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Mon 19 Jul to Wed 21 Jul
Monday morning we were off again, none of us were looking forward to the dusty rough roads again but we figured it was quicker going directly south and meet up with the Mt Isa highway east of Camooweal than travelling all the way back to Gregory Downs.It was 201 ks of dusty bumpy rocky roads, some of it was ok but we were all a bit sick of eating dust by that time.Both Bob's and our van suffered a bit of damage, busted water pipes & hoses from the big rocks that we spewed up along the way.No other major damage though just a very dusty caravan inside & out.As I said by the time we got on the bitumen we were ready to kiss it.We rocked into Mt Isa around 2pm and did not realize that the rodeo crowd had arrived and all the van parks were full.Luckily enough we got the last 3 unpowered sites in the Argyle Van Park (Big 4) on the east side of town.We didn't mind the fact that we did not have power but we did not have water either, we had to fill up our vans before we put them on site, and they still had the audacity to charge us the same price as everyone else, who did have power & water.Not happy Jan, and I told him so, and his answer was that he would gladly refund our money and we could go and look for somewhere else to park.They had us over a barrel and they knew it.Well we all got settled and cleaned up our vans inside and out and by that time it was our normal 5 o'clock session.
The next day everyone did their own thing.As we had been to Mt Isa a number of times we did not do any of the touristy things.Bob & H went into do the Hard Times Mines Tour and Riversleigh Fossil Centre, where you actually can watch the palaeontologists working in the labs to separate the bones from the limestone.There are so many interesting things to see and do in Mt Isa and one really needs a week to do it in.Just to name a few things that we have done while in Mt Isa besides the first two that I have mentioned, you have the Campbell's Surface Tour of Mt Is Mines, School of the Air, The Underground Hospital & Museum, National T rust Tent House, the Mt Isa City Lookout and Lake Moondarra.All of these I would recommend doing, they are all very interesting and there is such a lot of history on the area to be learned from each one of them. I have included a few photos from our previous trips so that you can get an idea of what I am talking about. And if you want a good feed go out to the Mt Isa Irish Club.
Wednesday we said goodbye to Bob & Sue as they were heading off with the Wrights to have 5 days of more dust on the cattle property near Dajarra.We decided to stay an extra day to fix up our tap and pipes under the van (very hard getting replacements in Mt Isa) and we needed to get our phone bill sorted out.So by the time we got back to the van park it was about 3 in the arvo, Warren had put his generator on to power up our batteries and at about 4 o'clock a chap from the office came down to tell us that we had to turn our genny off because it was not allowed in the camp grounds. With that we put it outside the boundary of the property behind the fence.A short time later the big boss came down in his golf cart and told us in no uncertain terms that we had to turn it off or leave. Warren was very polite and asked him if he could show us where it was written in the information sheets they had give us, which it wasn't, and even when Warren told him that he had to recharge our batteries because of his C-Pap machine, we were still not allowed to run our generator.They still did not offer us a powered site or empathise with our situation.We then told him that we would leave if he would refund us our $26, at first he would not come to the party with that, but grudgingly agreed in the end.It was 4 o'clock in the arvo by that time, so by the time we got on the road it was 5, and we still had to find somewhere to park off-road for the night.We set off down the road to Boulia and found a nice parking area on the side of the road, and witnessed a beautiful sunset and just sat back and enjoyed the peace & quiet of the countryside.Our next port of call will be Boulia and we will probably spend a couple of days there as we have never been there before and we believe it is a very interesting little town, so keep up to date with us.I have almost caught up with this blog only a few more entries to do.Keep well and happy LOL
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