Try saying that five times while sucking on a lemon!
One of the reasons we stopped in Mount Isa was to catch up with John, the brother of one of my oldest and dearest friends Mel. He works for Xtrata analyzing data in order to figure out where to dig for minerals. His girlfriend is a geologist. He came over to our camp for dinner and brought the boys soft drinks,chips AND a core sample of copper from 2 kilometres under the ground.
The boys showed him their road trip rock collection and we chatted about old friends. Good to see you John.
Mount Isa is an interesting place. When we arrived we headed directly to the free water playground for lunch and a bit of cool in the hot hot heat. Great playground, all free and provided by Xtrata (the mining company that basically owns the town). You can't ever forget that you are in a mining town as the ever present smokestack is constantly belching out sulphur dioxide fumes in the middle of town. A little unnerving to be honest...
The best part was seeing John and watching the VERY local mallee ring neck parrots grazing. See! Bird nerd!!