Goodbye kites, hello mines

Today we left the town of kites and headed for Mount Isa about 500km away. The road was surprisingly good with much of it being dual lane bitumen except there was quite a lot of roadwork going on which slowed us down to some degree but we still had a reasonable run and arrived in Mt Isa by about 3.15pm. The road became more undulating as we got closer to Cloncurry and even more so toward Isa. Once we were close enough we could see the mine’s tall chimneys smoking in the distance. Mount Isa is one of the largest cities in the world with the mines being its life-blood. It covers an area the size of Switzerland and has famous names such as Patrick Rafter, Greg Norman and Deb Mailman who were all born here. The annual rodeo is this coming weekend and we will be gone by then but the couple staying in the cabin next door to us in Normanton couldn’t get any accommodation for Wednesday and Thursday night due to so many people coming into town for the rodeo. It’s the biggest in Australia and one of the biggest in the world.
We were glad to be back into reception area for mobile phones again so we could book accommodation more easily and call home to see how everyone is as well as having Vodafone 2G to update the BLOG and receive emails. It was perfect timing to allow me to call mum in hospital since she had a shoulder reconstruction this morning. It all went well according to the staff but was sleeping each time I called so will ring tomorrow when she is not so groggy. What a relief that is over!
Tomorrow we will take a look around the city; see the mines and tourist stuff to find out more about this place.