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Finch Bay, Cooktown, Far North Queensland, Austral Closest International Airport is Cairns
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Reviews
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Views
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Date of last review
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1
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1728
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Sat August 12, 2006
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Recommended By
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Average Price
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Average Rating
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100% of reviewers
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None indicated
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10.0
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Description:
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To take your family to a magical place of sand kissing rainforest, visit Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is an all weather road journey 4 hours north of Cairns and it is the closest town to the Great Barrier Reef. Planes also fly daily to Cooktown from Cairns. Finch and Cherry Tree Bays both invite you to fall in lust with them and directions to their lanes of love are well signposted in Cooktown.
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Keywords:
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beach, Australia, Rainforest
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Author
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imaginif
Departed
Registered: July 2006
Posts: 219
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Review Date: Sat August 12, 2006
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Would you recommend the item? Yes |
Price you paid?: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Off the beaten track. True tropics. Peaceful, historical and beautiful.
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Cons:
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Isolated.
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Where the rainforest sneaks onto the sand in Cooktown, Queensland, Australia.
I was born and bred in Papua New Guinea, a country that the equator runs through. Talk about hot! We moved to Sydney, Australia when I was 12. Well, did that set the cat among the pigeons! It was winter and my siblings and I all HATED it. We had to wear long trousers, jackets, and we looked like puffing steam trains if we talked outdoors. The city might have been drop dead gorgeous but we wanted hot, not gorgeous.
Lucky for us, Mum and Dad missed the tropics as well and they planned a move to Far North Queensland. Dad flew all around the Far North trying to find a place that would offer lifestyle, peace, self-employment, freedom and heat. A tiny, tiny sleepy country village called Cooktown won out and we traveled the 3000 kilometers north to a place where the steamy rainforest snuck onto the sandy beach to kiss, caress and cradle it.
Although I had grown up in PNG with dense, unexplored rainforest and ocean and rivers that went for a life time, I couldn’t love and fantasize about them because they were too dangerous. We weren’t allowed to enter them. They were full of the unexplored and goodness only knows what that was: childerbeast eating green monsters? In Cooktown though, we were free and safe to wander where we wanted and to live our fantasies of being the wild colonial children who found and tamed those evil rainforest devils.
I used to ride my horse down to Finch or Cherry Tree Bay and while he waited patiently for me I would meander beneath the shaded security of glorious green monsters, whose moss covered trunks would whisper comforting stories to me and vine their loving fingers across my bare arms or cheeks. They told me about their love of conservation and about how the rainforest protected not only the pristine empty beaches but also the fragile marine life of the Great Barrier Reef. A book would have educated me about this also but the sensual pull of the sand kissing rainforest was more enticing. How lucky I was to experience it in reality.
I left Cooktown to go to University. Within a few short city braying years, the kissing of babies replaced the comfort of rainforest kissing sand. But oh how my vivid imagination and oneness with the rainforest sands growled. “Come home, come home,” it would whisper to me. Covering my ears with the mortgage and nappy tours, my green, golden and blue lover demanded that if I wouldn’t come home then I must impart knowledge of our steamy affair to my children.
Drawing upon the creative voice of my creeping rainforest, I began to personify the different green monsters of my teen years who treated each golden grain of sand as though they were babies in need of protection. My children were enthralled, enamored and begged to meet my one true love. Fifteen years after leaving Cooktown, I returned with children in tow.
Standing on the empty beach, squarely facing up to my denial and rejection of a true love, he reached his forgiving arms out to us: to me and my babies. He invited us back and we walked hand in hand beneath his green patchwork crown of velvet. The delighted squeals of the children did not breach his order for peace and serenity. Instead, the squeals reached deep into his heart and he in turn tickled the children’s ears and whispered them ancient stories of growth and preservation. Stimulated and excited beyond belief, my children promised not to be strangers but to be regular crusaders of protecting the sneaky kisses where forest meets sea.
It is now 26 years since I left Cooktown and my beloved Finch and Cherry Tree Bays. We take an annual pilgrimage back and pay our respects to my green king of sandy kisses. Even with the increase in population, development and tourism, the shaded sand castle of my soul has been left alone and continues to tell its stories as it did to me when I first discovered it all those years ago. Today I can step onto the beach and see my green crowned monsters of protection beckoning me. My children run up the sanded driveway, edged by forest and ocean, straight into the welcoming arms of the most magical, educational, and loving environment I could ever hope them to step into.
To take your child to the magical place of sand kissing rainforest, visit Cairns, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is an all weather road journey 4 hours north of Cairns and it is the closest town to the Great Barrier Reef. Planes also fly daily to Cooktown from Cairns. Finch and Cherry Tree Bays both invite you to fall in lust with them and directions to their lanes of love are well signposted in Cooktown.
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Imaginif...play kept our kids safe. Want to know what time it is in Australia? Click here. |
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