After the Endeavour nearly sank at Cape Tribulation in 1770, Captain Cook landed at a natural harbour to the north, where he spent two months repairing the vessel, observing the "Genius, Temper, Disposition and Number of the Natives" and - legend has it - naming the kangaroo after an Aboriginal word for "I don't know". Tempers wore thin on occasion, as when the crew refused to share a catch of turtles with Aborigines, and Cook commented perceptively: "They seem'd to set no value upon any thing we gave them."

The site lay dormant until gold was discovered southwest on the Palmer River in 1873, and within months a harbour was being surveyed at the mouth of the Endeavour River for a tented camp known as COOKTOWN . A wild success while gold lasted, the settlement once boasted a main street alive with hotels and a busy port doing brisk trade with Asia through thousands of Chinese prospectors and merchants. But the reserves were soon exhausted and by 1910 Cooktown was on the decline. Today, Cooktown's main drag, Charlotte Street, is neat but pretty quiet, good for random wandering past the old wharves and Endeavour Park , the site of Cook's landing, now graced by a statue of the great navigator. A kiosk on the waterfront organizes two-hour cruises through the Endeavour River's mangroves ($22). Among monuments on the lawn are the remains of defences sent from Brisbane in the nineteenth century to ward off a threatened Russian invasion: one cannon, three cannonballs and two rifles - accompanied at the time by just one officer. At the far end of town, 500m along Endeavour Valley Road, separate areas in the half-wild cemetery for Jewish, Chinese, Protestant and Catholic burials gives a glimpse of how cosmopolitan the town once was. The cemetery's most famous resident is Mary Watson of Lizard Island, whose grave near the entrance is decorated with seashells and a pietá painting.

The best views of the town and river are from the top floor of the old Sisters of Mercy Convent, now a regional museum (daily 9.30am-4pm; $5.50) with a bit of everything: artefacts jettisoned from Endeavour , exhaustive local history, a reconstructed joss house, a rundown on pearling around Thursday Island, and the history of the "hopelessly insolvent" Cooktown-Laura railway. Not far away on the corner of Helen and Walker streets, the Marine Museum (daily 8.30am-5.30pm; $5.50) details the 1899 cyclones Mahina and Nachon, which collided north of Cooktown sinking 76 vessels and killing 350 people.

There are more views of the district from the red-and-white corrugated-iron cone of Grassy Hill Lighthouse , reached on a concrete track from the end of Hope Street. Mount Cook is a rather tougher proposition, a two-hour return hike through thick forest on meagre paths - follow orange triangles from the nondescript starting point that you'll find beyond Ida Street (pick up free maps for this from the Council Offices next to the post office, open Mon-Fri 9am-4.30pm). At the end of Walker Street, the Botanic Gardens , founded by Chinese and recently re-established, merge into original paperbark woodland, with a track running to Finch Beach on Cherry Tree Bay. Although it is sometimes rated as a safe swimming beach, you should heed the home-made warning signs in pidgin: "Dispela Stap Hia" and a picture of a croc.