Cooktown and Cape York: Captains, Costumes and Cavalcades

For over fifty years the residents of Cooktown have celebrated the landing of Captain Cook on the banks of the Endeavour River in 1770 with an explosion of festivities on the Queen’s birthday weekend.

For many years the Cooktown Discovery Festival held legendary status as one of Australia’s longest and wildest parties with a re-enactment of Cook’s landing playing second fiddle to the serious business of the drinking games and events organized by the town’s pubs.

Nowadays the Festival is a more family friendly affair and the fully costumed re-enactment has been transformed into a fun performance telling the story of the plight of the HMB Endeavour from both an Aboriginal and European perspective. The warm fuzzy feeling generated from watching the actors, and sitting on the same ground that the first reconciliation between the two cultures took place, resonates throughout the weekend.

Of course it wouldn’t be the same Festival without the weird, wonderful and quirky and the 2012 program of events promises plenty of choice. Billy kart races or cane toad races, a grand parade or an obstacle course, movies in the park or a film festival, poets, thesps and live bands, marines with muskets and exploding cannons, belly dancers or Morris dancers, convicts at large and wanton wenches, an Aboriginal corroboree and fireworks – the list goes on.