From Townsville to Mount Isa

I love being a Girl Guide!


I am currently sitting in the bedroom of a Girl Guide leader here in Mount Isa, a mining town in the northwestern Outback in Queensland. We found Annette through a friend of a friend of Irene's, our Guiding friend in Townsville. I tracked Annette down on the phone two nights ago; last night Janet and I visited her Guide unit, and today she invited us over to use her internet connection to get caught up with the rest of the world!


Once again, I am getting a little bit ahead of myself. Back to where I last left off the story...


I realized I didn't explain about our adventures on last Sunday morning, the day Janet and I left Townsville for Mt. Isa. Irene took all three of us out to the Sunday market, where we had a chance to do some souvenir shopping. Then we headed back to Irene's house, where we were all picked up by Rebecca, Irene's co-Guider, and headed out to Bluewater, the local Guide Camp. Sunday was "Clean Up Australia Day", and the local Guides had organized a work party to go up to the camp and do some spring cleaning. We got there a little later than we'd originally planned, so we didn't get to help with the actual cleaning, but we did get to tour the property. The camp is about 7 acres and has two main buildings - one a giant indoor space for cooking and crafts (kids can sleep inside it on the floor too), and another as a bunk house. I found it a little strange that the bunk house didn't have its own kitchen, but hey, styles are different wherever you go. Throughout the rest of the property were clearings where sites of tents could be erected, and shaded areas for picnic tables. They also had a "Flying Fox" (we would call this a zip line) and a small low-ropes obstacle course, which was great. I also loved how when Janet went to use the washroom, she was confused about why there were planks laid over the toilet bowl. She thought that this meant the toilet was out of order. Nope... it's to keep the frogs out of the toilets! And the frogs here are HUGE.

We had to hoof it back to Irene's for lunch, and then it was off to the train station so Janet and I could get on our train to Mount Isa. What a totally different experience from riding the Indian Pacific! Jen, unfortunately, couldn't join us for this part of the adventure - she's now back in Melbourne, working, and will meet up with me again in a couple of weeks in Alice Springs.

The weather has been terrible up here in Queensland in recent months - they've had way more rain than usual and there's been lots of flooding. One of the side effects of all this bad weather is that very few people have been traveling - which meant that our train was EMPTY. Janet and I had gotten a great 2-for-1 deal on our tickets, and had upgraded to economy berths for the trip (it was a 21-hour ride to Mt. Isa). We were the ONLY people in the berth car until we stopped in at Charters Towers, at which point one other woman joined us in a separate compartment. In total I think there might have been ten passengers on the train!

The berth car was so much more comfortable than riding in the seats. Our berth could accommodate three people, although thankfully we didn't have to share with anybody else. Janet sat by the window, and I was able to stretch myself sideways on the rest of the seat and still not touch her. It was GREAT. My knees liked this journey a WHOLE LOT BETTER than the Indian Pacific!

We ate dinner in the Club Car (the food was also better than the IP) and spent a good chunk of the evening hours watching "High School Musical 2", which was playing on the TV monitors. When it finally came time to go to bed, the service manager was very kind to us - she let me sleep in the berth one down from Janet! Since both Janet and I snore, this was a good thing for both of us. I slept in the middle bunk (three seats in the berth = a triple bunk bed; but the lowest bunk was REALLY low and there was no way I was getting up on the top bunk!). The bed was definitely narrow and it's not like there was a bumper bar to keep me from falling out, so it took me a while to get to sleep. But sleep I did. It was wonderful.

On Monday morning we woke up to a completely transformed landscape. Townsville sits in tropical forest, and so is very lush and green. But in the morning it was clear that we had crossed into the Outback. We passed through six hours of stunted eucalypts, scrubby bushes, spinnifex grass and red earth before reaching Mount Isa. Most of the land was very flat, but as we approached our destination we passed through all these low, red, scrubby hills too. Once again we spotted wild camels from the train, along with herds of cattle that Janet thought looked like they belonged in India, not Australia! Occasionally we also passed signs that humans had once lived here; there are several abandoned mining towns along the rails and it was eerie passing through them.

We reached Mount Isa around 11am, and made our way to our hostel. The place we're staying is old and run down, but clean and air conditioned too. We've been meeting the most interesting people out here! The couple that own the hostel, for example, used to own a cattle-mustering helicopter business. The husband would help drove cattle from the air in the helicopter, and the wife dealt with the finances. Since at that time they lived waaaaaay out in the middle of the Outback, their kids did school through the School of the Air, which I am going to be touring tomorrow. So their kids did all their schoolwork from kindergarten right up to the end of grade 7 by listening to a teacher give lessons over a ham radio.

