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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Sunday 9 June 2002 (Day View) – June Weekend

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09.06.2002 – Sunday 9 June – June Weekend

• I wandered into town in time for the of Cook’s original landing at Cooktown, when he beached his ship, the Endeavour, for repairs after running aground (a-reef?) on the Endeavour reef. As in previous years, the re-enactment was slightly delayed, and overall not that interesting. Some “natives” mill about, followed by some “marines” who row up the river, slosh through the mud and walk around while the “natives” hide. Shortly after the arrival of the “marines” “Captain Cook” and his other officers arrive in their boat. They all get off, find a fire, and pretend to look serious. A seaman cuts his foot, as he does every year. Some other seamen row out a short way and catch a nice filleted coral trout, and yet another sees a flying fox which he thinks is the devil. The organisers have tried to blend a small amount of humour into the re-enactment to make it more interesting I guess. The “natives” run out and steal a fish, which the “marines” find exciting, “Captain Cook” offers the natives some beads from the local dollar store, the “marines” erect a flagpole in record time, and fire a six gun salute. Which makes a loud bang.
  Everyone wanders up to the cannon, which is fired by the winner from the raffle I forgot to mention they hold at the re-enactment. This makes an even louder bang and brings the time to 11 o’clock. I rushed up to the Internet café to see if I could install the Sony drivers for my Camera, which I successfully did after finding them at www.driverguide.com. I then had to grab a taxi back out to Ricci’s and back again, to get my USB lead for the camera. This cost $10. Apparently, the police had pulled the taxi over and inspected their taxi license at the busiest time last night. Typical.
  I offloaded the images on my memory sticks, and rushed up to the Soapbox Derby, which had already started. I took a few photos of it, and then wandered down to the pie eating competition, which is as foolish as it sounds. Teams of two compete, they aren’t allowed to touch the pies with their hands and must also drink a bottle of water. The first team member rushes from the starting position to a table that has his pie and cup (with bottle) of water on it. He then has to eat his pie and drink his bottle of water (using the cup) in a neat manner, using only his fork and knife. Once he’s finished both of these, he can run and tag his partner back at the start line, who then runs up to the table and does the same thing. It is all a silly bit of fun, and not a great deal of people bothered to come and watch.
  I bought some salad from the Supermarket and walked down to the raft race. Four teams took part in this race, where the aim is more to sink the competition than it is to actually win. The police motored up and down in their police rubber-ducky to scare the crocs away. The Endeavour Butchery team had made fake (at least I hope it was fake) meat from something, and threw this at as many people as they could.
  The Tug-O-War was next, which I find quite boring, but it is popular, so I wandered back up to the Top Pub to have a look. When I got there, they were having a wet T-shirt competition, which wasn’t on the “official guide” of things to be had. Neither that or the tug-o-war interested me much, so I just took a couple of photos and wandered the dusty half hour back out to Ricci’s.
  She wasn’t home.
  I rested at Ricci’s for nearly an hour, and charged my camera battery back up. My legs are starting to feel all the standing and walking, as are my toes. The fireworks, which had been planned for 10:30, have been moved back up to 7 o’clock; so I made my way down to see them. I stopped to phone Mum on the way, and missed the first few fireworks. They were launched from a boat out in the harbour, and looked nice. “Moulin Rouge” which I found to be quite good followed a kids screening of a few “Popeye the Sailor Man” episodes. The movies were played from a DVD on an X-Box, using a projector, and worked really quite well.
  After the movies, it was back up to the Top Pub to watch the band, which was playing there for a while, but I was too tired, so I headed back out to Ricci’s and went to bed. I think it was probably just after midnight, but I’m not sure.