Macca and Mt Isa

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We are now in Queensland and on Eastern Standard Time once again. After leaving Tennant Creek, we called into the old Telegraph Station a few kilometres out of town to have a look around and read how they lived there when it was very remote, and morse code was the manner of sending messages. There were small buildings for smoking meat, and keeping food cool underground, a blacksmith's and a butchering building - all interesting.

It was then a long long drive though more outback country towards the border. There were quite a few caravans and motor homes heading west - making us glad we were going the other way. Quite a few pull over early at roadside clearings to get good campsites for the night. At one, Avon Downs, where we stopped to make afternoon tea, there was a policeman doing a random breath test and Doug was tested. There is a police station in the lonely little outpost so I suppose they have to amuse themselves somehow!

About 20 kilometres from the Queensland border, we were doing our maniacal wave at another Jayco motor home like ours - as you do - two fingers off the wheel for a caravan and roadtrain, a slight wave for a motor home and all out for a motor home like ours! We realised the other motor home following just behind them was the G’day van and we were also waving at Macca - Ian McNamara from the ABC’s Australia All Over. We’d heard he’d done last Sunday’s show from Mt. Isa where the Mt. Isa Rodeo was on over the weekend and wondered if we’d pass his motor home. http://www.abc.net.au/australiaallover/

We spent the night at Camooweal, population 310, with a few rodeo riders and their cattle and horses also staying in the caravan park but we heard not a thing all night and they were gone by the time we'd surfaced.

We drove on to Mt Isa then and it is here where we are spending tonight. It is a mining town - copper, lead, zinc - and apart from the big mining complex and huge mullock heap on the edge of town, it's quite a nice little city. We drove around and walked around having a good look before coming back to the caravan park to turn on the air conditioning and finish the afternoon in coolness. The tourist things here are mostly underground - the mine and the underground hospital from the war, but as I'm not comfortable underground, I think we'll forgo them and make our way east in the morning.

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