Day Twenty-Five - July 4

Crossed the border into QLD this morning! Camooweal police and AFP were stopping every car coming in from the NT for breath tests and to search for fireworks. We had a lovely chat with the officer and an AFP officer took a family photo of us all in front of the "welcome to QLD" sign.

We arrived in Mt Isa by midday, and stopped for a few groceries before driving to Christie and Jed's house. They have three little people. Marty is the same age as Levi, Emma is nearly two and Harvey is 8 weeks. The boys played dress ups in Marty's superhero costumes and brummed cars, while I played dolls with Emma and had squishy baby cuddles.

Levi loved this ninja turtle costume and hasn't stopped talking about it since we got home.

We set up our trailer in their back yard, then set out on a tour of Mt Isa.
We went to the lookout, and it was just stunning to see how the mine has been incorporated into the centre of the city. We met another family there towing a camper trailer in a T5, same as us. 
We went for a close up look at the mine and got to peer into the "little" hole, and caught sight of some molten copper being poured.

Then Christie took us out to Lake Moondarra, the towns water supply and recreational area. It is an amazing amount of water for inland QLD.

Isaiah is up to Christie's ears.
Hard to fathom another 15 years of growth. 

We enjoyed curried sausages, toasted marshmallows, chocolate self saucing pudding and ice-cream, plus a small fire in the back yard before putting our very tired children to bed. And then to bed again. And again. I think maybe they have missed having other children around.
The grown ups stayed up way too late, catching up on nearly 6 years. It was really nice to spend time reminiscing and hearing about each others lives and adventures since we last saw each other. Some friendships are just easy to slide back into.