Tuesday
An early departure this morning as we have no bread for breakfast. We're packed and gone before 8am and call in at the BP for breakfast. Off to the Mary Kathleen Museum (some more about Mary Kathleen later) where we spent an hour looking at the exhibits and then onto the John Flynn Place and Royal Flying Doctor Museum. Wow - this place is amazing and we spent over 2 hours here looking at the history of the service, the telegraph and planes. We'll worth the visit and I'm glad we took the time to see it.
After visiting the Mary Kathleen Museum we decide that we'll free camp at the town of Mary Kathleen - or I should say ghost town. Mary Kathleen was a town about 63 kms from Cloncurry.
The town was established by Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd after uranium was discovered in 1954 and is about 5 kms from the mine. The mine operated until 1963 and everything was "mothballed" until new contracts were obtained. It re-opened in 1972 before the mine was closed and township disbanded in 1982. The houses were all sold and everything else was auctioned off in 1984 - Australia's largest auction.
The roads remain, but are in poor condition. As we drive through there are other campers visible. At the museum we'd obtained a map of the town as it had existed and we can see what used to the the bowling club and green as well as the slabs which used to be garages. We set up camp using one of these slabs.
After lunch I take a walk through the nearby streets and take some photos. There is evidence of some driveways and some garden beds. It's quite a large area and had housed 1000 residents in it's day. With so few campers here you really feel like you are on your own.
When the sun sets, the breeze dies down and there is a real stillness to this place. We'll take a drive around town in the morning before we leave to see it we can identify more features. This is definitely a free camp we'd come back to.