It is very, very hot in Mount Isa - the locals have been happy that it's been UNDER 40C this week - so Janet and I have been taking things a little slow. After moving ourselves into the hostel, we walked a couple of blocks to the main tourist attraction here, called "Outback at Isa". There are three separate museums in this complex, and we bought a pass to get in to all of them. So on Monday we toured the Riversleigh Fossils exhibits and talked with the resident palaeontologist. The Riversleigh fossil site, which isn't all that far from Mount Isa, has proven to be one of the richest deposits of fossils in all of Australia - on the scale of the significance of Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta. The difference is that the fossils found at Riversleigh are from the more recent past, and contain a huge variety of extinct Australian mammals. One deposit they're working on apparently used to be an ancient crocodile hole, and the bones of the victims were encased in the mud over millenia and preserved. Another site had originally been a cave and contained thousands of bat skeletons.

After finishing at the museum, Janet and I wandered around the downtown for a little bit, looking for a place to eat dinner. Not so much luck there! Mount Isa is a town of about 22,000 people, and the choice of restaurants is rather limited. On top of that, we're here in the 'off' season, so many of the places we checked out weren't even open for business on weekdays. In the end, we bought a roast chicken and some salad from the grocery store and ended up eating back at the hostel, which was just fine. The sun is really strong and even having just been outside for a couple of hours, we were wiped.

Yesterday we headed back to the "Outback at Isa" to do the mine tour. Mount Isa is one of the biggest mining centres in Australia and the entire life of the city revolves around the mines. We spent the morning wandering around the exhibits and learning a little about the town's history. Then in the afternoon we got all suited up in full mining gear - coveralls, gum boots, hard hats, lamps - and descended 25m underground into a recreated mine environment! (Apparently they used to do this tour over at the actual mine, but insurance and liability issues in recent years canned that. Trust me though, the recreated mine was very realistic!)

This was a fantastic experiential educational experience. We rode down in a mine elevator and then on a personnel carrier. We toured the crib room where mining crews would eat their lunches and learned about safety measures. We walked through mine shafts and learned how the drilling and blasting is done. I got to use a huge pneumatic drill to make a hole in the rock face. Our tour guide operated a variety of mining equipment for us and explained how they're used underground. At the end of the tour we returned to the crib room and had tea and biscuits and sat around the table, just chatting. What a great way to keep the conversation and information flowing! Finally, our tour guide had one of the other ladies on our tour throw the switch to detonate a (fake) blast, so we could hear and feel what it's like to experience a blast underground. It was really, really great. Our tour guide had worked in the mines here at Mount Isa for most of his adult life, and so was very knowledgeable about everything we were seeing.

Janet and I went back to the hostel to take a nap and freshen up, then we hiked across the downtown to meet the local Girl Guides for the evening. What fun! The Guiders, Pat and Annette, had had less than 24 hours notice that we were coming, and they were so wonderful and welcoming! The girls spent the first part of the meeting doing patrol activities. This included everything from baking cakes to playing silly games. For the second part of the meeting, Janet and I took over and we taught a variety of songs and games. After the meeting, Pat and Annette took us out to the Irish Club for coffee and cake. Since Janet and I hadn't actually gotten around to having supper yet, I ordered a plate of wedges instead. MMmmmmm. Wedges.

The club scene in Mount Isa is really interesting. Janet and I had already explored a bit of "The Buffs", a club right downtown. The Irish Club was on the outskirts of town and even larger than The Buffs. These clubs, and others like them in the town, hearken back to the early years of the city where restaurants and social activities were few and far between. The Irish community built their club as a place for people to meet and socialize. In its modern incarnation, it has a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, a pool room, a play room for kids, and a whole bank of pokie (slot)machines. The four of us chatted until well after 10! (I love how easy it is to chat with other Guide leaders, no matter where you are!). Then they drove us up to the city lookout, so we could get a view of the mine at night, and then back to the hostel for bed!

This morning I slept in late. I think the heat is sucking my energy away, but I'm not really complaining! Janet and I toured the town's Underground Hospital, which was built in the 1940's after Darwin was attacked by the Japanese in WWII. Although the hospital was never actually used, it was totally fascinating... the place was built under a hillside, near the actual hospital. Miners who had come off-shift at the mines worked 4 hour shifts to dig the hospital rooms and hallways. The entire place was built in 14 weeks! Totally incredible.

And that brings us up to the present. I need to get off the computer so Janet can send her emails away. For whatever reason, Hotmail is currently not letting me in, so I haven't been able to check my emails at all. Hopefully I will have better luck with that tomorrow.

Janet and I will be here in Mount Isa for two more days, and we catch the train back to Townsville on Friday. Annette and Pat, sometime in the past 24 hours, have put together all sorts of plans for the two of us - starting tonight with a BBQ out at the local lake. Have I told you recently how much I love being a Girl Guide??