Visiting a Mine Before Heading Off

Today we woke up early and Gadi did a tour of the mine. It’s not actually a real mine, as a number of years ago when they did tours of a real mine, a tourist ended up suing over some safety issue. So now they have a purpose built exact copy of a mine and Gadi’s tour guide is a mine worker - who works as a mine tour guide on his rostered days off.

He really enjoyed the tour and he learnt a lot about mining operations and about life underground for the miners.

Meanwhile Cadbury and I walked a bit first thing in the morning before the heat set in, then we chilled in the shade and eventually went back to our caravan - which was already hot even with all the windows and door open.

After Gadi’s tour finished he spent some time in the visitor Centre looking at all the displays and watching movies in their theatre about life in the mines.

Eventually we headed out of Mount Isa around 2pm and, given how hot it was, decided to keep driving until near dark - at least in the car we had the aircon!

We drove north on the Burke Development Road, glad to see the vast dry plains we had got used to over the last week or two, had given way to a more lush, shrub and tree-filled plain. Other than the Burke and Wills Roadhouse, situated at the crossroads of the Burke and the Wills Development Roads, there are no towns until Normanton.

We pulled up for the night in a large, empty rest area called Bang Bang. We found a nice spot with some shrubs and trees giving us some privacy and we opened up all the windows to cool down our little home, switching on a fan to speed up the process.

Meanwhile we enjoyed watching the sunset and then sat outside with a glass of cold, white wine and were treated to another full moon rising and a darkening sky with filled with millions of stars and planets.

Later we made a simple dinner inside and were glad we have an onboard hot shower to be able to wash away the heat and sweat of the dry, hot Queensland outback.

G’night from the middle of nowhere!Read more