Cooktown
Located in Guugu Yimithirr country at the Endeavour River's mouth on Cape York Peninsula's east coast, Cooktown is 328 kilometres north of Cairns and 650 km from Torres Strait.
After early visits by James Cook (1770) and Phillip Parker King (1819, 1820), the Endeavour estuary was a port of call for various unheralded beche-de-mer fishers and other passers-by before George Elphinstone Dalrymple's 1873 Northeast Coast Expedition arrived there in early November 1873. James Venture Mulligan had discovered payable gold on the Palmer two months earlier, prompting a major gold rush.
The day after Dalrymple's expedition arrived at the Endeavour, expecting to be joined by an overland party from the Palmer, the A.S.N. steamer 'Leichhardt' delivered a team of government officials as well as around seventy hopeful miners, and the settlement initially known as Cook's Town was established.
The town's name was subsequently changed in June of 1874.
In Cooktown's heyday, a population of over thirty thousand was serviced by sixty-five licensed hotels, twenty eating houses, more than thirty general stores, two newspapers and many other businesses.
By the late 1880s, the port's five wharves handled freight and passengers bound for locations across a broad region, with two hundred and fifty bullock teams and over two hundred pack horse teams carrying supplies, building materials and mining equipment to destinations between the Palmer in the south and Coen and the Wenlock River towards the north of Cape York Peninsula. Many pearling luggers and beche-de-mer fishers also operated out of the Endeavour.
However, by the early 1900s, Cooktown's heyday had passed. A 1907 cyclone destroyed or unroofed many buildings, and a fire in 1919 delivered further damage to the business centre. While many commercial premises were rebuilt, residences were abandoned as the population drifted towards more attractive locations further south.
While World War II saw an influx of servicemen, the town's population was barely four hundred in 1947. Another cyclone two years later destroyed more buildings, and by the 1950s, Cooktown was almost a ghost town. Tourism gradually came to its rescue as the town's relative isolation and spectacular setting drew increasing numbers of four-wheel drive enthusiasts and other travellers.
After the war, the town's Catholic convent and school remained unoccupied until the James Cook Bicentennial, when the refurbished buildings became the National Trust of Queensland's James Cook Historical Museum. The Cooktown and District Historical Society also operates a historical museum in the former Queensland National Bank Building.
Links to add:
Coen
Endeavour River
Guugu Yimithirr
Palmer River
Wenlock River
1873 Northeast Coast Expedition
