Thompsons Travel Oz: Mount Isa

30th July - 3rd August 2014

We are spending 4 nights in Mount Isa as we need to stock up on some food and there’s a few tours we would like to do. We have been travelling with Craig & Julie (The Willo’s) since Mount Surprise which has been nice to have some travelling buddies! The kids are all getting along really well.

Our first tour was to the Mount Isa School of the Air. This was a really interesting and eye opening experience. We sat in on a couple of classes in progress and saw how it all really works. The students all live very remotely on stations throughout Far North Queensland and Northern Territory. We were shown on a map where all the students were located. A lady walking through the corridor had bought her child into the school for an activity day. They had driven 300 kl ms just to get there, they still had to drive home again! The remoteness is amazing and the children’s lives so very different to our kids.

We then spent the afternoon cooling off at the Family Fun Park, which was a free council park complete with a water splash area!

Our next tour was at The Hard Times Underground Mine. We all had to suit up into overalls, boots, hats and head torches! Our tour guide “Bill” had worked at the Mount Isa mine through the 50’s till the 80’s. He had lots of stories of working in the mines in the “old days” and how the machinery and procedures have changed. We took a lift down 20 meters and were now underground. I was amazed at how dark it was, absolutely pitch black, very scary if your torch went flat! Bill demonstrated how some of the machinery operates and even drove a huge machine through the mine. We all had a turn at doing a bit of drilling, which was a very noisy and shaky experience! I don’t know how people can work in these very hot, noisy and dark conditions. Unfortunately photo's were not permitted, so that's why you won't see any here.

Our next stop is Camooweal.

The kids at School of the Air