Day 59 Sunday Aug 3rd 2014 Corella Dam to Mt Isa

It is cold waiting for the sun to rise. The drive into Mt Isa is magnificent with its red rocky ranges. The mine dominates the city skyline. It is a well serviced town and for us it’s refreshing to see some green grass. The Top Tourist Park is booked out so we make a bee line for the Big 4 park. Because the rodeo will be on next weekend the town is bursting. We get a nice spacious site, but it doesn’t have grass that’s beside us. Shucks.

Wow, a big town and it has an Asian takeaway. Isn’t it funny the things that you crave after only a week in the bush? The menu on the window covers Thai, Malay, Chinese and ….Spaghetti Carbonara!

The Isa is not an old town, lead was discovered here in 1923, so there aren’t the heritage buildings and traditional outback pubs that define other towns. Surprisingly, the City of Mt Isa actually includes the ‘suburb’ of Camooweal, 188 kms away. As well as lead they mine silver, copper and zinc.

The view from the lookout shows a city ringed with rocky hills the lookout being on a hill in the centre of town. It is a unique city. The very dry riverbed is on the western side of town. The mine is located between the river and the hills, it is huge and stretches for several kilometres. It looks as though they are carving out a lot of the hill with several open cuts and mine shafts. This area is known as ‘mine side’ as opposed to ‘town side’ (of the river). The sun sinks behind the hills with a crimson blaze across the sky. The lights of the mine become obvious and its true size becomes apparent.

Towing Kms: 58Kms