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| Cooktown
Orchid |
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Cooktown is a small town(pop. 1500) at the base
of Cape York,
Queensland, Australia. It was first colonised by Captain Cook
in 1770 after his ship, HMS Endeavour ran aground on a nearby coral reef.
The crew were able to get the ship into our Endeavour River for repairs.The
colonisation took the form of their six weeks stay. |
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HMS
Bark Endeavour |
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Nothing
much happened after this for about 100 years until gold was discovered in
the Palmer River near Cooktown. The population of Australian, Chinese and
many other nationalities surged to near 5000. There were 100 hotels and
many other businesses necessary to support the new population of mostly
adventurers and gold seekers. |
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Jackey
Jackey Store |
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By
the late 1880s, 60 tons of gold had been won and the gold rush was over.
During this period, Cooktown was the third largest port in Queensland. The
population started to diminish, helped by disastrous cyclones in 1907 and
1949 and a large fire in 1919. The first world war and the 1930-8 depression
also played their part.
Stability came in the 1950s and the small population
has continued to grow and prosper with better roads and airservices. The
present population is 1500. |
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Endeavour
Butchery |
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Cooktown
still has a largely "historic town" nature and this adds to its
interests for tourists. As well, the majority of the population prefer it
to be a quiet country-style township.
However, with the road to Cooktown getting close to being fully sealed,
and with close to 100,000 tourists passing through each year, it is only
a matter of time before we are dragged, kicking and screaming, into the
21st century. |
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TOP |
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We
have put together some photographs of the town so that you can see what
it was like in the past, and how it is in the year 2001. (warning:
the "Panoramic View" is 100kb in size and three screens wide,
and you will have to wait about 25 seconds for it to download - but we think
it is worth it!) |
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|Charlotte
St. 1900 | Cooktown 1900 | Cooktown
2001 | Western View of Town |
| Old Hospital | Miner
Statue | Museum | Council
Chambers | Panoramic View |
| Sunset | |
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