Day 6

Wednesday, 19th September
Winton - Mount Isa

Winton
Cloncurry
Mount Isa

Distance Traveled

Today - 471 km

Total - 2762 km

Blog

Today was a lot of driving.

We started with a cache and look through the Waltzing Matilda Exhibition. That was good with a bit of history, some art and lots of antiques. Definately worth a look.

After that we hit the road for Mount Isa. That is a 5 hour trip.

The road was different once again. With sparce trees and a green tinge on the ground, the country side didn't look too bad. There were some areas that had huge anthills everywhere, each a metre high, for as far as the eye could see.

We drove for a couple of hours to get to the first town. A tiny place with only 20 population. We had lunch there and a long chat with the shop lady and a 7 year old long distant education kid (he went through the Mount Isa long distance school, not the Longreach one that we visited).

We did a toilet stop at the next town, an hour up the road. It had the same sized population of 20, but even boasted a police station and an old closed school.

It was pretty much a straight and flat road until Cloncurry

We got some fuel at Cloncurry at 143 cents/litre only to find cheaper just down the road at 133. Gotta shop around.

The landscape drastically changed to very hilly. The hills and rock formations were fabulous. Most of the hill tops had exposed rock jutting up from them. Lots of photos taken.

Mt Isa was nothing like what I expected. For some reason I thought it was flat and arid. The entire area is surrounded by hills and trees. The mine is huge and right in the middle of town. We did a quick drive around and then picked a campsite.

Nice place with a lot of grassy area. Its funny that a lot of these outback arid towns don't actually have any water restrictions. They have large water supplies and are quite liberal with it.

We setup and then the kids did music practice. Upon dark we went off and got dinner. We had the dinner back here at camp and then off to bed for a needed rest.

Grass? What Grass?

We didn't park on the grass.

Dinosaur foot Garbo

The Waltzing Matilda Statue

Us with a Waltzing Matilda Stockman

A bunch of wool brands for branding the wool bales at the Winton Museum

Its flat out there

And suddenly hills

Kynuna on the way to Cloncurry. Looks like a nice waterhole to stop at.

The real waterhole

McKinlay on the road to Cloncurry

Anthills for as far as the eye can see.

More Anthills

And more anthills

Cloncurry. Water wise, while Mount Isa down the road has no water restrictions.

The Cloncurry Hills. They just sprang out of nowhere.

Interesting hill structures

More Hills

More interesting hillforms

A great hill that one

Suddenly more ant hills.

More Cloncurry Hills

... and more hills

Traffic lights. Must be civilisation.

Now at Mount Isa

One of the smoke stacks at Mount Isa

Set up camp at Mount Isa. using the extra space

Here is the two room version of our camper.