Laura
Laura Hotel, ca. 1900. (John Oxley Library/State Library of Queensland, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Located in Kokowarra country, 224 kilometres northwest of Cairns and 104 kilometres west of Cooktown on the Peninsula Developmental Road in the Cook Shire, the township of Laura is the centre for the heritage-listed Quinkan Country.
The surrounding area contains one of the world's largest collections of prehistoric rock art galleries on the escarpments where the local people took shelter during the wet season each year.
The town takes its name from the nearby Laura River, named after his wife by surveyor Archibald Campbell Macmillan as he established a road from the Endeavour River to the newly discovered Palmer goldfield in November 1873.
