After leaving Brisbane on Friday by train, and saying goodbye to the 4 people going to work on the Gold Coast, Tom, Ting, Katie and I made it onto the plane to Mount Isa with a little time to spare. The airports here are so much more efficient than at home - yes there are queues to go through security etc but it just all seems to be better organised. The flight up here was good, though we were unable to land first time round due to there being a bush turkey on the runway! Polly (the CW rep) met us at the airport, which basically looked like a garage with a runway (security, what's that?!) and retrieved our bags from the concrete onto which they had been unloaded.

We dumped our stuff at the Traveller's Haven Backpackers, which Polly and her husband Kim own, and went to have pizza at Polly's house and met her family. I think she actually has 4 children, 2 of which are still at home, Nicholas who is 8 and very cute and cheeky, and Amy who's 10 with the most gorgeous long dark hair past her waist. They also have 2 dogs, a Rottweiler called Toto, who is almost as soft as Bess, and a Chiuaua (no idea how you spell that!) cross Corgi called Mitzi who is very fat and very friendly, as well as a fluffy ginger cat called Puss In Boots! It was Ting's 19th birthday and Polly had managed to get her a passionfruit pavlova birthday cake which was delicious, and we had sparklers which I haven't had in years! Polly dropped us back at the hostel about 11:30 where we all collapsed into bed and had the best night's sleep since we arrived in Aus as there are only the 4 of us and another girl in our dorm.

On Saturday morning Polly picked us up at 9am to take us shopping, as in Mount Isa most shops shut at 12:30 on Sat and don't reopen until Monday. Spent far too much money in Mansworld getting kitted out in all the clothes we need for the stations, although I was lucky and managed to save 50 pounds on a hat as Anne (from Nardoo, my station) said I could have her old one, and luckily it turns out it will be exactly the right size! She also said I could have some of her old jeans too which will help out a lot. The others found it very entertaining when we went to buy sunglasses that all the adult ones just looked silly on me, and Katie joked that I should get kids ones instead - which are perfect! I've never had sunglasses that fit me before, and they soon stopped laughing once they realised mine were a third of the price of theirs! Something which I did find very strange though, while shopping for suncream, is that the highest factor they have is 30! Despite the fact that it is unseasonally cold at the moment - only 30C instead of 38C!

Australia seem to be a lot more environmentally conscious than we are - everywhere sells really cheap (40p) square collapsible bags to use instead of plastic ones, which are very useful, and everyone actually uses them! Also on the plane we saw that in Sydney on 31st March they were planning to increase awareness about global warming by having an Earth Hour at 7:30pm where they asked everyone to turn their lights off for an hour. Don't know whether it actually happened or how successful it was but at least they're making some kind of statement.

On Saturday night, after a hard day's shopping, Polly took us for dinner at the Buffalo (or Buffs) Club. Australia really seem to go in for members clubs which are huge and have restaurants, bars, discos, coffee shops etc, as well as pokies (poker machines), which have made them a lot of money and allowed them to build multi million dollar extensions. The food was delicious - I had barramundi, which is a type of fish and would highly recommend it. Polly suggested that we should go to the Irish Club as that was the place to go for people our age, so after a couple of cocktails at the Buffs, we tried to get the Irish club bus to come and pick us up - which basically didn't happen despite being told it would be with us in 5 mins each time we rang up! Meanwhile, Polly's car battery had died so they couldn't get home and after waiting an hour for the RACQ (who didn't arrive!) I had the bright idea of push starting it, as it was parked on a bit of a hill, and there were lots of us, and I'm proud to say that it worked!

Tom, Katie, Ting and me had been adopted by one of the locals by this time called Terry, and he called us a taxi and paid for it too, as he was also heading to the Irish club. Terry is 23, and one of the many people who work at the mine in Mount Isa - he's a safety engineer and gets paid 30,000pounds a year to sit and watch CCTV cameras! There's a real mining boom in Mt Isa at the moment, and so many men are coming in to take up the work, there's not enough accommodation in town for them, and they've ended up in places like the Backpackers until something comes available. Because of this, Mt Isa has a ratio of 18 men to every woman!!! The Irish club was definitely an experience, and although we had the choice of cheese (but not even good cheese) or hip hop (which later turned into dance/trance) to dance to, I wasn't overly impressed, but it turned out to be a cheap night as Terry had won $14k on the pokies the week before and insisted on buying all the drinks, and paying for the taxi back too, and we didn't get home till 3am! And I had a blue tongue as I'd ended up on some blue bottled drink!

Yesterday morning (Sunday) we were meant to go to the museum, but after the late night, we decided to have a lie in instead, until out Underground tour at 1pm. This was in a purpose built mine to inform tourists about the mining industry in Mt Isa and mining practices past and present. We all had to wear fluorescent orange boiler suits, steel toed wellies, hard hats with lights on and heavy battery packs - we looked very attractive and of course we had to buy the photo! I found the 3hour tour really interesting, as did Katie, but I don't think the other 2 were too fussed. There are currently about 6000 miners in Mt Isa, of which 16 are women! Although apparently in places where there is open cut mining, rather than underground tunnels, women are actively preferred, as they treat the machinery better and save on costs, but they are still very outnumbered by the men. It's a very well paid job though - your average miner is on $110,000 a year, which is about 42,000 pounds!!! The mine here is called the Hard Times mine, and was discovered in 1923 by a bloke who's horse ran away and when he went to find it he discovered the lead and copper deposits, so he named the mine after his horse, Hard Times.

We spent our last evening with Polly and the family having a barbeque which was very tasty, as was the mango we had for pudding, which grow all around here. On the way back we stopped off at the city lookout to see Mt Isa by night, and then returned to the Backpackers to attempt to pack and get an earlyish night.

Tom and Katie caught the 6am bus this morning, hence why I am up this early, and it was very sad to see them go. Ting and I are heading into town to get a few last bits and our Medicards before Anne from Nardoo picks us up at 2pm for the 3-4 hour drive to Nardoo where Ting is getting picked up by the people from her station. Thank goodness we're not on the bus, as we've accumulated so much stuff! I think Anne might be a bit shocked!

Had better go, breakfast calls...