At 9am on Friday the 8th of October we drove north out of Tennant Creek and turned right at 3-ways Roadhouse towards Queensland. Any green in the landscape soon disappeared as we travelled through dry brown grazing country. Our first stop in the sunshine state was for fuel and ice creams at Camooweal before arriving at the smoke stacks in Mt Isa about 6pm. We knew 'the Isa' was a huge mining town but we had no idea that it was all smack bang in the middle of the town. The Xstrata mining operation is the largest underground mine in Australia. We stopped for 2 nights at the Coppercity Caravan Park and did lots of washing and grocery shopping. We met a lovely family from Victoria who were travelling around the country for 2 years and had stopped in Mt Isa for work. Ashleigh, Hannah and their 2 girls raided the 'free clothes' box in the laundry and played dressups for hours. We also visited a free water park in the centre of town, right below a smoke stack. No wonder we read that Isa kids have the highest lead levels in the country. After Mt Isa we stopped only 60kms out of town at peaceful Corella Dam for the night. The dam was constructed to supply drinking water for Cloncurry and was a beautiful camp with loads of birdlife including Brolgas.
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