Day 8 & 9 Endeavour River Escape (Tue May 1^st - Wed May 2^nd)

We spent a relaxing few days here, at The Endeavour River Escape.  The first day we checked out the river, and walked along the walking track through the forest.  They have these barricades to help protect people from crocodiles.  The river is brown and murky, and rife with mozzies!

After lunch and a relaxing morning at camp, we headed into Cooktown to do some washing. I called into the famous Croc Shop in the main street of town to ask where the Laundromat was and met Linda Rowe!  She is an icon up here, and used to live up the Cape in the 80’s and 90’s.  Last time we were here we bought her book ‘Paradise Found’, it’s a fantastic read and awesome account of her wild days living up the cape. The book inspired us about our up and coming adventure when we read it, so it was a real treat to have a chat to her.  

The second day we took a day trip out to Elim Beach, which is about 70km north of Cooktown via the aboriginal community of Hope Vale. Elim Beach and the coloured sands are beautiful, the drive out from Hope Vale takes you along a dirt road through the scrub covered white sand dunes.  Sienna looked out the window, and said look mum, snow! 

Coloured Sands in the distance

We were here last July, and ended up in the exact same spot for lunch, where we spent a few hours. 

You can camp at Elim Beach, at a place called Eddie’s Camp. There are no facilities and you need to be fully self sufficient, but it’s a perfect spot for beach camping.

Fresh water creeks run out onto the beach, similar to Fraser Island. This was a great place for the kids to have a splash, salties habitat this area, so it was nice to have a safe spot for a swim.  

The only disappointing thing we found was the amount of rubbish people left behind.  I can’t understand why or how people can do that! 

Lunch at Elim Beach

Back at camp, i took the kids up to the homestead to help out with the feeding of the poddy calf and the chooks. 

 

On our return dad had our first camp fire going for the trip, and of course the kids tried toasting some marshmellows.  They wern’t that fussed, they mainly got smoke in their eyes and said they prefer to eat them out of the packet.  

Toasting marshmellows with their headlights on