Here's what my pal down that way wrote to me about this place.
G'Day CB,
If you saw Mount Isa you wouldn't want to live their either, ugly or not. Its a hell of a place, hot as buggery, regularly gets well over the 40's C (104 F) every day for days on end. Most of the miners there live in dugouts, cave like houses built into the rock face. They are great looking houses though, cool to live in and really something else. Its dry hot and dusty all the time, little rain and little in the way of trees and green matter. Real desert country. I wouldn't even go there for a holiday. Driven through the place and couldn't wait to see the end of the town sign. Most of the outback Queensland is pretty dry and near desert country. Give me the coast nayday.
Saw most of the end of race, my boy didn't do very well at all.
Dirk