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"On the road again..." ...it's funny, I only have to say those three words whenever we jump in the car, and Dylan bursts into song each and every time. He only knows a couple of lines, but he can't resist singing it...
This one's more appropriate though... "The road is looong..." Bloody hell, it's a big country we live in, and you really don't appreciate it until you try to drive across it. This is the third day straight driving in a row, and although it's not ideal, it's the right part of the trip to be making up lost ground. Most of the places we've stopped, which were originally two nights, have dropped back to one night, and that's not a bad thing, there's really not that much to see...
Still heading east from Barkley Homestead, we drove straight into an all day headwing / crosswind, which really shook us around, and played havoc with our fuel economy. Also, the road deteriorated quite badly, becoming irregular and pot holed and bumpy, and made it a noticeably less comfortable trip. (Compared to the Stuart Highway, which was great.) However, when we hit the Queensland border, the road became brand new again... We stopped briefly at Camooweal for fuel and coffee, and a sign there said "Welcome to Queensland. Please adjust your watches 30 minutes and five years forward..." Haha, good joke! We're still 1000km from the coast, but I can almost smell the sea air, and sense civilisation...almost... The countryside changed today too. We went from very green, almost lush, vegetation in central australia, to much dryer and more sparse grasslands in outback queensland. Obviously pastoral ground out here, judging by the numbers of cows in the paddocks (that's a fair clue, right there...), but at least the roads are fenced to stop the cows becoming burgers on the front of road trains.
We covered about 460km today, took us 6 hours with the time difference, and arrived in Mt Isa at 2.30pm. Have to say, with all the driving recently, the boys have been fantastic in the car. They're getting along well, and although there's the occasional argument, they're better than we expected.
Once we'd arrived in Isa (as she's known to us travellers), we set up quickly, and headed back into town to fit as much in as we could. Straight to the visitor information centre, where they have this enormous museum about the fossil fields out here in western queensland, and what it all means. The ground out here is apparently some of the richest fossil fields known to man, and cover everything from 20,000 years ago to 30 million years ago. They're constantly digging up new finds, and making new discoveries about the plants and animals from the past eras. Interesting stuff!! They didn't cover anything about the dinosaurs though, that will all be explained once we get to Richmond and Hughendon...
We finished the afternoon with a visit to the city lookout, which gave us an expansive view of the mining operation out here, and a better appreciation of the sheer scale of what's involved... It's just massive, and dominates the entire skyline!! Mt Isa is a very clean, tidy and pretty town (other than the mining... look the other way, over there!), which is a contrast to the rough and tumble reputation it has. We were pleasantly surprised. A quick visit to the shops for groceries led to the continuation of Dylans obsession with Lego, and an expansion of his holiday collection, along with a couple of DVD's for down the track. (You know, we never turn on the tv! Ever! Only to watch a movie on a quiet night..) The park we're in (BIG4 Argylla Tourist Park) is a basic park, but the facilities are clean and well looked after. (That's all we need, remember?) The sites are chockers though, and we're jammed in like sardines, all on top of one another. There's room for our awning, but not our car, and we're back to back, and it's like that for about 30 sites wide. It's an incredible number of caravans... The next time someone complains about our sites being too small or too tight at home, I'm gonna smack 'em!!
Tomorrow we head to Richmond, another 400 odd km away, after which we should be back on track with our schedule. We're going to explore and learn about our dinosaurs...
Sounds like fun?
I'll let you know...
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