Mount Isa - 581 km

This morning’s drive from very touristy Karumba (see advertising mural) was heading east so for the first 30 + km we were driving into the early sun.

We had seen so many brolga cranes yesterday we thought it would be great to get a few shots of them on our morning way back towards Normanton and we did though there weren’t as many today.

Our first stop was in Normanton to view “Krys” the Savannah King – a model of the 8.63 meter crocodile shot by a woman named Krystina Pawlowski, a famous crocodile hunter in the Gulf region in the 50’s. Apparently it is the largest recorded estuarine crocodile and the photo opportunity addressed two things as the bicyclists we had seen the past two days were making their way through Normanton and had stopped to admire and photograph the croc as well.

As we headed south most of the drive was through very barren cattle stations and flat terrain so a pretty boring drive in some ways. Norma took advantage of the repetitive scenery to catch up on her reading.

We did see several areas where bored people had stopped to dress up the termite mounds. It did give us another photop well as something to break the monotony.

Also, there seemed to be more live kangaroos along the road today – one day we will get a picture of one before it hops frantically away.

We did stop at the Burke and Wills Roadhouse for a bit of a break. There was a small road train there – it was only three units long versus some of the four unit ones we have seen. The terrain is such that it is easy for them to pull that much load. It sure wouldn’t work toward the coast with the mountain passes.

Once we passed the junction near Cloncurry and headed west to Mt Isa the terrain really changed. We were now into the mountain range - I use mountain figuratively – should I say big hill – so it was a winding and more interesting drive. This is a huge (for the outback - population 25,000) mining town so the road trains we were seeing were for carrying ore though we don’t know where to.

It took us three tries to get a vacant camp spot tonight but we can’t really see what the attraction here is. I would liken it to there being 5 tourist parks in Trail. The smelter chimney was the most prominent landmark in town.

We are going to feast on gulf prawns again tonight. They are huge and we can’t wait! Mouths are watering already.