FNQ – Cairns to Cooktown

Cairns - Cooktown

Work took me up to Cooktown in Far North Queensland for a week. Although it’s a short flight from Cairns to Cooktown I decided to take the more leisurely drive up there. I don’t mind flying but when work takes me away from Brisbane I prefer to drive, take in the scenery and have a look around.

The road from Cairns to Mossman follows the coastline, with some spectacular views over the sea and, as such, it’s a pretty slow road, full of Sunday drivers admiring the scenery. From Mossman there are two options; keep going on the coast road through Cape Tribulation and Wujal Wujal or take the inland road. As the coast road is 4×4 only, with my hire car I only had the choice of the inland road, the final section of which was only sealed in 2006.

The road runs through the hills across to Mount Molloy, and then arcs northwards through Lakeland to Cooktown. The road is pretty fast unless you get stuck behind caravans, RVs or trucks, all of which struggle for speed on the hills. As the road is windy and has a lot of dips it can be difficult to overtake slow moving vehicles. In the end, both the trip up and back took almost 4½ hours to cover the 327km as opposed to about a ½ hour each way if I had flown.

Cairns - Cooktown

Cairns - Cooktown

Black Mountains, nr Cooktown

Cairns - Cooktown

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