Devils Marbles - Tennant Creek - Camooweal - Mt Isa

Thursday 29th
Waking up with the knowledge we hadn’t been whisked away into a spaceship overnight but instead to a sprinkler right next to our tent – placed there by the odd grounds keeper was dampening.
We headed towards the Devils Marbles Conservation Park – a very sacred area for the local indigenous people and when you are there you can feel and see why – it is such a quiet area and the size and balance of the rocks upon one another is quite amazing.







We continued to head north towards Tennant Creek then stayed the night 10km across the Queensland border in a town called Camooweal.

Friday 30th
Mt Isa was the next stop on our journey through Queensland. Mt Isa mine has a much longer life than Broken Hill mine thus the town is more industrial but built in much the same way as Broken Hill is – mine at one end and town at the foot and spreads from that so that from nearly everywhere in town you can see the mine.

We spent the afternoon at the Mt Isa discovery centre where we learnt about the Riversleigh fossil site in Lawn Hill National Park and were also able to talk to a palaeontologist who worked at the site. It was very interesting learning about the fossils that had been discovered in the area – it is one of the best sites in Australia for marsupial and mammal fossils. This site gave scientists mush more knowledge about what lived in Australia millions of years ago.
Fossils of a turtle and 'big bird'