There’s a lot to like about Mount Isa
Dressed in an orange jumpsuit, large white gumboots and a hard hat with a torch on the front we descend into the mine.
I'm in Mount Isa, deep in the north-west of the Queensland Outback. It is a city built by mining, rising from the arid red dirt of the landscape in 1923, after prospector John Campbell Miles first discovered lead ore here.
From the air, the land surrounding Mount Isa, or The Isa as it is known by locals, looks like the scarred surface of an alien planet. From my window seat in the plane, the rocks below reflect back beams of light from the setting sun, hinting at the great seams of zinc, copper, lead and silver buried under the dirt.
We're on the Hard Times Mine Underground Tour, just beside the Outback at Isa visitor centre, in the middle of the city of around 22,000. Because of health and safety precautions, tours into the actual mines closed a few decades ago, so the city built its own mock mine, with around 1.2 kilometre of tunnels.
Our tour group is led by Alan Rackham, a miner of 49 years who over the course of the next two-and-a-half hours takes us through the history of mining in the area.
Going down the lift shaft, around 20 to 30 metres below the surface, I get a faint tinge of claustrophobia, but the area down below is well ventilated. The blasted rock surfaces of the tunnels are covered with wire netting, with thick screw pieces drilled in every metre or so to support the load.
To explain the mining process Rackham employs the metaphor of a street system, with the first tunnel we go down functioning as the main street.
"If you drive into a small town, this is the main street, it's hooked up to the lift and the air flow," he says.
The smaller tunnels off the sides are suburban streets, access ways to the houses or yards which contain the columns of ore.
"When we get into your yard, we put a tunnel down both of your fence lines and one at the back," he says.
The column then gets blasted out and removed, with more levels created further down to get at the rest of the ore, which Rackham compares to a multi-level carpark.
Throughout the network of tunnels, old mining machinery donated by Mount Isa Mines is scattered around. Each of the tour party strap on ear muffs and has a go on a hand-held borer, a massive drill piece that bites into the rock to stuff in charges.
The night before, fresh off the plane from Brisbane I had woken up from a nap to a huge rumbling noise, which at the time I thought was an earthquake. Apparently though, 8pm is the time the mines set off charges, huge explosions that are capable of shifting hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock.
Symbiotic relationship
The city has a symbiotic relationship with the mines, which are run now by Swiss mining giant Glencore, employing around 4000 people. Those not directly employed by the company either work in supply businesses, or depend on the success of the mineral market for things like accommodation and the money it brings into the town.
My first day in the city, I met Steve Carson, a miner of 44 years who also happens to drive a tour bus for North West Tours. Hopping on the bus along with a bunch of older Australian tourists, Carson introduces himself with a joke, describing how his father decided to uproot the family from England in the 1960s.
"I thought, the old man hasn't waited for us to die, he's taken us to hell while we're still living," he says.
But it quickly becomes apparent just how much he loves the city, and how he cherishes its brief history. Driving through the streets, Carson calls out a running commentary over the intercom laced with jokes and stories about the early mining pioneers.
On flood days, miners used to cross the Leichhardt River and get themselves stranded at hotels and bars so they could spend several boozy days away from their wives and families. This strategy may have contributed to the record the town used to hold for the most beer consumed per capita anywhere in the Commonwealth.
On the day we crossed the river it was down to a trickle, something Carson put down to months of drought, so we carried on up to the mines, a hulking industrial estate set toward the rear of the city.
Copper and zinc
Mount Isa Mines has several sites in the area focusing on two main mineral streams, copper and zinc. The mine has one the largest network of underground tunnels in the world, almost two kilometres deep and stretching to a length of around 1600 kilometres.
"You can drive from here to Townsville and halfway back again," Steve says.
The scale of the operations is immense, attracting people from all over the world to work underground. At one point, Carson tells us, there used to be 52 nationalities living in Mount Isa, creating a multicultural society bonded by work, something which continues to this day.
"We have physical distance among the people but emotional closeness," he tells me at a cafe later.
"You can sit next to people in Brisbane or Sydney or Melbourne and they'll all be looking in different directions, but here we'll all start talking to each other," he says.
I get the same message from many other people I speak to, Kylie Rixon, for example, the tourism manager at Outback at Isa. The information centre is a must see, along with the underground tour, it has numerous displays about the history of the area, including a focus on the Kalkadoon people, the original inhabitants of Mount Isa.
Fossil field
There is also an extensive exhibit about the Riversleigh Fossil Field, a World Heritage site a few hours north of the city. The fields have provided a wealth of information about the ancestors of animals living in Australia, with the finds there making up half of what is known about the evolution of mammals over the past 30 million years. Some of the standout creatures include a marsupial lion, the wakaleo, flesh-eating kangaroos and the largest marsupial ever to have lived, the diprotodon, which grew to a whopping three metres long and two metres high.
Taking a drive outside the city, to look at some granite rock formations I came across one kangaroo, but unfortunately it was dead by the side of the road.
The other place to look for wildlife is a lake just south of Mount Isa called Lake Moondarra, which was created by the mines as a water catchment. White splashes of pelicans and their babies dotted the deep blue of the lake, which is also home to pythons and freshwater crocodiles.
Underground hospital
Another highlight is the Underground Hospital, which was built by the miners during the Second World War because of the fear of Japanese air raids. The Beth Anderson Museum has a collection of old medical equipment and information about the hospital, which was never used.
It also features The National Trust Tent House, the last remaining example of the kind of quick-fix accommodation miners built for themselves and their families. Made of canvas walls with a tin roof, the tent house has been lovingly preserved by volunteers, offering an insight into the way miners used to live.
Like most things in the city, the tent house is only a short stroll from my accommodation, the Burke and Wills Motel, which offers charred crocodile and kangaroo fillets on its extensive dinner menu. Everything is walking distance in the central part of Mount Isa, which claims being the second largest city in Australia on a technicality; Camooweal, a suburb is 188 kilometres away.
The central city is full of restaurants, bars and cafes, one of which, the popular Isa Hotel, was humming throughout the rodeo weekend, with a mechanical bull providing plenty of entertainment for the wannabe riders.
The city was one built on mining, something which will continue to play a crucial role in its development, but as Carson says every tonne of ore taken from the ground brings the mines one tonne closer to closing.
Which is why tourism is becoming a focus for the city, and with its wealth of attractions there is already plenty to see and love about The Isa.
Have you ever been to Mount Isa?
Written by Oliver Lewis. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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