Days 318-320 - Mt Isa, Qld (28-30 July)

Left Julia Creek for Mt Isa (approx. 250kms west) via Cloncurry.  As John was checking out the roof rack he found a tiny green frog perched between the kayak paddles, we have no idea where or how long it was up there for.  We put it under a tree in a damp area but think it might die as the environment in Julia Creek is very harsh, hot and dry not ideal for a little tree frog – fingers cross though that it survives!  On the way to Mt Isa we passed through another small town called Cloncurry that has an interesting statistic that on 16 January 1989 it had its hottest day on record a whopping 53degrees!  Mt Isa town of 24,000 people.  It is a hot dusty town with not a lot to do in close vicinity.  The caravan park we are in is not in the nicest part of town, nowhere nice to walk to with Coco so end up walking around the local cemetry!  A lot of the homes have wire fences to keep undesirables out or in.  Many have two dogs and some nasty ones at that.  It is quite interesting walking around the cemetry and sadly there seems to be a lot of babies and children who have died.  The oldest grave I have found is from 1932.  A lot of the graves are badly neglected a sign I guess of family members no longer visiting the the graves.  John has had something else to fix up, this time the roof rack again! all 6 of the roof mountings had either cracked or was broken through!.  A result of atrocious roads and a fair bit of weight on the rack (the 30,00Kms hasn’t helped).   Luckily again the caravan park owner has a workshop and offered to re-weld the mountings and strengthened each one with a gusset.  He did a great job for $50 and 6 cans of beer.  John is very happy as we thought this could delay us finding someone to fix it for us. Putting it back on the car took hours a horrible job!  Mt Isa was discovered in 1923 when a prospectors horse, named Hard Times, wandered away from camp and he (the prospector) found a lump of lead on the surface where he found his horse.  We did a 3 hour underground mine tour which was very interesting.  We did our tour in a replicated mine shaft built purely for tourists and it cost $12M to build.  A lot of tourists dollars to recoup the cost.  We weren’t able to take cameras so the only photo we have is the one the guide took that we had to pay an extra $5 for!  The tourist mine is named after a horse. The main mine is 1.8km deep, with over 1,000km of drives and 27 levels.  The mine produces lead, copper, zinc and silver.  It started production in 1929 and it is projected to have another 15 years of production.  Mt Isa has been founded on 92 different nationalities who came to Mt Isa to work in the mines from all over the world.  In the working mine at any one time there would be 70 miners working on a shift.  Back in the 1970s there would have been 200-300 miners working a shift.  The reduction in workers is partly due to technology and the 1970s was the development of the mine and required more workers to do this.  Our tour guide was a retired miner who worked in the mine for 23 years so was very informative and gave us good examples of what it was like to work in the mine.  We all had a turn at drilling a hole into the wall.  Would have been hard work those drills are heavy!.  Nowadays they have airconditioned cabs with drills on the end so a lot easier to work with.   At dusk we drove to the city lookout to see the sunset over the mine and city centre.  Lovely balmy night.  We have had some lovely hot days here up to 34 in the day and down to 18 at night.  Been using our air conditioning that we haven’t used for ages.