ISA and the outback
Mt Isa is a town in north-west Queensland located on the edge of a very big hole. We come to realise that ‘the Isa’ is itself a bit of a hole too.
We explore the landscape above ground, pedalling up to the town lookout to survey the ordinary houses and shopping centre that lie safely in the shadow of the mine.
We get on a bus to get a closer look at the hole and find out more about the subterranean activities of the people in hard hats. Our chatty tour guide driver tells us that miners can make $100,000 for 4 months worth of shifts (4 days on, 4 days off), as a truck with a payload of copper ingots goes past. We see stacks and pipes and molten stuff and hear about a massive air conditioner built to cool the air underground and an even bigger power station used to make it all sing. I am interested to hear that young women are recruited to drive the massive dump trucks that work their way back and forth – their light touch has reduced the maintenance bill by 25 per cent.
Let’s leave this place of digging up the earth and kids with increased lead levels and head back out to the outback. To more flat, dry grazing land dotted with brahmins and the (very) occasional outback town. Fill up at McKinlay (population 30), home to a pub that featured in one of the Crocodile Dundee movies. We continue to Kynuna and book a bed at the Blue Heeler pub, an historic building with a wide verandah out the front and motel rooms and a cockie in a cage out the back. There are chops on the menu, cold beer at the bar and the walls are covered in messages and names scrawled on the walls by visitors.
Longreach is a destination that deals with Australian legends – particularly that of the flying marsupial and horsemen. At the Qantas Museum we find out about the origins of the flying kangaroo and climb through the City of Bunbury, a retired 747 parked outside. There are acres of historic relics and interesting information about the outback at The Stockmans Hall of Fame, a celebration of stock whips and settlers, swags and bush culture. We pedal along the Longreach wide country streets lined with historic country pubs, find a real country bakery, sniff the leather at the local country saddlery and watch locals eat massive country meals at the local club.
Heading south to Mt Isa
Up before the birds, we drop the tent and leave Litchfield for the long trip south back down the Stuart Highway. We are heading to Three Ways and the turn east to Queensland.
We stop to have a have coffee with ‘Fran’, who has opened her roadside home to travellers who seek an alternative to the same-same Stuart Highway roadhouses that sell fuel, souvenirs and food that is fried or microwaved. Fran has set up tables around her back door to supply us passers-by with homemade fruit and meat pies and ‘real’ coffee (a rare treat). Happy to patronise a local business, we sit and enjoy our pricey afternoon tea, read the signs that are plastered to every surface informing and directing visitors, and listening to the free entertainment - a lengthy diatribe from Fran as to the challenge of baking pies, and serving the dining public for the past 30 years. She rouses on one man for asking for a pie when she is serving afternoon tea. The sign says “Knock if I am resting, I don’t mind” but should have a footnote added “except if I have made my cup of tea three times and been interrupted by you customers!”
On day one we make it 600 kilometres down the road - to Daly Waters and the Daly Waters Hotel - the winner of our people’s prize for favourite overnight stop. They provide an easy solution to tired road-trippers with their well-priced chilled beer, simple good food accompanied by nightly musical entertainment, comfortable, affordable accommodation, friendly efficient staff and refreshing humour. The bar, beer garden and grounds are overflowing with odd sights and ’stuff’ - collections of thongs, bottles, number plates, and rusting farm machinery and bar is decorated with the id cards of previous visitors and draped in bras. There’s a huge toy panda wedged in a tree labelled a ‘drop bear’, a pig in a cage covered with a beach umbrella outside the cabins, and funny signs that direct visitors to park at (”any angle, mate”), that label the “n’tainment area”, and the designated pissing post for canine friends.
On day two and 1400 kilometres down the road, we are just shy of Mt Isa. The road has been flat and straight and narrow and the Corolla has withstood gusty winds, squeezed around road trains of three or more trailers and turned only one corner - left to Queensland. Another straight road to follow, narrower and traversing a landscape of pale grazing grasses inhabited by brahmin cows. And the big birds of prey are back - cheers go up when we spot Wedge-tailed eagles picking at road kill on the side of the road.
Litchfield National Park
By now we are itching to get out of traffic lights and air conditioning and back into the tent. It’s 32 degrees at 9am and we are keen for a swim in the waterfalls and rock pools of Litchfield National Park - an easy 170-kilometre drive from the city.
By noon the tent is pitched in a corner site under a tree, with the fly off for optimum star gazing. We set out to enjoy the cool wet season waters that are drawn to the surface and percolate out of the surrounding sandstone during this, the hot dry season. We sit in pummeling waterfalls, plummet into deep clear holes, and are nudged by fish in wide pools fringed by pandanus. Buses from Darwin bring in sightseers and swimmers, including lots of Europeans who have caught too much sun, but still no freshwater crocs in sight. We participate in a creative bombing competition, which is contested fiercely by two men - the first who calls himself a beached whale after flinging himself off the rocks causing tidal waves, and the ultimate winner who produces wicked martial arts and super hero mid-air moves.
Despite noisy clueless neighbours we have two nights of dazzling dark skies - a bit of moon, some satellites and a lot of stars to watch from our cosy tent.
Darwin
We farewell the world heritage of Kakadu and head up the Arnhem Highway to the cheesy spectacle of jumping crocs. Feeling a bit guilty at joining this circus we climb onto a boat and chug up the Adelaide River listening to our captain’s introduction to its safety features, which include colourful croc-attracting life jackets. Whatever, show us the crocs.
As we venture up the muddy waters crocs swim towards us to be introduced (Thelma, Louise, Bogart…) and then jump vertically out of the water for a lump of frozen bait, a mere snack which our hostess Shelly assures us will not spoil their appetite for surviving in the wild. Bogart is an 80-year-old monster who outwits the waitress on the first go and then packs it in and goes to sleep instead of heaving his huge weight out of the water a second time. We are introduced to one female who lost both ‘arms’ to a violent partner over two consecutive seasons, but who manages to worm her way up out of the water for a meaty reward.
The Stuart Highway takes us into Darwin, the furthest point from home during our trip. Humid days of 34 are followed by balmy 20-degree nights, when the locals come out to the Asian food and fire jugglers at twilight markets and to sit in outdoor cinemas in parks. We wander around galleries and museums and see mainland and Tiwi art and learn about the devastation of the city by cyclone Tracey in 1974, an event that erased the city’s historic buildings. The annual festival is on and so there is art hung on trees in parks and free performances in parks.
We wonder how the locals stand the agony of living on the shores of the inviting turquoise waters of the Timor Sea and not being able to swim without the threat of being bitten or stung (signs on the beach advise that a bottle of vinegar should be added to your beach equipment in the ’safer’ winter months).
Despite all this we don’t seem to find the feel of what Darwin means to its locals. Mitchell Street is about backpackers and Smith Street seems to be all chain stores. We search for a relaxed place for drink and find pubs with jelly wrestling entertainment, wine bars with coin slots to dispense your own and noisey bars with strange names and staff that hover. Parap markets is a great find - stalls heaving with produce and the smell of coffee and fresh juice and laksa .
At the end of the Darwin bit we wave goodbye to Tim. We put him on the plane to the chilly south at an uncivilised 2.30am