Gardens

If you haven’t visited the Cooktown Botanical Gardens recently, you are in for a surprise. Many changes have been made: the tracks have been paved, trees labelled and there is extra signage. The visitor centre is outstanding and comes complete with a nice restaurant. I was asked to present two Moths Nights – one to open The Cooktown Discovery Festival on the night of 17 June, the other to close it on the night of 19 June. Both events were staged at the Gardens and were combined with a night walk. I was surprised at the small number of people that chose to attend. There were about 20 each night with visitors and locals in equal numbers. Anyone who has visited Cooktown will know that it seems to be perpetually windy there. The Moth Nights were no exception; gusts of 40kmph were common. The wind seemed to come from all directions and that makes it very difficult to run a successful light sheet. Even though there were few insects, those who attended seemed to find them of interest. Several of the insect visitors were ‘old friends’ seen at many of our Moths Nights elsewhere.