After I left you all last night, we did attempt to watch a movie, plugging in our new, you beaut power invertor into a handy 12 volt power socket. I ought to have realized that the socket wouldn’t be up to the task, but the tele wasn’t drawing a great amount of power. With hardly ¼ of an hour to go on the movie, an ear piercing alarm emanated about the caravan. It was enough to send Alvin into a frenzy, while Bethany lay deafly, and blissfully ignorant of it. I am sure we must have awoken half of the other campers, such was the screeching that was assaulting our eardrums. It turned out to be the invertor, sounding a low voltage alarm, before going into imminent shut down mode. This was despite the house batteries still remaining close to fully charged. I believe it is yet another case of inadequate wire size, causing a substantial voltage drop across the cables. And just when the movie was about to reach its crescendo! It mattered not how long I sat staring at the invertor, without any option of increasing the voltage to the offending power outlet, the end of the movie was out of our grasp until such time that we plug into power again.

After a good nights rest, we were treated to a fresh morning, following a positively freezing night. Both of the dogs had, at some point in time during the night, managed to snuggle onto the bed between Bec and I, although their added warmth was a welcome addition to our slumber. I just wish I hadn’t rolled over at the sound of the alarm to give Bec a good morning peck on the cheek, without first opening my eyes. A mouth full of dog hair was not what I had hoped for.

Hemmed in by rocks, it was an effort to extricate ourselves.

With just a quick 60Km jaunt up the highway today, we were in no particular hurry, but still managed to negotiate our way out of our tight little parking space, by 10:00AM, en-route to Mount Isa. The scenery had begun to change late in the day yesterday, but it was a gradual change that was hardly worth the effort of description. Today however, gone were the rolling plains of nothingness, to be replaced with a small range of craggy, red rock outcrops. The road meandered through them, giving us at times, a close up view of the rust coloured rocks, dotted with the more than just occasional green brush here and there. The contrast in colours, the red ground, green fauna and blue sky was a stark contrast, to what we’ve been driving past for the last couple of days. It was a fantastically pretty view, as the road sauntered lazily through the cuttings, leading us into ‘The Isa’ as the outback city is known as to the locals.

We weren’t even on the road for an hour, before we were pulling into the drive at the first caravan park we came across. It wasn’t quite a case of just pulling in here because it was the first we seen, but rather a concerted effort of research which led us to believe this would be the most satisfactory park in town for us to rest our road weary bones for a few days.

Even if it is advertised as the better of the several parks in Mt Isa, the caravan section is a barren expanse of red dirt plots. The sites are at least of a good size, and the access roads wide enough to allow plenty of room to practice our reverse maneuvering. Fingers crossed, but we seemed to have about mastered this black art, and slid easily into our allotted space with the minimum of fuss. While the outlook from within the park may be bleak, it will suffice for us, with access to water to re-fill our water tanks, electricity to charge our batteries and maybe some time to do a few odd jobs on the rig, not to mention a load or two of you know what (that would be laundry if you didn’t catch on). Our first order of business though, having separated the van from ‘The Beast’, was to go for our usual familiarisation drive about the township.

It’s quite a large town, built on the successes of the various ore mining operations that are conducted throughout the area. The largest such site is literally just across the railway track from the main city central area of Mt Isa, leading to the local descriptions of areas as town side or mine side. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot available here though, other than the basics, provided by a small business area.

Having taken a quick driving tour of town, we went to do our shopping. I had intended of picking up a few bits and pieces from the Bunnings, but it is rather more compact than the great big warehouses to which I am more accustomed, and didn’t stock the required parts for the tasks that I had set myself. It was off to do the grocery shopping next, battling quite a crowd to collect enough supplies to last us a few days. In good old fashioned country style, apparently the supermarkets remain closed for a day of rest on Sundays. Hence the stampede we were witness to today.

Back at the van, we spent some time getting to know the couple in the van behind ours, then rolled out the awning to give us some shade against the strong, if not stiflingly hot, sun that was by now beating down. We then spent the remainder of the afternoon relaxing. We set the TV up, and managed to tune in a grand total of 2 channels. ABC and SBS was all that seemed to be available. Not good news for a couple of TV addicts like ourselves. I did later manage to get a signal from a few other stations, but it dropped out again as quick as I picked it up. We did at least get to finish watching our film from last night, only to find that the ending was somewhat strange and unappealing.

Apart from that, while Bec had herself an afternoon nap, I tried to catch up as best I could on the blog. Despite my best efforts, I am still a little behind, especially with the photos and the Google map. Stay tuned however, as I strive to get everything back in order before we leave ‘The Isa’, and venture back into the bad lands of no terrestrial mobile phone or Internet signal. Actually, I lie, because we have maintained intermittent phone coverage, but not of the strength that has allowed me to access our blog pages.

Until next time, stay safe, have fun and don’t forget to write.