MOUNT ISA

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It has been a bit of a rough start to this leg of our journey. We left Mareeba late in the afternoon and headed straight for the hill climb up the range through Ravenshoe. (Qld’s highest town) The rodeo struggled in second gear so we knew we wouldn’t get far till it started to get dark and were all set to camp at Archer Creek where we have camped once before except when we got there it was all blocked off for the markets the next day. So we then had to quickly change our plan and ended up staying at Mt Garnet for the night. The new Avan performed well for us went up easily for us even in the dark.
Sunday we headed off again and weren't long out of Mt Garnet when we hit a 230km stretch of unsealed road. We were not expecting that at all! Our poor van and Rodeo really got a work out, and Peter too. The corrugations and soft spots were right up there with the cape roads and we found we could only drive between 30km and 70 km an hour for the whole trip.
By the time we got to Richmond we’d had enough and stayed at the Lakeview Caravan Park for the night. When we popped the roof to set up camp we found out the hard way that we need to secure things in there a bit better. We have now added a few scratches and dings to the interior and had to re-screw a few bolts in here and there, broke 3 eggs and pulverised all our fruit and vegies! Oh well hopefully we learn from our mistakes.
We are starting to notice that all the travellers have disappeared. The roads are empty except for the odd road train here and there and the towns are like ghost towns. It’s great for us as we get the pick of the sites and the Richmond caravan park owner was nice enough to let us have Max off the lead.
From Cloncurry to Mount Isa the drive is very picturesque, the journey until then was very boring. The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Max, sound asleep on his bed in the back lapping up the air conditioning.
Thank heavens for the air conditioning in the van. It is considerably hotter here in Mount Isa and there was no way we were going to try and sleep without it. So we booked ourselves into our first powered site. We had a lot to choose from as there are hardly any travellers / holiday makers / tourists here. So we picked the shadiest spot very close to the camp kitchen. It’s unbelievable how nice and cool our little van was with the curtains closed and the hum of the air con we slept for almost 12 hours!
Not much to do in Mount Isa this time of year. Most tours are closed but we still went to all the major sites like the lookout and the huge Moondarra Lake. We were surprised at how big Mount Isa is and how green it is.

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Comments

[Heather and Mel]

Fellow Travellers!
Hi Guys, good to see you back on the road again, like the look of the A-Van. Have fun!