As we headed north to Mount Isa, we followed in the tracks of the first four white men to visit these parts : the Burke and Wills team that had headed for the Gulf in January 1861. They clip-clopped over these ranges with “the camels sweating profusely from fear”, Burke recorded, in one of his brief diary entries. A memorial stands enroute where they passed.
Further along, we came to Kalkadoon territory. We were welcomed by a rock monument which says: “You who pass by are now entering the ancient tribal lands of the Kalkadoon, dispossessed by the Europeans, honour their name, be brother and sister to their descendants.”
Sadly, some travellers ignore the gentle Kalkadoon welcome. Their monument has been brutally defaced several times since it was installed, even blown up with dynamite once. Yet, down the road, the Burke and Wills monument remains unvandalised. Such shameful actions.
In 1923, travelling north to the territory on the lookout for gold, a prospector named John Campbell Miles, tested a sample on a rocky outcrop only to discover evidence of valuable minerals in the surrounding rocky ranges here. The following year Mount Isa Mines company was set up to to mine the copper, silver, lead and zinc finds, and the Mount Isa township slowly evolved in a valley beneath.
It is an unprepossessing city which has had its ups and downs over the decades. Its area, though, is huge: some 43, 310 square kilometres which make it one of the largest city areas in Australia, second only to Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia.
In one mining boom in the late 30’s to 50’s, when miners flooded the town, accommodation was in dire demand, so the Mount Isa Mine company built several hundred tent houses to encourage families to move to the area: one of which has been relocated near the underground hospital which had been built as a precaution during the second world war after Darwin was bombed. The worry was that Mount Isa, because of its lead mining, might be next. If so the need for a hospital would be imperative. Though that need never actually eventuated, and the tunnel hospital, built by volunteer mine labour in just three months, was never actually needed, so closed after the war, only to be rediscovered a few decades ago, when it was decided to kit it out with appropriate era medical equipment and reopen it as a tourist attraction.
The tent house was an evolution of the tent, though its roof and walls are of galvanised iron topped with canvas in the upper sections; its partitions of iron and wood, with boards or earth for the floor.
This one is a three roomed house built in 1937. It also had a lavatory and a shed, so was likely much more accommodating than a tent for the hard working miners, I imagine.
We had to wait till Monday for our other pair of tyres to arrive and be fitted to the back of the motorhome so spent Sunday out at the very beautiful Lake Moondarra along with the peacocks.
This lake is man made and provides water for the mines and town. It is built about one of the largest prehistoric stone quarries ever found in Australia operated by the Kalkadoons. They were kept very busy here mining good quality stone hatchet heads which they traded with passing tribesmen for other goods. Some of this Mount Isa stone heads have been found as far west as Perth.
A special place.
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