Thread: Mary Kathleen

Thanks for posting the photos Frank
excellent

great to hear peoples memories of the area.

Glen, will make a point of checking out Clem Walton Dam, are heading that way in a couple of days.

"smelling the daisies" is what its all about !

Brian, 1976, was with McFee const. and we were refurbishing the slurry pipes, building new conveyor belt runs, chutes and the job I was on, the rod Mill loader. Which was a device that shoved the manganese rods (about 4" dia.x20' long) into the mouth of the Rod Mill. Biggest problem was that the I beam rails, which were about 30' long would warp when the sun got onto them and it was a bugger to align them with the Mill. Could only work on the Mill (shown in the pics) up to about 1:00PM as the Sun would heat the steel up and your boots would start to melt.
We (Mc Fee) also built the new plant, a 3 storey heated Cyclone gadget to turn the Yellow Cake into Uranium Oxide. In the afternoon we worked under the slurry tanks where it was cool, or a bit cooler anyway.
Biggest adventure I had was flying home at Easter and driving my 69 fairlaine back up from sydney, through Bourke and central Queensland in 2 days, did the Landsborough Hwy. from Winton to Cloncurry, took nearly 10 hours, piece of **** in a Landrover but not in the Farlaine, the underneath of the car was polished from the grass hump in the middle of the road (track), tore the entire exhaust system off on what Queenslanders call a river ford. Had to stop at most dry river crossings to build up a ramp to get over the concrete slabs that had been moved by the previous floods. Some of the differences in height between slabs were up to 2', my exhaust fell victim to one that was only six inches high. What a hell of a trip that was, never seen another soul, going either way the whole trip, now it's a tarred hwy. and apart from the scenery it would be very boring. Unusual country around MK, all looks the same wouldn't take much to get lost out there, the Highway between Cloncurry and Mt. Isa was known as the Crystal Hwy. from all the broken windscreen glass. Cattle used to be a big problem on the road, one of the boys wrote off his Holden panel van when he hit a giant steer, even the roof of the van section was buckled.
Had some wild Saturday nights in the Isa, esp. with the Gentleman in the photo of the Town square, with his chest puffed up, His name is/was Garney Jones, the hardest man I ever met, would rather have a fight than a feed and I never heard of anyone who could better him, hope he's still around, he was in his sixties when the pic was taken.
Most weekends we would hire a Suzuki 4WD and head up North for some Pig shooting, used to drive along the dry bed of the Leichhardt river, find a water hole and wait for the pigs to arrive, thousands of cats to shoot as well.
Will be putting MK on the bucket list, have to get back and see it again. Regards Frank.