Kirb's Line

In and Around Mt Isa.Part 1.

Hi Everyone,
Joanne and I recently celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary, so we decided to spend the weekend at Mt Isa. It worked out well with me having the weekend off so we took the opportunity to go.
Mt Isa is a reasonably young town being established in mid 1924, after the prospector John Campbell Miles discovered lead ore at the site by chance when he was passing through on his way to the Northern Territory in February 1923. He gave his lease the name Mt Isa.

The eastern entrance to Mt Isa. The stacks are the dominant landmark along with the house on the hill.

Mt Isa Mines was established in January 1924 and immediately started setting up a town with the necessary infrastructure to sustain their workforce. Initially only mining lead and later silver, zinc and copper the mine being so far from a sea port had problems getting it's product to the port of Townsville. Camel trains and carts would transport the ore to Cloncurry for loading on the rail until the rail arrived at Mt Isa in April 1929. MIM continued on a sustained growth path and by 1955 it was the largest mining company in Australia. Xstrata bought MIM in June 2003 and has invested more than $570 million in further development and employs approximately 5000 people.

This is the final resting place of John Campbell Miles on the corner of Rodeo Drive and Miles Street.
His ashes are interned under the memorial and he keeps watch over the mine and the town he founded.

The view from City Lookout.

Mt Isa is situated on the Leichhardt River which only flows in the wet season and after becoming a city in 1968 has the title of the Largest City in The World in area covering 40977 km2.

Looking South from City Lookout. The A frame in the foreground is at the Hard Times Mine and in the distance is Mica Creek power station. We will have a closer look later.

Overlooking the hospital(the big building in the background) and in the foreground is the underground markets and the underground hospital. This hospital was excavated by miners during WW 2 as a backup to the regular hospital after the bombing of Darwin. It is now a tourist attraction and is still fully equipped as it was back then.

Mt Isa has a population of 22000, this is the council chambers.

The Red Earth Hotel is across the road from the council chambers and is the classiest pub in town. This is where we stayed the weekend, our room was on the corner, the door you can see on the top floor.

Looking from our balcony down West Street. Council on the left Rodeo Drive on the right.

The Barkly Highway runs through town, this is facing east towards Cloncurry.

The corner of Barkly Highway and Miles Street. City Lookout is on the hill to the right.

The Isa Hotel is connected to the Red Earth via a walkway and beer garden, the meals here are first class.

Walking down Rodeo Drive you see the footpath lined with stars and plaques of all the cowboys and bulls who have achieved Legendary status at the Isa Rodeo.

Simpson St.

Corner of Rodeo Drive and Camooweal Street.

Not much going on Saturday arvo.

This is from another hill that had a steep 4wd track up it, just couldn't resist.

The stack on the right is the Lead Smelter, it was built in 1979 and is 270 metres tall, the one in the middle is the Copper Smelter it is 153 metres and built in 1960 and the left hand one is the Acid Plant. We load acid out of there and take it to Phosphate Hill.

Mt Isa Railway Station and the Copper Smelter in the background.

Mica Creek power station was a coal fired station but it was converted to gas some years ago. It supplies power to the whole region including Cloncurry. They have started construction of a new power station the Diamantina Power Station which will also be gas fired and will assist Mica Creek to supply our power.

Some of the locals hanging out. Check the one out on the left. Totally chilled out.

Just east of town is Telstra Hill and is a popular lookout. There have been a number of fires in the area recently and the area around Telsta Hill has copped a flogging for as far as you can see. There are still fires burning at this time.

Telstra's buildings and equipment must have been very close to the heat. The small bushes are called Turpentine Bush and they burn with a very intense heat.

On the other spur of the hill is our new BOM weather station only commissioned a couple of weeks ago.

Brand New.

Looking east the Barkly Highway from Cloncurry.

A lot of smoke around from the fires burning in the area. Most of them start from lightning.

Not much vegetation left.

The end of a big day.

Well that was a look around town, tomorrow we will visit the Hard Times Mine and Lake Moondarra. Catch ya later.

In and Around Mt Isa Part 2

Hi,
Today we take a look at a couple of tourist attractions in Mt Isa. The first place we visit is called Outback @ Isa, which incorporates the Hard Times Mine, Isa Experience, Riversleigh Fossil Centre and The Outback Park.

This building houses the museum the Isa Experience.

