Day 289: Day Trip into Cooktown — Dinner at Mungumby
[Posting from rural Tasmania – pics need to get added later when wifi better].
Today we made new friends at breakfast: Heike and Axel, a German couple who’ve lived in Melbourne for 25 years. It started with Axel trying to convince the kids to go for some Vegemite on their toast, which they declined after sampling it yesterday. Axel was slathering away, and admitted to us that it took him six years to build up his taste for it. But now he loves it. Ha!
Heike is a travel agent and we had a fun discussion about our travels. Because we answer questions about our trip constantly and because we’re so in the thick of it, we’re a little desensitized to the enormity of our year. But for some reason — maybe because Asia is (mostly) behind us and we’re in the home stretch? — I was struck for the first time by the scope of our accomplishment/experience this year.
We. Have. Done. A. Lot.
We did school on the lodge’s porch, then drove to Cooktown for lunch and exploring.
But before that we got a chance to meet Isabella’s rescue lorikeet, Blue. Her husband Hamish had found him on a nearby bike path. His wing was broken — Hamish suspects another bird attacked him. The wing has never healed and so they have kept him. Such a stunning creature.
Btw, the birds here are….wow. Wild parrots and cockatoos in the trees. Creatures that look like escaped exotic pets are just the birdlife norm. Australia’s pigeons and sparrows. We didn’t even see that level of crazy wild birds in the Amazon.
Cooktown is a town so named because Captain Cook stopped there in 1770 to repair his boat after hitting a reef. There’s one main drag of post office, community center, bait and tackle shops, a few pubs…
We ate lunch at the Driftwood Cafe (and Willa pointed out that we also went to a Driftwood Cafe in Hoi An, Vietnam — amazing memory!).
We had cell signal in town and used the opportunity to do a little housekeeping and catch up.
We drove over to a waterfront public park with shaded park benches and a brand new splashy water playground. The kids romped in the sprinklers while we wrote, read, etc. Stayed for three hours.
That evening we ate dinner not at the Lion’s Den Pub but at the lodge, where Hamish and Isabella were whipping up a lovely dinner. Haike and Axel stopped by our table to chat and give us a few Tasmania recommendations and exchange contact information.
During our meal we added a new tally to our running “by the numbers” document: The number of individual pools and bodies of water we’ve swum in this year. Including the creek from yesterday, we’re at 101!! Interestingly, the Great Barrier Reef was 100. Seems appropriate.
This number explains why we’ve gone through so many bathing suits in 2019…
Hamish had brought out a little box of books and toys for kids, and inside was a fake cell phone. We spent the remainder of dinner fielding fake phone calls from animals we’ve met this year. I kicked it off by pretending Gaia the dog was calling to check in on us, ask about the quality of the sticks up where we’re staying, etc.
Called it a night!
