2 BOB Touring - The Blog - burketown to mt isa

Monday

Aug102009

burketown to mt isa

Monday, August 10, 2009 at 12:04AM

Well the theory held. We left the less than friendly town of burketown (exept for debbie the take away queen), for cloncurry and then mt isa via the minor road we had spotted on the map. After about 60km of tarmac we had a very minor river crossing before we speared off down what could have been a complete goat track but wasn't. It was one of ther best dirt roads we have ridden on this trip, very little dust, very few corragations, just nice even dirt road. Bliss. There was however more than the occassional cow and kangaroo that tried to ambush the big fella by jumping out from behind a bush. Cows aren't the sharpest tools in the animal shed, but they have a substantially keener edge than the roo, which is as dumb as a box of hammers. All this time i thought they could fly helicopters and use two way radios. Bloody skippy!

However it's not only cows and roos that are attracted to the big fella, he has a thing for birds as well. The will fly at him or around him at any given opportunity. They occassionally even fly with him. Because there is so much road kill, there is no shortage of eagles and other birds of prey, and today one of them decided it wanted to fly with wal, so instead of flying away from him when he approached, it joined him on the bike, well between him and the windscreen, where it flapped about for a while before thinking better of the situation and flying off.

This section of road to a bit over an hour and then we were onto tarmac again and heading for the burke and will roadhouse for lunch. This is where we met dave byrnes the crazy cyclist who is cycling solo and unsupported, 15,000km around australia in 50 days!! that'a an average of 300km a day. stupid. if you would like to follow his adventures go to www.davebyrnes.com.au. We also learned that the mt isa rodeo, which is the biggest in australia, was on and that we had buckley's of getting accommodation as they were expecting 20,000 visitors.

dave the crazy cyclist

So we thought we'd head to cloncurry, get fuel and chech out the tourist info place and see if they knew anything about accommodation in isa. We found fuel ok but the tourist info place proved elusive, no 2 locals could give us the same location. So in the end we decided to try our luck and press on. We figured that if there was nowhere to stay we could pass through and camp somewhere.

After leaving cloncurry we again rode through some amazing, ancient ranges with incredible colours and textures and stunning rock formations. The road was perfect of bikes with long sweeping bend after long sweeping bend all stitched together with gentle undulations and surrounded by mindbuggering beauty. This continued all the way to mt isa.

We pulled into the first caravan park we came to, and judging bny the signs, things weren't looking too good, but the big fella once again managed to jag a place. He played the sympathy card and used my sleep apnia to get us a small room with 2 beds and power, everytyhing we needed.

Showered and changed into my best shorts and thongs, it was off into town to have a look around and a nice cold beer. The place was certainly jumping and there were hats, really big hats, as far as the eye could see. It seems in these parts you don't really rate unless you have a really big hat. We didn't have hats.

Never having been to mt isa, i was surprised at just how close the mines are. They are not so much close as in the city. They do look pretty at night though but i'm not sure how they'll look in the harsh light of day.

Tomorrow is straight run through to the threeways roadhouse where we'll spend the night. It's long but pretty easy.

our exact location: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=-20.7226,139.5156&ll=-20.7226,139.5156&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1

Russ |

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