Bob Kattah, Alan Jones and the ever-present smokestack in 'The Isa'

We pressed on the next day, making our way out of the national park and skidding into Mt Isa on an empty tank. Mt Isa is big, dusty and totally dominated by the huge mine in the middle of town. What Sash excitedly pointed out as ‘the lighthouse’, was actually a smokestack which seemed to be able to be seen out of every window in town. We visited the 'Isa Experience' – a museum detailing the town’s history, which was mainly about mining. It should have been interesting but without a passion for mining we found it a bit hard to get excited. Nonetheless we dutifully watched a video of various Alan Jones lookalikes talking about growing up in ‘The Isa’. 

Next we drove through the town and doffed out not-oversized hats at Bob Kattah’s office before checking in at the local, caravan park. We were feeling a bit hot and dusty and tired by now and so splashed out on a little cabin, which felt like fabulous luxury. In the morning we went to the local library for school and books, whilst gazing out at the ever-present smokestack. While I shopped up a grocery storm, Bill took the kids to the local park which turned out to be the ‘best playground ever’ – another example of outback communities getting massive grants from the local government to build amazing and free amusements for local kids. It was so good that B and the kids picked me up from the supermarket and we all returned for hours of fun. Complete with water park and all sorts of swinging, sliding and zipping things that we had never even seen before, this park could almost have held us in Mt Isa for another day. But not quite…

We were, however, keen to visit the local fossil centre before leaving town – a place where the kids dug excitedly for fossils in a sandpit whilst we read about the amazing discoveries made between Mt Isa and Lawn Hill. Turns out this site was where most of what is known about Australia’s megafauna and other pre-human mammals was learnt (and most of that was discovered within about an hour sometime in the 1980s). We all found it more interesting than the mining history, but we had people and solar eclipses to see on the coast and so needed to move on – although only very slightly because we had spent most of the day mucking around in ‘The Isa’.