Cooktown to Laura and Mareeba

Australian cowboys

Dog handler and his cattle herders.

 The main hub of the town of Laura.

 Aboriginal rock wall painting.

 Magnetic termite mound.

 Local Laura kids.

One of the beautiful roads through the region.

 Black cookatoos.

A different type of termite mound.

Tuesday June 28^th

I got up this morning and wandered down to the little restaurant kiosk by the harbour and had a bacon and egg breakfast. Then I phoned home and talked to dad and mom.

After that I had a talk with a man I met yesterday, Gavin Whiteman, who is a teacher in the northern part of the state on the Cape York Peninsula. The further north you go the more remote it gets and the more aboriginals there are. Sort of like Canada except here it gets hotter as you go north! He is an ex-vagabond world traveler who at 44 got married and now has a young son. He teaches in an aboriginal state school. I asked him if I could contact him after the holidays and get some information about the school and the students to share with my Caulfield students, who are largely ignorant of aboriginal issues. He agreed and I hope we can connect.

I took one more tour of the town and took a couple of photos of the inside of the Top Pub from last night. I had hoped to climb Mt. Cook but it was drizzling and the summit was encased in cloud so I set off south.

The weather improved as I went and I enjoyed the countryside. About an hour later I came across a group of cowboys herding cattle. There were a couple of aboriginals and a white girl riding a riding helmet who was out learning from her dad. There was also another cowboy with dogs in cages in the back of a truck. I asked if I could take photos and they consented. I talked to the dog cowboy and found out the dogs are used to help round up the cattle. Two cages: one for good dogs and one for dogs that 'don't listen'.

I continued on my drive and came to another fork in the road (decisions decisions!) and turned west on a 70 km drive to the town of Laura, which is beside a national park which I had seen on Google Maps. I found a very small community with a general store, a road house petrol station, and a motel. I found out the park is off road only so I decided not to go there. I also found a cultural museum describing the history of the area from aboriginal times through the gold rush in the area and then the settlers and ranchers of the stations (Australian for ranch). I found it really interesting and watched a video of the life of the aborigines that showed the rock and cave paintings that are in the national park and some native dancing. I bought a drink at the road house and talked to a motorcycle rider (with the same haircut type as mine) who had stopped for a drink about his travels through the outback.

Now I had to make tracks as I wanted to get to Cairns before sunset. En route I saw a large flock of black cookatoos but couldn't get close enough to get good photos. I also saw thousands of termite mounds in three different styles. One was built by the 'magnetic' termites as they are known because they build a fan shaped structure that always faces in an east-west direction to stop the colony from over heating. The second are smaller and more cone shaped and the third are large and shaped like large mounds. They seem to be three different types of termites and the three types don't overlap and change in areas from north to south.

The trip was taking longer than I expected and I was beginning to think that northern

Australian kilometres were twice as long as southern ones. As I drove I read a number of unusual names of mainly dry water beds: Double Barrel Creek, Shortspoon Creek, Dead Dog Creek, Saltbag Creek, Capsize Creek, Surprise Creek...

As the sun was setting I arrived at Mareeba and realized I wouldn't make it to Cairns (still 60ks away), so I got a room in a small nondescript motel. The proprietor is another motorcycle rider who is planning on riding through North America after he sells the motel, so we had a chat about that. Finally, I went to Coles to get some groceries for dinner and settle in for the night. I watched an amazing show by David Attenborough on bioluminescence called Seeing In The Dark (check it out!).