15-19 October

Mt. Isa is a city with over 20.000 habitants most due to the mining companies... it is a big mining area for copper, zinc and lead. We visited the Hard Mine which is a museum in an old mine shaft so the visitor could get the hands-on feeling being under the earth. They had several of the big machines on display all in working order as we experienced – we drove in with the “rail carriage”, could use one of the drills and the guide operated several other machines which filled the hole walkway and made so much noises we had to have earmuffs on. Before we could even enter the mine we we dressed as miners – orange complete suit or coat, gum boots and had to wear the battery for the helmet torch.

The Mt. Isa Mine is still working and they are blasting twice a day at around eight. You can feel the shock-waves (I guess it's similar to an earthquake). The other day we drove out to Lake Moondarra – the recreation area close to town. With good luck you can even swim in the lake and of course you can fish (the next competition will be on 25^th October) – maybe we could do some wild camping here as the caravan  park is getting expansive. We just hope not to see to many Aborigines in the park. The Aborigines in the city are like a ‘pest’ (at least to us) most likely just sitting around doing nothing and so many look weird (swollen lips, deformed legs...) as long as we can avoid them. 

We had luck no Aborigines in the park but a lot of peacocks. They were really doing a big show for us – showing their wheels a lot – i'm not sure if they wanted to impress us or the female peacocks. We've spent the whole afternoon at Lake Moondarra but didn't go for a swim as there were too many algae and the water edge was green. 

The other day we opted for the Surface Mine Tour – all into a big bus and driving onto the mine grounds. First we drove around the mine and had a look at the staff parking and the big elevator. Then we went onto the ground where they're transforming one part to an open cut mine. They are still working on the  transformation – getting a deep hole (should be around 700m deep) into the ground. They're using really big trucks for it – the tyres are probably as tall as I'm – but they just looked liked match-box trucks from our spot... 

Mt. Isa mine has some connections to a mine probably 60km away. In the other mine they just get the ore off and transport it to Mt. Isa. They're using really big trucks for it: 5 carriages with an additional engine and carrying around 500t per load. These road-trains are not allowed on public roads – I'm not sure if I'll see one up close. Then the tour went on to the copper smelter passing some big crushing wheels before hand. We were even in luck – they did some new pouring...  we could see a really hot fire (it glowed green) and a big bowl pouring something into the fire... Luckily we were just 10 people so we could take pictures without moving heads in front of the camera. The other day we used for cleaning and servicing the car, stock up on some groceries and then we started our round-trip as we had to come back to Mt. Isa to collect our mail.