Day 9 Mount Isa. 14 July 2016
The good news is, the NSW Blues won the third NRL State of Origin game last night, preventing a Queensland 3-0 Series win. The good folk of Mount Isa didn’t seem too happy about the result, but, hey. Lol
The day wasn’t any more appealing then yesterday. It rained all night 19ml and was around 7C when we woke. We took our time getting up this morning, no rush. It was our first day on the road in the van where we have stayed a couple of nights in one spot. Things you do to get to the warmer weather, and we still haven’t found it after nearly 3000km!
Yesterday afternoon, we decided to do the Ingress Mission in Mt Isa. It took us all over town and we saw the best, and worst of Isa. (Sometimes it can be difficult to tell the difference!) But it was fun and it gave me reasonable bearing on the town.
We visited the town lookout, which is just a short distance from the cbd, and gave a very good view of the mine, ore stock pile, the processing plants and the very high smoke stacks. The mine was originally a purely lead mine, but in 1943 it switched to mining copper, and then eventually became a dual purpose mine in 1946. In 1955, Mount Isa Mines (MIM) became the largest earner of export income in Australia.
The legacy of the mining in the town is lead dust, everywhere. They have spent lots on cleaning it up, but to this day it is still an issue as can be seen by the TV adds showing the best ways to control lead dust (Mop and water!!)
The town has some pretty good infrastructure in the form of sporting facilities, a racecourse, swimming centre, lots of very good playgrounds and a couple of very large clubs. They have the claim to fame of the largest Irish Club outside of Ireland!
We went into town around 11:30 and I met up with a couple of other Ingress players and gave them a bit of gear. It was good being a bit useful for them and meeting them.
We had a slow afternoon, we watched a movie in the van and then, later went to the Irish Club for tea. We have eaten inside many Irish Pubs around the world, we love them, but this just didn’t cut it!!
The club was large, and anything but Irish. No Irish beer on tap, or even a hint of Irish theme within the building. We both had Chicken Schnitties for tea. As Deb said, they were better than we expected, but then we both had low expectations.
Time to digress.
In the afternoon I had downloaded Pokemon Go onto both our phones and we decided to give it a try. A strange game where you have to throw balls and Pokemon creatures that appear at random in real world settings, it’s an AR (augmented reality) game based on and around Ingress Portals from what we have seen. But it lacks the challenges, competition and teamwork that Ingress has.
Deb found a suggested 3 Day Itinerary in a tourist magazine we picked up in town, over the 3 day itinerary it lists exciting things as “Buy your souvenirs and have a cold drink” 2 hrs, “Nanna Nap.. you deserve it!” 2 hrs, go to the movies, have a meal, …… Mount Isa the town of excitement!!!
Day 10 Mount Isa to Bourke and Wills Roadhouse Four Ways via Cloncurry 15 July 2016
We set out at about 8:30 on the road to Cloncurry, about 121km east of Isa.
Again we decided to do the Ingress Mission in town. It took us firstly to the Royal Flying Doctor and John Flynn Museum, which we probably wouldn’t have otherwise done. It was interesting. Today was also the end of Nadoc?? Week, and we happened to walk by a school as they had a full school assembly and a group of kids were performing gymnastics in front of the rest of the school and some parents. We did a little top up shop, filled the car, again, and Deb got some lunch from a bakery before we drove out of town and headed back west just a short way to get onto the Bourke Development Road and start heading towards Karumba.
On reflection we would have been better staying 2 nights in Cloncurry than Mount Isa. Cloncurry is a clean, neat & tidy town, unlike Mt Isa. Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie are much more enjoyable, interesting and cleaner mining towns to visit.
After stopping for lunch we were back on the road when I noticed something, or someone, in the middle of the road about a kilometre ahead. I slowed right down and as we got closer we saw in was a stockman on a motor bike blocking the road so the other stockman could drive a largish herd of cattle across the road. As far as I could make out the cattle were from Gleeson Station. The cattle looked to be a mix of ages, with lots of younger steers in the herd. I guess it took several minutes for the cattle to cross over the road, several 100 head of cattle would be my guess. I love this country.
We continued driving and went passed an abandoned roadhouse and eventually got to Four Ways and the Bourke and Wills Roadhouse around 1:30. We are overnighting here, before we go onto Karumba. There we lots and lots of trucks, vans and camper trailers parked all over the place. They were either resting, filling with fuel (about $1.60 per litre here, $1.30 in Cloncurry) or getting a bite to eat. I never expected that this place would be so busy.
We got a site and settled in for a nice relaxing afternoon. There is power here but no internet.
We finished the day with a cheese platter for tea on our bed as we watched a couple of movies.
Before we set out on this trip I downloaded a few Aps onto my Tablet, and so far the best and most frequently used ones have been, WikiCamps – You can see every roadside stop, many attractions and all campgrounds (free and paid) around, and the other is Fuel Map – its shows the location of all petrol stations everywhere and gives a price for any fuel type you want. It has saved us lots, particularly when you consider we have paid between $1.20 and $1.95 a litre for diesel. You can get upwards of 30c per litre variation in the cost of fuel in 50km. We have brought along a jerry can of diesel, which we have not needed as there has always been a station to fill up when we needed it. Deb has really enjoyed having her newspapers everyday. She has been reading the digital versions for many years now.
Along with listening to music, we have been listening to pods casts. Carly suggested we try “Serial” (it’s associated with This American Life). It was really interesting, it is one reporters investigation into the events of a murder in the USA and questioning whether the guy convicted for the murder actually did it or not. The podcasts caused enough stir in the USA to have the case reopened on appeal.
Number of Views :2269
I love podcasts! If after listening to Serial you want to delve deeper into the case there is another podcast called Undisclosed, The State vs. Adnan Syed. Here are some other podcasts that I like: Invisibilia, Radiolab, The Moth. I’ve also started listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History.
Thank you for those Claire, I will look them up. We are really enjoying them on our long drives.