Mount Isa, Saturday midday, 1450 km on.....

Friday night, Julia Creek, 20 39 S, 141 44 E, 1150 km onward

Only drove 261 k today, but spent until 2 pm on laundry, organising necessary stuff in various small shops (no mall here!) and getting up to date on emails and blog at Hughenden’s’s veerrry slow internet centre.... Then ever westward, like yesterday afternoon, on the Flinders Highway/the Overlander Way, the site of the old coaching and droving trail – so that there are tiny settlements, each with their old hotel, at about 100 k intervals. In between NOTHING but flat grasslands, the occasional trees and cattle, maybe a sign off to a cattle station every 10 or 20 k or so – Long way between neighbours..... An incredible vastness and nothingness, just the road and the railway line, both shimmering endlessly ahead in the intense afternoon heat. Almost like some of the Libyan Sahara roads, but with grass instead of sand and gravel and plenty of creeks and floodways – all dry now just like the grass, but in a few weeks time the ”wets” will start and this road will be impassable at times... I’m travelling over the Great Artesian Basin, also the site of a vast inland sea during the Cretaceous, 110 million years ago – and there are spectacular dinosaur finds that I wasn’t aware of until recently – each tiny settlement with informative visitor centres and fun reconstructions of some of the monsters...

Finally arrived at Julia Creek, like all these tiny towns ablaze with jacarandas, bougainvillea and flame trees, all in riotous flower. I’m the only stranger in town, conspicuous among all the tough looking cowpokes as I search the store for supper, ending up with pot noodles yet again – all fresh meat pies sold out long before lunch.... one of the scariest looking locals sizes me up, jumps into his pickup, guns her up, grins and shouts “injoy yr’olidays mite” before heading back to the station....

Saturday midday, Mount Isa, 1452 km on...

Decided to start at sun-up, heading for the Queensland/Northern Territory border tonight – drive another 100 k of grassland, then I think I’m hallucinating – a hill, a rocky bluff! Suddenly the road starts to wind, climb, up and down, we must be near Cloncurry – once the biggest copper mine in the British Empire.... just think they found gold in the last set of hills 600 k back in 1871 and then copper here in the next lot in 1889 – how much metal ore is there in this country? Cloncurry also the home of the Australian Flying Doctor Service, but museum closed at 8 am on a Saturday, so g’bye Cloncurry!

Onwards the rocky hills continue, landscape & road more varied – looks like the old bones of the continent sticking thru. A bit too varied for one roadtrain, whose last two trailers had tipped over, causing some chaos – lucky there’s so little traffic, although busy this morning – more than the usual passing car every 5 minutes or so.... so now in Mount Isa, also a mining town – one of the biggest copper, zinc and silver producers in the world and dominated by the smelter plant’s huge chimney. But also with a fantastic visitor centre – another fossil exhibit – this time of 25 million year old mammals (including the giant wotsit in the picture) –and wifi & mobile phone connection! probably the last before Katherine, 1200 km down the road....

Another couple of hours drive and I should be in Camooweal, the next tiny place and last stop in Queensland.......