to Mossman and the Daintree. After crossing the Daintree River on the car ferry, we are in the rainforest and now on our second touring route, the Daintree Explorer. It is here, just a few kilometers from the river – eagerly but futilely scanned for a glimpse of crocodiles – and just after the first cassowary warning sign, that we see the real thing.
Travel on the Bloomfield Track is 4WD only. “No toilets for next 32km” warns the road sign as you start on the rough track from Cape Tribulation. There’s little traffic – our only encounter is a convoy of five vehicles towing trailers and “tinnies”, a group of young men back from a fishing trip.
The Mulligan Highway is the alternate route to Cooktown, named for the explorer James Venture Mulligan, who discovered the Palmer River goldfields in 1870. The controversial Bloomfield Track was carved out only in the 1980s, but the sealing of the inland highway all the way to Cooktown is likely to mean a boom for the sleepy village in the coming years.
At Wajul Wajul, we detour slightly to take in the magnificent sight of the Bloomfield Falls, heavy after recent rains, before tackling the remaining 75km to Cooktown.
At the end of the Bloomfield Track, thirsty travellers have stopped at the historic Lion's Den pub since 1868 before forging on to Cooktown.
On Cooktown’s main drag, Charlotte Street, we seek respite from the road at the Sovereign Hotel where a drink on the verandah seems a fitting way to contemplate this historic town, where even the deep stone gutters are heritage-listed.
No gold was found in Cooktown, but this is where the gold ended up in the late 1870s, and it’s evident in the fine and substantial buildings lining the main street. In the Old Bank, an imposing colonial building built in 1891, the local historical society now runs exhibitions about Cooktown’s fascinating history. But the main story is found in the James Cook Museum, named for the explorer who charted this coast and gave so many places their names.
Cook’s ship Endeavour foundered on the Great Barrier Reef and limped ashore at this point. Cook and his crew spent three months here, making repairs, and left a lasting legacy. Endeavour’s original anchor, raised from the sea bed on Boxing Day 1971, about 200 years after it was ditched, takes pride of place in the museum.
More stories from the area’s turbulent history can be found on the headstones in the Cooktown cemetery. The earliest grave is of Reverend Francis Tripp, who died just 10 days after his arrival in May 1874 but there are many other tales told here. In a corner of the cemetery, a large shrine built in 1887 commemorates the 300 Chinese buried here between 1873 and 1920.
Leaving reluctantly, we head west to the outback town of Laura. Not far outside Cooktown are the eerie mountains of black granite boulders which form the Black Mountain National Park.
In Laura - a settlement of around 80 people - we are on a mission to discover the region's famous Aboriginal rock art. A visit to the Quinkan Cultural Centre gives some background to the area before taking a self-guided tour of the rock art galleries at Split Rock, just a few kilometers from the town.
One of the locals available for guided tours is Steve Trezise, whose father Percy first discovered the major rock art on their pastoral lease, Jawalbinna, in the 1960s. Steve and Percy, both artists, documented and interpreted the sites until Percy’s death.
Jawalbinna is about 36km from the main road near Laura but it feels much further as we bump and grind our way for an hour along the unformed track. While Jawalbinna (it means "dingo story place") is the smallest pastoral lease on Cape York, at 64 square km, it has one of the most extensive publicly accessible rock art sites in Australia. The Emu Dreaming and Giant Wallaroo sites are spectacular and vivid examples of the major sites "both sacred and secular" which have been found on the property.
The sites have been dated to 35,000 years ago and make the easily accessible and more-visited Split Rock and other sites at pale in comparison. The difference is in the depictions; Split Rock is known for the tall distinctive figures of the Quinkans, supernatural spirits - both good and bad - which live in the sandstone and rise at night from crevices to stalk the land.
From Laura we take the sealed Peninsula Development Road south and cross the Atherton Tablelands heading west to the former mining town of Chillagoe.
A worthwhile detour for nature lovers is the Mareeba Wetlands, which has a successful breeding program for the endangered Gouldian finch. Take a boat tour of Clancy’s Lagoon and be dazzled by the bird life and the lily pads.
You can't get further from the traditional north Queensland image of the reef and the rainforest than by heading along the Wheelbarrow Way to the outback mining town of Chillagoe, where the town's major attraction is its spectacular limestone caves. There are three major cave sites – Donna, Royal Arch and Trezkinn - all accessed by guided tour only, and you can cover them all in a day if you need to.
For those who plan to stay overnight, if the skies are clear head to the observatory built by Paul and Susan Presant for a spot of star-gazing.
Driving back to Cairns offers several options, one of which is to take the range through Kuranda, stopping off to explore the rainforest village’s many attractions – but my preference is to make a day of it from Cairns, taking the Kuranda Rail one way and returning via the Skyrail cablecar, for sweeping views from your gondola.
Staying on the road, we meander through the Tablelands again, bound for Cairns. We rejoin the Reef to Rainforest trail at Yungaburra and continue on through lush and beautiful landscapes.
