Devils Marbles - Mt. Isa

On the way to Mt. Isa we stopped at giant round rocks called Devil’s Marbles. They looked like marbles of the goods.

At Mt. Isa we did the hard mine tour and 10m below surface we experienced mining work. Our guide had been working in the Mt. Isa’s mines the last 30 years and gave us interesting background information.

Mining back than was a tough job with all this heavy machinery. Some trucks killed many miners so the safety standards today are very high. The trucks and cars even have AC and Audio system. Back in the 70s and 80s one person did digging, drilling, explosives and excavation. Today each job is done only by one person.

In Mt. Isa they have a lot of fly in fly out jobs in the mining area since there are not enough people. A miner gets AUS $ 1500 per shift (12 hours), working 4 days, havin 4 days off. Or they are working 4 weeks in a row and 4 weeks off. Moneywise it doesn’t sound too bad. Still I wouldn’t like to be underground the whole day.