Up at sparrow fart and packing the tent and after a bit of breakfast hit the road around 7.30am. Headed straight south and right into a headwind, so my fuel economy would be up the creek! The trees were in flower amongst all the grass termite mounds, a very plain dirt colour.

First fuel top up was at the Burke & Wills fuel/pub/caravan park. There is nothing else here except the junction between north south east and west roads.

I had been interested in heading west here to the next stop of Gregory Downs, then Lawn Hill national park. But, I had been speaking to travellers who had been along that road just recently and they all said soft sand patches and loose drifts of gravel. Not for me sunshine.

So onwards and south where there were some interesting bits of countryside

And the not so interesting countryside, of which there is much more 🙂

I continued to Cloncurry where I did not stop but just turned West where the road is great for bikes and has a bit more feature

This here was a tribute to the Aboriginals of the area, but it has been badly defaced and shot up 😦

I eventually arrived in Mount Isa around 1.30pm.

I tried a few caravan parks, but eventually went to the same one as I had been before, the Sunset Park where I booked in for two nights. I then checked out the local Suzuki dealer and he would let me do an oil change etc the following day. So, as I had the time, I also booked a surface tour of the actual mine which the town was built for, that was also for the next day.

I managed to locate a weak WiFi signal and did some mail, paid a few bills etc, before they closed down, maybe the response was down due to my use of the bandwidth? Grabbed a few takeaways and some microwave dinners and had a quiet night for a change around the camp kitchen which was well laid out. The temperature was a lot cooler than last night; in fact I was wearing jeans and a liner and only 600km south of the coast.

Day – 523km
Trip – 4091km

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