In Cloncurry I trotted off for a little jog down a dirt road to the west right next to the van park, got three km in and came to a small crest where upon a mine opened up before me. Didn’t look like a huge operation but I guess that can happen in this part of the world. From Cloncurry we drove on to Camooweal a lazy 311 km away. As its a couple of days later now I can’t speciffically recall that particular stretch of road, with the exception of Mt Isa. The mine dwarfed the city and I discovered that a tour of the operation has been voted as one of the top 100 things to do on some Australian tourism website. Still no time for us to linger, nor too much inclination, there will be more mines to see.

One stretch of road I will remember was the first 80 or so kilometers out of Camooweal on to the NT border and the three ways junction. We hit the road about 10 minutes before the sun peeped over the horizon and bathed the country side in light. I wish I were a poet so that I could descirbe the scene, alas 12 yrars in the public service has grilled creative writing out of me. Perhaps suffice to say we felt as though we were driving through one of those expensive scenic photos of Australia you find in galleries in all good tourist locations. We were snapping photos left right and centre. A couple below.

527 km later and many imagined ‘are we there yets’ we pulled into Banka Banka station. Thanks timoath for filling one of the van gas bottles cause there was no power. But Banka Banka was well worth it, and with what must be the sweetest tasting water in the country.

From Banka we pushed on to Mataranka, via the very outback Daly Waters Pub, and are now within cooee of Darwin. Barring any unforeseen circumstance I expect making the plane to pick up Em, Amy and Oliver will now be as easy as drifting down the Bitter Springs thermal river. Very nice by the way.