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Mount Isa is nestled neatly in the middle of the road between Three Ways and the coast.

A one business town, it has the Worlds largest Bauxite mining faculty (which I think has something to do with Tin Foil), and the stacks are clearly visible from all over town - in fact half the town is the mine.

Its an interesting town... no, perhaps that's a little exaggeration... It is however a strange town.  Home of one of the largest Rodeos in Australia and the country and western spin off shows through clearly in the 11 3/4 months between each instance of the event...

We find ourselves guest members of the local 'cheap eats' establishment - the Town Leagues Club on a Saturday night, the buffet costs A$15 a head, as much as you can eat.  And after the trauma of the day, we make sure we get our moneys worth.

Next door, in the bar, we have a beer to wash down our feast - they're playing some western track, sounds like "shagging on the boulevard" and we have a couple of locals gyrating to the tune.  As we look on, bemused, they're joined by a chap with badly fitting slacks and no rhythm... or so it seems... he's actually in disco fever slacks and merely warming up as next minute he's in perfect step with the original gyrating couple - yep, we've found our way into the highlight of the week around these parts - Saturday night line dancing.

Much as we'd love to join in, these guys are seriously professional - no fools allowed.  Man, they even have a woman walking around the floor with a cheese-grater - what the ????  (It transpires she's grating wax, not cheese, to keep the floor polished).  We exit, rapidly.

The next morning we head up to the lookout to survey the town.

We see the mine. Interesting.

The tag line for Mount Isa is "you ain't Australian until you've been to the Isa", but I'll go with Steves' variant: "happiness is Mt Isa in the rear view mirror".

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