When we left Undara to drive in the direction of Cooktown, something we were dreading finally happened. It started to rain. It wasn’t the rain that bothered us but more the fact that our windscreen wipers stopped working in Gove and no-one has been able to fix them. By the time we drove into a little town called Ravenshoe, it was raining quite heavily and it was too dangerous to keep driving. We pulled into a little roadhouse, had a coffee and rang the local mechanic. Long story short, it was their lunchtime and we were asked to return two hours later.

What to do in a small town for two hours in the rain? My idea was to find either the library or the Visitors’ Centre. As luck would have it, they were next door to each other. So we spent an hour in the library where we were made very welcome and offered the wifi password. Then we moved into the Visitors’ Centre which, unexpectedly, had some very informative and interesting displays for us to browse on the history of the town (timber logging) and about the traditional owners of the land. In another room, we took a look at the display of old photographs and were surprised to find that Ravenshoe – this little town- played a big part in the Second World War. So much so that King George VI secretly visited the troops here in January 1944.

It was discovered that the rainforests and climate around the town here was suitable for training soldiers in preparation for jungle warfare in Papua New Guinea so up to 100,000 soldiers were stationed here at any one time. We had no idea about this!

We would never have learned about this had it not started raining! Just another small town with another interesting story to tell.