Thursday, November 8 Barkly Homestead Caravan park to Roadside rest south of Normanton – Driving Day

Room to stretch

     As we left the roadhouse a roadtrain was just pulling in. There was a photo of a roadtrain pulling 10 trailers of ore in the bar, it looked like it was dated from the '60s. I think there are length limits now, so you don't see anything like that anymore, thank goodness.

Long trucks for a big country

     We spent most of the day driving through a part of Queensland called the Barkly Tablelands, which is rolling and mostly grasslands. Raising cattle is about the only source of income for the area. It's slightly larger than New Mexico, and has 6300 souls living there.  It's population density is only 1/100^th that of Wyoming, which itself is only 2/100^th that of Ohio, so as you can imagine, it's a pretty big, empty place.

Not many people, but lots of cattle and corella

Visiting Mordor

    We crossed the border of Queensland in the afternoon. The land got hillier, then almost mountainous. We stopped in Mt. Isa to do a little shopping. Like Broken Hill, Mt. Isa exists because of mining, and has large copper, lead, silver and zinc deposits. The mine and smelter towers over the city that gave birth to golfing great Greg Norman and Lindy Chamberlain, the “Dingo Baby Case” mother.

Mt Isa is a busy, prosperous town, and over 10% of its children
have elevated levels of lead in their blood

     The landscape around Mt. Isa has very interesting small 'mountains' which seem to have popped up all over the place. Unfortunately, much of the area has been burnt by bush fire, so it's a melancholy view.

The region around Mt Isa reminded us of Mordor...
we're glad we didn't see any orcs

         We pulled off the road near sunset at a rest area for the night.