Comment: Following the Big Wet - 2011 Trip – Part 15: Exploring around Mt Isa.

Submitted: Monday, Dec 26, 2011 at 16:04

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Following the Big Wet - 2011 Trip – Part 15: Exploring around Mt Isa.

. It was hot as we left Mt Isa on the good gravel road that goes south to Duchess. There were interesting rugged hills and the occasional tempting side track.

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John and Val,
I just had a look at your blog and would like to comment on some of your findings. Looks like you had a good trip and it is great to see that you saw the Monument.
I see mining has closed in on the area and stopped people from travelling on some of the tracks. Many of these tracks were put in from the turn of the century + Amoco, Cypress Gold and Arimco made quite a few.

The initiation stones were fenced off by Cypress gold when they pushed that road west to the borefields on the Burke River around 1988. The guy who owned that little mine you show in your blog made them divert their boreline around his lease. Yes the scrap metal is used in the recovery of the copper ore.

If you followed that road west you would have come to their borefields and then you could go across to Tickhill and up to Duchess. You really have to know where you are going though.

Before you decided to return to the cross at double crossing bore you were on the track to Selwyn mine or Starra as it is correctly known. That is if you were travelling east. You would have actually passed Neil Lucas' Question mine on that road and he was the one who showed Cypress gold Starra.

When you went north and could not go into Mt Elliot via the mine road you may have camped a little further on to the left. If you did it would have been Selwyns old bottle dump as Old Selwyn really is Mt Elliot. You can go to the Old Selwyn township if you go north of Mt Elliot and then turn south as long as Ivanhoe mining don't try and bluff claming it is their lease.

Just before you reach Kuridala on the left is also there old dump, in hind sight I should have passed on much of this info to you both.

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Reply By: Member - John and Val - Wednesday, Mar 04, 2015 at 01:09

Wednesday, Mar 04, 2015 at 01:09

Hi Grant,

Thank you for those details. Yes it was a very good trip, and we especially enjoyed exploring the area south of Mt Isa. Thanks to the reading you suggested and the material you sent us, we had enough understanding of what lay around us to really appreciate the experience.

Once home and with unlimited access to the internet we have revisited the area a number of times using Google Earth and the Bonzle link you gave us.
( http://www.bonzle.com/c/a?a=p&cmd=sp&p=298797&st=&s=selwyn%20mine )
It was fascinating to see the roads of the old towns (Kuridala and Old Selwyn) emerge as we zoomed in using Google Earth, and too confirm via our OziExplorer track that we had actually been there. Especially at Old Selwyn, the only real on-ground clues that there was once a town there were the railway cuttings and the cemetery.

How we wish we’d had these internet resources with us while travelling! OziExplorer allowed us to venture into places with the confidence that we could always find a way out, but the detailed Bonzle maps and information would have been so useful. Next time those maps will be in OziExplorer! And there WILL be a next time!

You may have missed the credit to you in the previous blog. We really appreciated your assistance in preparing to visit the area. It has a real fascination, a rich history of hopes, sweat and tears as the cemeteries attest. Without your help and undoubted passion for it our experience would have been pretty bland.

Cheers

John and Val