Speedy trip to the Golden Centre

We left Mt Isa early this morning and headed along the Barkly Highway toward Tennant Creek, Northern Territory. We drove past the MIM, Mount Isa Mines, buildings that we had seen in the distance; it seems really strange to have a big ugly mine/smelter right on the edge of the city like that. No wonder they dress it up with pretty lights at night; it makes it seem like something attractive. The road was fairly good at first but we had read that the Barkly was in poor condition though slowly being repaired and we did come to the rougher section once we got into the Northern Territory which is not very far after you leave Camooweel which is a satellite suburb of Mount Isa some 180km west of the city. We stopped there to get petrol and were amused at the sign on the wall facing the other way saying, “Welcome to Queensland. Adjust watches ahead by five years and 30 minutes.” We knew there is a half hour time difference and I guess NT is considered a bit behind the other states judging by this sign.

The views from the road once we got into NT became quite different; the earth was very red, the dry grass very pale and the trees once they did appear mostly a greyish green. It was a very pretty sight but I was driving and Fin was asleep at this stage so I did not get any photos. I think they call the Barkly the “Overland Way” once you get into the territory.
A funny thing happened once we were in the territory - there was that a sign saying, “110km/h ends in 1km” so I started to slow down only to discover that the speed limit had changed to 130km per hour! It made our trip a bit quicker than we expected being able to hike along at that rate; actually I stayed a bit under because as I said the road was rough, with pot holes in some sections, and there were warning signs about cross-winds showing pictures of caravans swerving out of control. We could see the long grass and bushes leaning over in the wind also. In other words, you can imagine that we were driving across very flat open plains. We also noticed that there was very little road kill on this road until we were closer to Tennant Creek though I did see a magnificent Wedge Tailed Eagle fly off from feeding on something on the road. We filled up with petrol at the roadhouse along the way and we paid $1.73 per litre for Premium Unleaded! Dearest we have had to pay yet.

We had to change rooms when we found that the room we were in had a very poor signal from the (paid) wireless internet available and couldn't connect so they asked if we would like to move but it is an upstairs room so most people decline but we packed all our gear up and trudged up the stairs with it to our new room where we have a much better signal. See what we do to provide all our fans with more photos to look at? Jokes aside, that is why I wanted the wireless, apart from there being no vodafone here anyway, so I can upload more pics to Webshots which I am currently doing. You will finally get to see some more of the places we spoke of in our previous posts. Enjoy!
So........ we have arrived at the Golden Centre of the Outback – Tennant Creek.