The early bird catches the worm (or gets the tour)

Today we had a slow start, thinking we would mosey on up to the Outback at Isa Information centre and book a couple of mine tours; one underground and one above. However, when we got there we found out the last tour for above ground mine for the day went at 11am which was 10 minutes earlier and the young lady who helped us didn’t really explain about the underground tour so we were a bit confused and got tickets for the displays in the centre itself which involved the Riversleigh Fossil Centre and the Isa Experience Gallery but then we ran into some guys in miners gear who we asked about the underground tour and they said one had just gone and another was going at 12pm so see if we can get tickets but when we went back to the desk, they told us it was booked out! How annoying. I just looked on their website wondering whether I should have checked there last night and avoided the disappointment but found that there were no times there either. Fin and I took a walk up to the centre the previous night to see if there was any information stuck up outside somewhere but nothing. So the moral to this story is to check the times if none are listed and not assume they will have the tours all day long or at least until the early afternoon!
We had a look around what the centre had to offer and the information and diorama displays regarding fossils were very interesting. They found fossils nearby in the Riversleigh area that have shown the development of early mammal megafauna over the past 30 million years. There are rich deposits of all kinds of fossils at varying levels showing giant meat eating kangaroos, thylacines (Tasmanian tigers), and Thingodonta – how’s that for a name? It was a fossil with strange teeth so they called it Thingodonta. How the palaeontologists work out what each fossil is and where it fits with others they find is beyond me - I thought we had some hard puzzles at kindergarten! Actually, I think I find the area of fossil discovery more interesting than mines anyway but I know Fin would have liked to see into the mines. The other section was about the mine and how Mt Isa was settled as well as there being an aboriginal art display to look at and some incredibly creative ‘creatures’ made out of all kinds of parts of machines, tools etc welded together made by a local guy who won’t sell them and just does them because he likes to and doesn’t think they would sell. I think they’re great!
The next disappointment was realizing after we had lunch and did some shopping that the underground hospital Fin wanted to see closed at 2pm! What is it with the tourism here? Everything closes early!
We went to an Aboriginal Women’s Project called Arilla Paper where they make papers out of grasses and leaves and Hazel took us through the workshop and explained how they treat the grasses to make into paper fibre. She was in the process of soaking some Spinifex grass to soften it before it is cooked tomorrow morning for about 4 hours then mulched up to make into paper fibre. Unfortunately, the workers only come in for 4 hours in the morning – again with the morning! You just can’t have a sleep in Mount Isa!