FRIDAY 3 JULY     COOKTOWN

It was still very windy in the morning – really strong gusts with that loud roaring noise. It becomes wearing after a while. It seems to actually happen in narrow bands – can hear it coming, and brace for the onslaught, but then sometimes it blows in a nearby area and where we are is still. Very strange.

Lazed around camp in the morning – recovering from the marathon of yesterday.

After lunch, drove out to Archer Point – the track out there leaves the main road before Black Mountain.

Archer Point is a scenic place. There are huge hills coming down to the sea in both directions. A lot of tracks comb the headland. It is stony, low scrubby country. There is a light station up on the headland; there was a set of old cement stairs, unattached to anything, that were quite incongruous. Maybe they were remnants from an earlier lighthouse structure?

John fished and caught a small something, and a long, thin fish we later identified as a Long Tom – had not seen one of those before.

While we have been travelling north, there has been much publicity and drama over two American divers who were “lost” by one of the charter boats operating out of Port Douglas, back in January. There seemed to be a degree of mystery attached to the disappearance of the honeymooning couple. A couple of days ago, a diver’s slate that may have belonged to one of them was found washed up here at Archer Point. There is now argument over whether this was “for real” or planted there.

I cooked a roast chook tea – a last treat for John and to make up for the egg debacle.