The Hard Times Mine is a purpose built mine purely for tourism. Mt Isa Mines used to take underground mine tours at their working mine until there was an accident with a tourist and they stopped the tours. Mt Isa Mines decided on a purpose built underground experience and donated the manpower and machinery to build Hard Times Mine, in conjunction with the Queensland government supplying almost $7 million for the whole complex as well as Mt Isa City Council driving it forward also. Surface tours of Xstrata's mine are still available and leave from Outback @ Isa.

The Hard Times Mine A Frame was donated by MIM.

Outback @ Isa was opened in 2003 and Hard Times in 2004. The mine comprises 1.2 km of tunnels 4 metres wide by 4 metres high and is set up like a real working mine.The first thing you do is meet your tour guide, ours was "Brownie", he takes you to the store and issues you with overalls, hard hat, belt and boots and when you are kitted up you move out through the yard above which is scattered with old mining equipment of days passed and into the tin shed above. Here you are issued with a very heavy battery pack, which you attach to your belt and a miners light for your hard hat. Then you move under the A Frame and enter a cage called an Alimak cage for the trip into the mine, about 25 metres down.

All the guides are current miners or retired miners and Brownie is a retired MIM miner. Once you are in the mine you walk a circuit and he explains the different ways they used to mine over 70 odd years. They have very early mining equipment right up to modern day and it is all in working order which he demonstrates, there is one drill setup that you can operate yourself to get a feel for how hard it was to work in there. He also operates a 50 tonne underground loader and the noise from the drill and the machinery is deafening, we only had to listen to it for about a minute or two but those guys endured it shift after shift with no hearing protection in those days. Near the end of the tour you are taken to the miners crib room to have a cuppa and a biscuit while Brownie lets of a blast, it's a real life simulation of the real thing and gives you an idea of what it would sound like underground when it goes off. We then proceeded back to the surface in the back of a Toyota Ute, the whole tour takes about 2.5 hours, it was a great experience the only downside was that you are not allowed to take photo's down there.

This is one of the original pneumatic drills used in Mt Isa.

Next on the agenda is the Isa Experience, a mining museum in the complex. This is very interesting also and includes exhibits, interactive displays and a theatrette.

Some primitive mining equipment.

Man in a cage.

Mine Ambulance, I think I'll walk.

Couldn't believe the size of this camp oven.

Outback Park.
The Outback Park is based around the above water feature which is modelled on the Tufa Falls in Lawn Hill National Park and is a glimpse of the flora found around the north west.

A great spot on a hot day.

The lagoon is home to quite a few species of fish.

Joanne getting a bit of shade.

The Riversleigh Fossil Centre in the complex displays many of the strange animals that lived in the Riversleigh area some 15 to 25 million years ago.

This huge lizard is a distant cousin to our Goanna.

A Rain forest Koala.

This ancient Platypus had teeth.

Large Possum.

Ringtailed Possum.

This wombat type marsupial chased the Kangaroo descendant in the following photo down this cave.

And broke his leg.

This strange animal is called a Thingodonta. They were so bizarre that reserchers gave them that name.

The largest marsupial known in the world.

A scene depicting how they uncover fossils.

Hope that lizard is friendly.
That's the end of our Outback @ Isa visit and it was a very good experience and well worth the money. Next we head out to Lake Moondarra for a look around.

Lake Moondarra

About 16 km north of Mt Isa city is Lake Moondarra, built in the 1950's out of necessity for a reliable water supply for the growing town and mine. The location was chosen,and construction was started in 1956 on the dam on the Leichhardt River. The dam was completed in 1958 by Thiess Bros at a cost of 1.7 million pounds.

The lake is the prime recreational area for Mt Isa and surrounds, it hosts the annual Lake Moondarra Fishing Classic on the last weekend of October where a specially tagged Barramundi can win you $50,000 if you can catch it.

In the 1960's the lake even had a sandy beach courtesy of MIM trucking in thousands of tonnes of sand, they also had a Surf Life Saving Club.

The lake is stocked every year with Barramundi fingerlings, also making the lake home are Sooty Grunter, Long Tom, Sleepy Cod and Saratoga. Boating, skiing,swimming and fishing are the most popular activities on the lake, unfortunately camping is not permitted and the gates are locked at night as well.

There are plenty of picnic shelters and bar b que's around the lake to take advantage of as well as scenic spots to take photo's.

The Lakes name came from a competition held to find a name and Moondarra was selected as it is an aboriginal word meaning "plenty of rain and thunder". Moondarra covers an area of 2375 hectares and holds 106000 ML of water at an average depth of 6 metres.