Crossing the Barkly Tablelands near Mt Isa

[jimbo42]

Does anyone have any information on the country through the Fountain Range, part of the Barkly Tableland. This is west of the Cloncurry-Duchess Road, thru a range to the south of Mary Kathleen, and then up the East Leichhardt River and across to near Rifle Creek Dam ; then into Mount Isa.
I used to live in Mt Isa and worked at the smelters, so this is a trip through this rugged area that has fascinated me. Another aim is to commemorate the closure of the copper smelter at Xstrata Mt Isa Mines in 2016; so it has a historic bent to it as well, with a visit to the copper smelter area at Kuridala (south of Cloncurry) which was active in the late 19th and early 20 Century -- but went bust when copper prices collapsed at the end of World War I.
The final route into Mt Isa will follow the trail of John Campbell Miles, who is credited with discovering the lead orebodies at Mt Isa in 1923.
During World War II, parts of the derelict copper smelters at Kuridala and Mt Elliott were cannibalised and rebuilt at Mt Isa, where the company switched from lead to copper smelting to help the war effort. Naturally, at the end of the war the Federal Government offered no thanks, compensation, or support in switching the smelter back to lead smelting. Later on in 1953 the company started up a modern copper smelter, making both lead and copper bullions for refining in the UK and Townsville respectively.

[Giddy_up]

The fountain range is not part of the Barkley as the tablelands effectively stop at the border and don't drift into QLD. The fountain range is south of the old Mary Kathleen town site as you said and has a lovely swimming hole sandwiched in a fault in the range with quite a high water fall running in the right seasons. The range is a very prominent landmark in the area with the next most prominent being Mount Philip to the south of the range.

It's not particularly long from memory and the range would not be more than 15-20km long, and I may well be overstating it at those lengths. As for the rest of the proposed journey I can't shed much light. Have family at the "curry" and cut my teeth in some of that country after I left school. Got a mate at Augustus Downs and I have another close contact on the Barkley so I can try to find some more info from them if you come up stumps elsewhere.

It's wild up there and you would need to be very well provisioned I would think and prepared for any contingency.

Hope this helps????

G_U