COOK‘S DEPARTURE A SIGN OF THE TIMES

WHEN the super-sized effigy of Captain James Cook was first erected to promote the Cook Motel in the 1970s Cairns was a very different place to the city it has grown to become in 2022.

The Sheridan St icon harks back to a time when Cairns was renown as a dreamy tourism mecca known for a propensity to harbour questionable characters running from wreckage created in the south and a special brand of tropical kitsch.

Fast forward 50 years the controversial statue has finally been given it’s marching orders by James Cook University ahead of plans to turn the landmark’s decades-long resting place into something more than an underused carpark famous for bikini car washes and midnight dust-ups.

New owner Martin Anton – who bought the replica of the famous British explorer for $1 from JCU – after two false starts plans to finally truck the statue out next week in a historic moment for the city.

“Wednesday morning it will be his last tour of Cairns and the regions,” he said. It will be carefully removed by machinery in one giant piece and placed on a semi-trailer to be relocated at a property at Mount Molloy.

Activists convinced the statue was an inappropriate throwback to Australia’s violent colonial past will undoubtedly welcome Captain Cook’s exit from the city. But rather than the statue’s removal representing a loss of an icon, celebrating an 18th century voyage of discovery, the moving on of the saluting explorer is much more.

To be built in the statue’s place, the Cairns Tropical Enterprise Centre, will perform groundbreaking research to bring cutting-edge technology to Far North medical professionals in an advancement that marks the growth of an industry-diverse and thriving jewel in the crown of the Far North.