Mt Isa

Well what can you say about Mt Isa?  What a disappointment for us.  Our family trip had been humming along beautifully up to this point. Then we pulled into the much fabled Mt Isa and found very little to recommend it.  It was busy, smelly, expensive, and as we were to later find out, a hot bed of crime.

I'll relate Evan's diary entry first as it quite succinctly sums up the place:

At Mount Isa we went to Sunset Top Tourist Park.  It was expensive.

We went to the library and found lots of crochet books to photocopy. But when we left we had our mobile phone stolen.  We also had Sarah's MP3 player, $91 and some other things stolen.

We left Mt Isa quickly.


My diary for Mt Isa:

3/5/07
We packed up camp and arrived in Mt Isa. We are not overly impressed with the town.  The Information Centre ladies took one look at me and announced that absolutely no way can we bush camp in Mt Isa, we must stay at a caravan park.

We booked in at Sunset Caravan Park.  It has a pool which is good, because it is quite hot.  Once again tent campers are shoved down the back on dodgy ground with no tap and the furtherest away from the camp kitchen and pool.  Ironically it is the campers who are the ones who use the camp kitchen facilities, but they are always the ones sited the furtherest away.  Well, at least we had shade for most of the day.

We went shopping for Steve's birthday....

4/5/07

Steve's 41st Birthday

We had bacon and eggs for brekkie and cooked a cake for Steve in the camp kitchen gas oven.  Well tried to anyway, but managed to burn it instead.

The park has an air conditioned room with a TV.  We watched Eragon, Evan bought the DVD yesterday.  Both Sarah and Evan have been reading Eragon as we have been travelling.

We collected the mail and then went to the library. Just as it was starting to sound like a ho hum day, reading mail, writing emails, photocopying some crochet books; drama unfolded when we discovered that Sarah's little handbag had been stolen!  Sarah had recently had a birthday and she was loaded up with birthday money from her newly opened mail.  She had $91 and an MP3 player in her bag that was stolen.  We searched the library to no avail.

Later that afternoon, I discovered that my mobile phone was missing.  We realised that this too must have been stolen while were at the library.  We tried calling it but it was out of credit.  The buggers had used up all $30 of credit on it.

We reported the thefts to the police but they held very little hope that we would ever find our goods again.  I'm pretty sure that once we walked out of the door they filed our complaint under B for bin.

We decided that Mt Isa was not the place for us so we decided to pack up and move on fairly quickly once we had replenished our camping supplies.

It seems that we were so underwhelmed with Mt Isa that we don't even seem to have any photos of our time there.  Maybe it's a good thing, because if we had have gotten our camera out it too might have been stolen.

On Sunday the 6th we packed up and left Mt Isa for Riversleigh fossils.  We had a short walk through some fossils, there was not much to see really.  It showcased giant crocodiles and thunderbirds that lived around 20 million years ago - the period of mega fauna after the dinosaurs had died out.

We continued on our journey and will continue in the next blog about what happened when we got to Adele's Grove at Lawn Hill.

Lark Quarry

Lark Quarry is the location of a stampede of dinosaur footprints which are the subject of some conjecture as to how they were caused.

Both Evan and I have diary entries for our visit to Lark Quarry.  I'll start with mine:

1/5/07

We packed up camp at Winton with the plan to head to Lark Quarry. On the way we drove through Bladensburg National Park and visited an old homestead.

At Lark Quarry we planned to look at the dinosaur footprints.  They were enclosed in a big air conditioned building and we had to line up for ages to get into see them.  They spent so long before hand building us up to see them that by the time we got in it was a slight anticlimax. "By the time Harry got inside he was bored silly and not interested in the foot prints at all."

We left Lark Quarry after lunch and went looking for Old Cork Station on our way to Middleton. However, we took a wrong turn and ended up in the Diamantina National Park.  It was a fortuitous turn as we found a lovely campsite right on the banks of the Diamantina River at a place called Hunter's Gorge. I have a very strong memory (though I didn't write it in my diary) of the flies being unbelievably bad.  They were the kind that crawled all over your face and tried to get into every moist area, like in your eyes and up your nose.

We couldn't help ourselves while we were staying there singing the old Redgum song The Diamintina Drover, lyrics are below:

The faces in the photograph have faded
And I can't believe he looks so much like me
For it's been ten years today
Since I left for Old Cork Station
Sayin' I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

Well it seems like the sun comes up each mornin'
Sets me up and takes it all away
For the dreaming by the light
Of the camp fire at night
Ends with the burning by the day

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

Sometimes I think I'll settle back in Sydney
But it's been so long it's hard to change my mind
For the cattle trail goes on and on
And the fences roll forever
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back till the drovin's done

For the rain never falls on the dusty Diamantina
And a drover finds it hard to change his mind
For the years have surely gone
Like the drays from Old Cork Station
And I won't be back when the drovin's done

Read more: Redgum - Diamantina Drover Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Evan's Diary Entry:

Today at Lark Quarry we saw real dinosaur foot prints.

They told us that the dinosaurs came down to the river bank to have a drink. Then a big dinosaur came to eat them. Then they stampeded back to the forest (leaving the footprints).

After the tour, we went on the spinifex walk, and when the walk finished we had lunch.

We all thought their theory stunk, because they could have all rushed in and then ran all the way out, and then the big dinosaur ran in had a drink and left. And there sort of ? because there were no little footprints in his big footprints.

(Recently, a new theory has been put forward that suggests it was a dinosaur stampede at all.)

I thought Lark Quarry was very hot.