Cooktown/Gangaar
Located in Guugu Yimithirr country at the Endeavour River's mouth on Cape York Peninsula's east coast, Cooktown is 328 kilometres north of Cairns and 650 km from Torres Strait.
After early visits by James Cook (1770) and Phillip Parker King (1819, 1820), the Endeavour estuary served as a port of call for various unheralded beche-de-mer fishers and other passers-by until George Elphinstone Dalrymple's 1873 Northeast Coast Expedition arrived in early November 1873. James Venture Mulligan had discovered payable gold on the Palmer two months earlier, prompting a major gold rush.
