The Shire of Mount Isa covers a wide area. Today's starting point, Camooweal, the first town that welcomes visitors to Queensland after the Northern Territory, is already part of the city of Mount Isa, one of Australia’s iconic places and our destination ...
True, as the three teams ran for some 190 kilometres, surrounded by bushland and empty creeks on every side, it didn’t exactly seem like a city. Of course, it was no such thing. The dryness of the Northern Territory seems to have been replaced by more leafy scenes, but make no mistake: we are still in the Outback.
For our first boys team (and the others), the day was considerably shorter. However, it was no less of a challenge.
Though we started early, the heat was as strong as ever, so that as we waited for each runner, we remained in the safety of our air-conditioned vehicle.
For each runner, the frequent site of the road trains, sending a powerful gust of wind in their direction – and the danger of blowing off their cap or even extinguishing the Torch – becomes a welcome sight. In this heat, we look forward to the air being thrust in our direction, with all the power of these momentous vehicles.
Our Mongolian Bayarkhuu, was our leading distance runner today with 27km, though he looks as though he has barely worked up a sweat.
Our girls team drove forward 80km ...
... and set our first runner off, again nice and early to miss as much of the heat as possible.
Yesterday our scenery was bright blue sky and dry brown grass, with nothing much else. Today there was an addition to our scenery with green thrown into the mix ...
When you haven't seen green for a day or two it really does catch your eye. Sri Chinmoy often spoke of different colours of green and would speak of the feeling of heroism or enthusiasm or new life when he saw different shades of greens. Today we were treated to many varieties of green, giving us a chance to think of those different qualities ...
It was Oyungerel’s last day running with the Peace Run today as she will be flying back to Mongolia tomorrow so she wanted to do 18km – the most she would ever have done in one day since she joined the Peace Run in Australia way back in Melbourne ...
... so she set off doing a 10km stint first ...
... as she ran to the waiting van she was asking: "How many, how many?". When we told her it was 10.4km she was so happy. She thought it must have only been 7km, she was feeling so great!
As we ran we noticed a blackened dark tree that may never offer leaves or flowers to the world again, surrounded by green and white branches that held this new life. There are a lot of bush fires in Australia and it seems the plant life has found ways to continue to thrive amongst extreme conditions.
Seeing how these trees had adapted to live in these conditions gave you hope for humanity, as we all strive to adapt our minds and thoughts to only see the positive side of life and people ...
... opening our hearts to the diversity of humankind, embracing our differences and loving each and every person on this earth of ours with the same love we feel for our near and dear ones. As with these trees, we are trying to make those gradual steps in our own lives and through our own self-improvement we are in our own way perhaps making little differences to this world.
Our second boys team had a nice, late morning start, but as we had to prepare lunch for our fellow team members, it didn’t give us much spare time ...
Rodney had camped by the creekbed last night and came over while we were finishing the lunches. We had a nice chat about the Peace Run and about Rodney's adventures around Australia.
We drove about 160km and started running on the good old Barkly Highway, which has become quite a good friend of ours the last few days.
The outback here in Queensland is much more lush, with plenty of trees and hills surrounding us on all sides. It almost felt like running through a different country, and if we had been in Europe (where I’m from) it would definitely have been so.
Yet it turns out not every Australian appreciates the outback. The famous Australian writer Vance Palmer (1885-1959) called the outback, ‘This ragged flat where the earth crumbled in poisonous dust and the very grass had the menace of spears.’ It seems Vance had had an unpleasant encounter with spinifex, the innocent looking green grass which is omnipresent here. You’d be ill advised to sit on it, as it has a mean sting, like needles pricking into your skin.
We only had to do a mere 47km today, which almost feels like a day off on the Peace Run. But we needed the break, since tomorrow is going to be one of our longest days on the Run ...
... near the end of our running, close to Mount Isa, we encountered a lovely family who stopped their car for us and after learning about the Run spontaneously gave us a twenty dollar bill to buy something nice for the team. Thank you so much!
Our destination of today was the famous mining town of Mount Isa, home to 23,500 souls.
Here we met again with the Bird family of Jacob, Nicole, Sarah and Charlotte ...
In Mount Isa we visited the local museum ‘Outback at Isa’, which generously gave our whole team free entry passes ...
Mt Isa has some of the most mineral-rich rocks in the world. The rocks that host the majority of the minerials are from the Proterozonic Period, nearly 2 billion old – 10 x older than a dinosaur ...
The museum depicted the rich history of the town, rising from an immigrants' settlement in the twenties to the bustling mining community it is today. Roughly 20% of the town’s inhabitants work in the mines, which are world-famous for their zinc, lead, silver and copper. In fact, the Mount Isa mines hold 11% of all the world’s zinc and lead resources, 5% of all its silver and 1% of all its copper. It is the largest underground mine in Australia, and one of the largest in the world.
The museum also held an exhibition of the famous Riversleigh fossils, a collection of ancient fossils dating back 30 million years, found at a site some 200 km north of Mount Isa ...
At the Riversleigh fossil site paleontologists have identified over 200 species of mammals, marsupials, insects and birds that were hitherto unknown and lived between 20,000 and 30 million years ago ...
... they carry mysterious names, such as the Bullockornis (a kind of large ostrich) ...
... and the Pallimnarchus (an ancient giant crocodile). It’s just as well they lived so long ago – most of them you’d rather not want to meet.
With a little more time to fill after visiting the museum, some of us drove out to Lake Moondarra for a swim and a look around at this beautiful area ...
We are so grateful to Michael and Jade at the AAOK Moondarra Accommodation Village on the outskirts of Mt Isa. Set up for miners, this place really has everything a traveller could possibly want, including a lovely pool, nice grassy campsites and a fantastic cooked breakfast for tomorrow morning!
