The plan was to head into Mt Isa, fill up with fuel, water, have lunch and do some shopping. Well we and other travellers where surprised to find the main shops like Coles, Woolworths, Kmart etc where closed all day whereas places like Supercheap, Harvey Norman and a few other places were open, go figure.
The bike tree on the road between Boulia and Mt Isa.
Mt Isa has not earned the title of an RV friendly town. This is improving with a few good RV parking areas including one close to the main shopping area. Also a great large parking area opposite the mine in Rose St where 2 dump points can be found and several taps to fill up with drinking water. Awesome, well done Mt Isa.
But there is no free camping within the town area and we were told by the Tourist Info not within 50km of Mt Isa. We rang them because several vans had taken up spots on the grass area near the dump point mentioned above, we wanted to know if it was ok to camp there as a sign clearly states no camping. We had gone and asked someone who had been there for 3 days, the tourist info said nope they were not allowed to camp there. Personally we feel this is bad form on part of the caravanner who was then encouraging others to also illegally free camp. Come on people do the right thing
So we moved on, not doing our shopping and did note there was a rest area about 15km towards Cloncurry that one could stop the night.
We headed towards Mary Kathleen