Mine Camp
17 October 2017 | Slag heap horizons
"What's that Skippy? They went to the mine. But they didn't fall in?"
No. But we could have. For what seemed like hours, and it may well have been, we drove past the spoil mountains or slag heaps as we used to call them, of Queensland's many coal mines. We've grown up around mines. Anne's grandfather was a miner. We've lived through Margaret Thatcher's miners strike. We live close to the now, silent mines of central Scotland. We've watched ships unload Australian coal and washed its dust of our decks. We've watched Billy Elliot many times. As a consequence we believe we have something of an affinity with mines and miners. OK, something of a remote connection, but a connection nonetheless.
In a bold attempt to get a closer look at Queensland mining we naively drove into one of the big mines thinking we might brass neck our way in for a look. We knew it was a big mine because we'd been driving past it's slag heaps for quite a long time. At some point we stopped to take a pic of the spoil heaps and honestly, it stretched from horizon to horizon, that makes it what? Six to eight miles? Unfortunately, if not reassuringly, the closest we got was Security where, unable to stare down the guard, we turned around Booty Call, and headed back out to the main road. However, the risk of falling down a mine might be the least of our concerns. In the last week, not that far from where we are now, one poor old lady has been taken by a 3.4m croc and a shark has given similar treatment to a swimmer. I told you this was a scary place.
Committed to land cruising we continued on our merry way, heading for Moranbah to meet up with Johann and Henriette, cruisers we'd spent a full 72 hours or so with in the Azores way back in 2012. Such are the bonds cruisers make! The Schultz, for that's their surname, are prominent citizens of the small community that is Moranbah. We were a bit concerned that Booty Call might be a bit of an embarrassment to them. (It is to us). Our bucket of bolts camper is called a Budgie. It's got more rattles than Toys r Us. The windscreen seal is missing, it's scratched from one end to the other but it's got cool graphics pasted on all over it. The occupants of like sized vans give us friendly waves. The teenage youth of various villages, when we're parked in town, give us high fives, and say, "cool, dude". However, after six days and nights on board our tiny Budgie we now look enviously at passing large, commodious RV's bearing inspiring names such as Discovery, Intrepid and Outback and momentarily fantasise about life onboard something in which you could at least, swing a cat.
Talking of budgies, while we've not actually seen any in the wild, we've seen plenty parrots and cockatoos. The latter gathering in hordes above my lilo bed and screeching all bloody night.
David Attenborough never said anything about that.