Mt Isa & Camping by a Billabong

From Cloncurry we went to Mt Isa for a few hours, just to have a look around. On the way we stopped at the Burke & Wills Memorial on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere.

We didn't do a whole lot of sightseeing in Mt Isa, but it was fantastic to be in a 'big' city again, with big department stores and shopping centres, we even treated ourselves to a McDonalds breakfast! After a little bit of looking around, we took Alex to the free family fun park...which was a play ground and water park, great for the 32 degrees. In true Alex style, he found some other kids to play with and we didn't here from him for a couple of hours :)

After Alex was totally waterlogged & exhausted, we continued on our Journey to our 1 night stopover in Cammooweal, right on the border or QLD & NT. We had planned to stay at a roadside stop we had read about, but when we got there, a big sign stating NO CAMPING had been placed there. So the next alternative was a Billabong about 1km up the road, & what a fantastic free camping ground. The Billabong was actually dried up, so no mozzies, you could park wherever you found a spot, and there were already a few other vans and tents there so we knew it was ok to stop.

We had planned to set up of chem toilet & tent, but just as we were setting up it became very, very windy, and started to rain! which for this time of year is very unusual. So, we had to swallow our pride and keep the toilet in the van...ha ha. Alex thought it was fantastic and proceded to 'go' 3 times in the 1st hour, whereas Antony & I used it only when absolutely necessary. As a matter of fact, Antony decided to take to the bushes later in the evening, only to walk thru a massive spiders web that he said felt like fishing line. Lucky the nasty looking palm-sized spider decided he wasn't good to eat.....

The sunset at the Billabong was beautiful, and we all slept really well, until it started pelting down with rain again, the poor guys next to us, in the flimsy Big-W style tent ended up jumping into their very full commodore wagon...it was pretty funny watching them scramble out of their tent :P

Here is a photo of the sunset taken from the Billabong, it was really beautiful.