Captain Cook Highway
Linking Cairns and Mossman, where it joins the Mossman-Daintree Road, the scenic Captain Cook Highway connects the Cairns CBD to the city's northern beaches — Machans Beach, Holloway's Beach, Yorkeys Knob, Trinity Beach, Kewarra Beach, Clifton Beach, Palm Cove and Ellis Beach — and Port Douglas, providing a link between significant tourist locations and access to Daintree National Park.
With the Bruce Highway at its southern end, the Captain Cook Highway also delivers travellers onto the Kennedy Highway in Smithfield, and the Mossman-Mount Molloy Road before its terminus in Mossman,.
While a coastal highway connecting Cairns to Port Douglas was proposed as early as 1918, work on the route had to wait until 1931, and the unsealed highway opened as a toll road in December 1933.
Sealing work began in 1938, with the last section completed in 1945. Tolls were abolished the following year.
