Mount Isa Qld, Mighty Mining Town: (Saturday 6 through to Tuesday 9 October 2012)

Our ride from Cloncurry to Mount Isa was an easy short one, being only about 118 km, and through really beautiful breakaway rocky hilly country. The rocks are a light orange colour. We had to watch out for the usual brown hawks again, feeding on road kill. And we arrived in Mount Isa at 10am. First choice was a caravan park near town and shops, but an inspection of their camp kitchen showed we would have to be putting coins in the barbeque hotplates to cook, arrgh! Plus the kitchen area looked like a slummy dive of an open shed.

We went into the office there and asked "Why?" People in caravans with every electrical device inside made by man get charged the same powered site costs as those in tents, yet tenters have to pay to cook? Why are we being penalised? As usual, when confronted by our questions like this, the caravan park managers look annoyed and try to justify their stupid policy….and when Dave has finished his little spiel I tell them their coins to cook policy is "bad for tourism"! I reckon people who run caravan parks like this are just losers, and they are not doing financially well with their business because they are too dumb to know how to offer proper decent services. And these sorts of caravan parks always have depressing loser vibes about them. People in caravans with their own kitchens, toilets and laundries inside their vehicles have no idea what it is like to be an adventurous tenter. The Mighty Intrepids and lots of European travellers know!

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we ended up finding a Big4 caravan park just out of town and as usual, we were very happy with their facilities. This one also has the biggest swimming pool, one the size you'd expect to find as a main town pool. It was about 40 degrees all the time we were there so Dave and I had a great time keeping cool at this pool. Being a mining town, there are lots of permanent mining residents at the caravan park so we met some delightful fellows having their daily swim. Lots of friendly banter and jokes between us. I managed to get a great snap of Dave catching flies in a deckchair by the pool….I have been trying to get evidence of his falling asleep and snoring in public for ages but he has always woken up just in time before. Heh heh! He thinks he has deleted this photo from my mobile when I left it unattended, but it has been forwarded onto Perth for safe keeping and use in this blog photo album.

Mount Isa at this time of the year is a dry and dusty large town….they call it a city. It was started in 1923, and copper, lead silver and zinc are mined there.

We spent time exploring the local museum and a fossil place, then the following day we really enjoyed going on an underground mine tour. This was a highlight of our trip round Oz, as it was so well done. We got to have a turn at using a widow-maker drill…the miner tour guide had us actually "drilling" into a pre-made hole for safety reasons, but it was still a rumbling buzz for us tourists to get the feel of the big drill. We were shown lots of equipment in the underground tunnels and trudged along through watery slopes. We all looked cute in our bright orange overall suits and big rubber boots and helmets with lamps…like a pack of teletubbies.

We were also hoping to go on a surface tour of the open cut area but this was not available at a time to suit us. Dave managed to get a new back tyre fitted on his bike, as the repair to the puncture was not fully working.

The town lookout gave us a good view of Mount Isa surrounds. We also went for a sunset climb up a rocky hilly area overlooking our caravan park and took in the lovely peaceful surroundings, being observed shyly by some little rock wallabies. I thought it was sad to see the other side overlooking the town of this area was littered with signs of alcohol abuse and old clothing…..some of the local Aboriginals have been here and it looked to me like a place of despair. Hopefully one day things will improve, given the past history isn't helping but maybe younger ones will be able to feel proud of their heritage even though policies in the past have tried to destroy it. In 1884 there was a "Battle Mountain" event where over 200 of the local Kalkadoon Aboriginals were killed after trying to drive off white men who were fouling the waterways and taking over country with cattle.

I was dreaming in our tent on the first night that there was a big gathering of Aboriginals for some ceremonial purposes and I kept hearing the word "Bora, Bora". This was happening on the land all around our tent ground…it is a big flat area at the base of the big rocky outcrop we had climbed earlier at sunset. Later on googling "Ceremonial Aboriginal bora", I found there is such a thing…it referred to Aboriginal initiation ceremonies for boys becoming men, and other tribes were often involved. It felt like a very powerful and meaningful dream. I believe in my "vision" dreams.

Even though it was very hot in Mount Isa we went for a ride out to the town water supply, called Lake Moondarra. We planned to go for a swim, but there were too many weeds and when Dave said the blue marron would love my toes, I got cold feet and chickened out of jumping in! This lake/dam is enormous and the mining company funded and built it for the town. So we went for a sweaty hot ride back to town, had lunch at the "Buffs Club", keeping our clothes on! We had a peek at all the people in the gaming room….not an attraction for us, but it keeps a lot of local punters happy. I can think of much better ways to have fun than to shove lots of money into a jangling light-flashing machine.Then it was back to our huge swimming pool to cool down at last.

Tomorrow we are planning to wake up early,leap off our air mattresses with great alacrity and do a packing frenzy to get going early for a 460km ride to Barkly Homestead, which is on the way to Tennant Creek. It's going to be another 40 degree day and we hope to beat the worst of the heat. We've booked our motel room…I'm wondering if it will be as flash as our Burke and Wills donga?

Paparazzi Patty