At Richmond there was another museum showcasing lots of fossils – we decided not to go to it because it was probably similar to the on at Hughenden. If it hadn’t been so cold and windy, we might have done the 1.2 km walk around Lake Fred Titon near the van park, but it wouldn’t have been pleasant in the wind. So that just left one other thing we had planned to do in Richmond – that was to go fossicking for fossils at the quarry about 12km out of town – a free activity. The van park office had a display of some of the sorts of fossils that had been uncovered at that site, so we had a look at that to be informed about the sorts of things to look for in the rocks. We drove out to the site and were the only ones there at the time. The council or whoever must have occasionally put a ripper through the ground as there were areas where broken up rocks were exposed in the ground and you didn’t really have to dig – just turn over rocks. Also it was sandstone so very brittle and easy to break if wanting to do so. We hadn’t known what to expect, but it was actually very easy to find all kinds of fossils in the rocks – mostly shells from what we could tell. There had obviously been millions of shells in the lake area which then became sandstone. We all found our own fossiled shell – several in fact. Bethany actually found quite an usual one and was very proud of this. Lauren also found a bone which looked quite different to the kangaroo bones we often find around our property at Little Burra – not sure how old it is, but we added it to our collection. We were there for about 45mins and it was a bit of a novelty and good that it was so easy to find interesting stuff.
We then headed back on to the Flinders Hwy to continue west. We planned to stop at Cloncurry today and then continue on to Mt Isa for the evening.
The landscape from Richmond to Cloncurry was quite distinct – mainly grass with quite small trees dotted around the place – and mostly flat, with an occasional mountain in the distance rising out of the landscape. It was 144km to Julia Creek where we had lunch parked by the creek. Then it was another 137km to Cloncurry. We arrived at Cloncurry at about 2.30 and drove to the John Flynn Museum – which chronicled the foundation of the RFDS. Unfortunately we were there on a Saturday and the museum closed at 3pm on a Saturday. It was not going to be worth paying to go in for just 20mins or so. Michael had been the main person keen to see it, so it was unfortunate for him. There was not much else to interest us in Cloncurry, so we continued on towards Mt Isa.
The landscape between Cloncurry and Mt Isa was a bit different to earlier in the day. It was still grass and sparse trees but there were more rolling hills. About half an hour out of Mt Isa was a monument to Burke and Wills who had passed through that way on their ill fated journey to the Gulf. We also drove past the entrance to Mary Kathleen which used to be a mining town a couple of decades ago. It is now just a few remaining bitumen roads. We didnt have enough coverage on our phone to ring any caravan parks until we were just about in Mt Isa (probably because of the hills). The first van park we came to indicated full for powered sites, so I rang another van park on the north side of the city and it had vacancies and was only $32 per night as it didn’t charge any extra for kids – a good deal. We drove there and set up. It was a very laid back van park. We were there at 5.30 and the office closed at 5.00, but there was a phone outside the office which went through to the owners – they said to just find a site that we liked and we could fix them up in the morning. So we did this.
With tomorrow being Sunday, we decided we would find a church to go to as we hadn’t been since we left Canberra. We decided we would go to church in the morning then relax in the afternoon and see a few quick sites around town. Then we would look into doing some mine tours the following day or two.