Aug. 26th.......Mt Isa...Garry & Linda

Our potential car problem was sorted out this morning by the local Ford garage. It was the only place in town that had a generic computer that could be plugged into the VW to see what the matter was. Unfortunately it could only diagnose the general nature...something wrong with the EGR?? (part of the exhaust system, taking gases etc from the engine). Anyway as he was doing this he turned on the motor, revved it a few times and presto, the light went out........and stayed out. Probably caused by a small build up of carbon, possibly by some impurities in the fuel. We took it for a test drive out of town and it's going well. So our plans for Normanton are intact.

Did the washing, had morning tea with Trish and Jacko and then the four of us went into town to see the sights. Jacko drove us up the local lookout...great views. Like Broken Hill this place is built adjoining one of the actual mine sites....so plenty of smog when the stacks are operating and  a pretty industrial outlook.
The Xstrata Mine is really huge and the actual mining is all underground with hundreds of kilometers of massive tunnels making the site look like an ants nest. The tunnels are big enough for full size mine trucks to drive around in and much of the processed ore is taken to Townsville by rail. However, gigantic tailings dumps dominate the skyline.

Looking to the West at the Mt. Isa Mine

Up close and personal........

........but surrounded by attractive, low hills.

  

Next we went to the Tourist Office, a very flash place called the "Outback at Mt Isa"; as well as tourist info it incorporates an underground mine simulation and tour, an Art Gallery, a Museum, an outback park and the Riversleigh Fossil Centre.

The Grand Entrance to the Tourist Complex

We headed to the Fossil Centre. Riversleigh is a cattle station 250kms to the NW of Mt Isa and fossils were first discovered there in the early 1900's but not explored or extracted until the 1970's. When they did start to look at it properly they found specimens that would treble the known record of Australian fossils over the last 250 million years.....and the story goes that most of that expansion came in the first half-hour of digging!!
As the most important fossil area in Australia it was declared a World Heritage Area in 1994.
 

People can still visit the actual site, which is still being used by several universities. It is in the Gregory River area and the streams and river are fed by springs that contain minerals that are perfect for preserving the fossils in rocky limestone outcrops; unfortunately that trip is all on 4WD tracks. This display centre in Mt Isa just shows part of the dig, many fossils and dioramas of the complete animals.

Among the animals discovered were giant, meat eating kangaroos, marsupial lions that were the ancestors of the wombat, flightless birds, turtles, crocodiles and bats. From these fossilised remains they then extrapolate the bone structure and "build" a model of what the animal may/should look like....these models were in huge diorama displays.

A Giant Flightless Bird

A Diprodon, rhino sized and the biggest marsupial in the world!

From here we went to "TheBuffs" Club (the Carpentaria Buffalo Club) for lunch. It had excellent meals and the best hot chocolate I have had in ages.
There were other things of interest like the underground hospital, which unfortunately had an early closing time and so we missed it; and various Flying Doctor displays; so gradually we came to appreciate Mt Isa. It seemed to have very little historic architecture, and little character at first, but there were nice parts to the city and certainly the geography of the area was really lovely.

Bauhinia Tree - Mt Isa