Mt. Isa

What a find... Unpowered site at the Sunset Caravan Park, down the back end, on the banks of a natural spring billabong. Yahoo! Peace and quiet.  Right?!?! Until night....bark, bark, bark, bark. Guard dogs in the industrial shed across the way. Oh well! Lovely during the day for a Nanna nap ha!

Camp at the billabong.

All kinds of birds, and lots of ducks.

Cocky!

Had a fix it day first day. Dez having trouble with battery charging, so replaced plugs and wires, and shuffled, and did stuff. But, still not right, so off to the auto electrician. Needed a new regulator to charge the auxiliary battery. All fixed. We hope. Apart from that everything has been working perfectly.

So we needed to do something to cheer Dezzi up, and what better way than a helicopter ride.  Love love love helicopters! It is such a great way to get a perspective of the size of the mine, and the city.  And it did put a smile on his face.

Happy Dezzi!

Just part of the mine. The chimney on the right is 2000 feet high. Image placeing the last brick!!!

We flew at 2,500 feet!

More mine. There is underground and above ground mining. They mine copper, lead and zinc. In the open cut mine shown here, it takes the trucks half an hour to drive one way! It's massive!

Just some of the city. The large dry bit is the racetrack, and rodeo complex!

Lake Moondarra Dam, which is just out of town. This is the main water supply for Mt. Isa, but after two failed wet seasons, it is now only at 20% capacity. It is a real worry out west. Everywhere is in draught.

Also, the dam is well stocked with barramundi! 

Bird's eye view! Love it :)

Just to show how high up we were! That's a road train.

Happy chopperers :)

We headed out to Moondarra Dam to try to get us one of those barramundi...but no good :(  Because it is so low, the water around the edge is quite shallow and weedy. We could have hired a pontoon boat, but they were not available for two weeks - getting safety audit checked - ggggrrrrr!  It is a lovely spot nonetheless, and we had a lovey lazy arvo.

Still smiling! Lovein' the holiday!

View from the dam wall.

Just chillin'

Next tourist stop was the Mt. Isa Underground Mine Tour. You get to wear very attractive orange overalls (one size fits all - NOT), helmet, light and Welly boots. The adult ones didn't fit me, so I got to wear a kids pair with Spiderman on them ha ha! Harland would have been impressed!

This was so great. The mine they use is one of the really old original group of tunnels. It is used now for induction and training for the main mine. Two and half hours of going through the shafts, down about 30 metres, and learning about life working underground, and all the machinery old and new. Definitely not for me! The main mine goes down nearly two kilometres underground. At one point we all turned off our lights, and the darkness is so intense. I would not like to be stuck down there.

The mine is actually under a water table, and in the wet the water seeps into the tunnels, hence the Welly boots. It gets so wet sometimes, they even have two boats down there to get about! It was fascinating.

In the main mine they blast twice a day, at 7.50 am and 7.50 pm, and you can feel the rumble through the ground, like a mini earthquake!

No cameras permitted underground, so you only get to see our lovely tourist shot ha ha!

Stylish miners!

Mt. Isa was great. Have to say it was really clean and tidy for a city in the grips of draught. Every business, cafe, and pub we went to was really neat and tidy, and people friendly and helpful.

So before we left had a little Bevy time, shopping, pedicure, cafe lunch before we left "civilisation" and head further north to Normanton and Karumba! So goodbye to the billabong (where on the last night a pair of ducks decided to flamin' quack the night away, and despite chucking stones in the water to scare them away...they persisted!)

Yeah peaceful now! Where are those pesky ducks?

Next stop Normanton...........