(written by Nancy)

Quiet night at the campground – the only noise I heard was the waterfall over by the pool that was near our spot. Not sure that it is great hearing running water all night given our spot was a very long walk from the amenities block! Dave’s Thermarest pad deflated overnight but he didn’t notice until this morning – that’s what a few hard days on the bike will do to you. Hopefully it was just that he did not close the valve all the way – I guess we will see what happens tonight. I declined his offer to trade pads for tonight.

We were on the road by 8am this morning for the long day into Mt Isa. It warmed up quickly again and we took off the armwarmers and legwarmers within the first hour. Today’s ride had a lot more hills than we have seen in a long time – really since Rockhampton. They were not long hills or all that steep but they pinged some muscles that we haven’t felt in a while. And they kept the average speed down a bit – we missed the kilometres and kilometres of 30k/hour speed.

The hills did provide a nice change of scenery – lots of red rock and more of the yellow flowering acacia. Quite a few termite mounds again – they add a nice touch to the scenery! We could see some kind of mountain range in the distance – we eventually crossed it but it isn’t really marked well on our maps so not sure what the name of it is. A few good climbs to remind us what it feels like. We actually saw the Cloncurry River with some water in it – clear water even.

 

We passed a monument to Burke and Wills, the two explorers who tried to find a route up to the Gulf of Carpenteria from Victoria. It is a famous Australian story of all the things that can go wrong in an expedition. Burke and Wills passed the place where the monument was located in 1861. Most of the party in the expedition perished after it split into two groups and they missed meeting up at a tree by about 8 hours. There is a great book about the expedition called ‘The Dig Tree’ – I read it several years ago and it is in one of those boxed packed away somewhere. Just down the road from the B&W monument was another monument to the Aboriginals in the area, with some interesting text.

 

 

We pulled over for lunch at a roadside rest area just about the halfway point and Larry and Hannah were there. We chatted a bit while we ate our PB&J sandwiches and mandarins before we headed back out on the road to do the remaining 60k or so into Mt Isa. It felt really hot by then and we had some good climbs for a bit, but then got some really nice downhills that made the next 40k or so go by quickly. We stopped again for a snack about 25k or so out of Mt Isa – ate our remaining sandwich and mandarins.

We finally got into Mt Isa about 3 or so and headed to the information centre. We got some info on caravan parks and stores. We went to look at one caravan park that the gal in the information centre had said was good but it didn’t look great. The only store open today (being Sunday) was an IGA that was up at the end of town that we had come in on so we went back up there to get some food for dinner. I called two other caravan parks to see if they had any tent spaces – both did. One was further out of town in one direction, the other was a ways in the other direction. At this point we were getting pretty tired and just wanted to be done so we picked one that was closer to the other grocery stores in town, as Dave said the IGA was not great.

We headed to the Sunset Caravan Park, the ‘Top Tourist Park’ in town. We booked in for two nights and then went to see the space they gave us – it was really bad and neither of us were happy about staying there after seeing the site. While this place had a good kitchen the site they assigned us to was way at the back of the park and really just a dirt spot with a concrete pad. After debating for a few minutes we decided that given we were going to be here for a couple of days we wanted a good site and we would forget it and go up to the other major park that was back out by the IGA. Dave said he would try to get our money back – at that point I didn’t really care. So, he went into the office and the managers said they would be happy to give us a refund but that first we should look at this other tent area they had. So we rode back into the park and of course the tent area was a lot better, grassy and right next to the river!

Whew, enough mucking around – by that time it was 5pm and we were both pretty exhausted. We set up the tent, made friends with the neighbours, took our showers and then headed to the camp kitchen to make dinner. Dave made chicken curry and we cooked rice and naan. Now we are both so full we can hardly move! Well, perhaps we have room for a little bit of chocolate…

Hopefully this park will work out ok and give us a chance to relax for a few days. I don’t think we are planning to do much sightseeing. Mt Isa is really a mining town – the tourist information for the town talks about the scenic view from the town, with the centerpiece being the huge exhaust stack from the big mine just on the outskirts of town. I think we will just use the time to recover from the last 650k and plan the next leg into the Northern Territory. And of course, we will try to work up that summary of what really makes up an egg and bacon roll.

[slightly late posting of this due to wacky Telstra signal last night – hopefully it will work better today]