Mount Isa

We drove the one and a half hours to Cloncurry where Gadi had a look around the Mary Kathleen museum at the Visitor Centre. Cadbury and I chilled out in the shade where water sprinklers helped keep us cool. Then we had a rest inside the caravan - windows opened up wide to catch even the slightest breeze.

Next I visited the John Flynn - Royal Flying Doctor Museum where I learnt about how the RFDS began in outback Queensland and how dedicated John Flynn was to his vision of an air service that could traverse the outback, thereby reducing the vast tyranny of distance.

After my museum visit it was time to stop at Woollies to do a shop before heading on out of town to Corella Dam, situated on a private station, where you can camp for free. Half way between Cloncurry and Mount Isa this looked like a good place to stay for a couple of nights to explore the area. We drove around the dam and found there were many people camping and it wasn’t easy for us to maneuver the car and caravan into a spot with any view of the lake. Gadi didn’t really want to stay and given it was only 4pm we had enough time to drive to the large mining town of Mount Isa where we decided to stay behind a hostel that we had heard from fellow travellers let’s you park your caravan out the back and you can use the facilities for a small fee. We unhitched and made it in time to drive up to the town lookout in time for sunset. We saw the incredible sight of at least 20 kytes (hawks) swooping and flying low over our heads. They seemed to be enjoying their air acrobatics. As the sun sank lower, it highlighted the darkening hills surrounding the town and the smoke coming from the mine smelters. This was immediately followed by an extraordinary huge, full moon rising up yellow and orange from the opposite darkening range. As the lights of town twinkled before us you could see how big the mines were, totally surrounding and overwhelming the town.

Time to grab some takeaway for dinner and open up all the windows of our little home on wheels to cool it down now the heat of the sun was gone.

Another day well spent on our journey. Tomorrow we will continue north to Gulf country - Normanton and Karumba.

Night night from ‘The Isa’ as it is commonly known!Read more