BAZflyer: Mount Isa

A rather long time ago in my younger life I spent some 30 months of my formative years on the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) base at Wagga Wagga. During this time I was serving in the Royal New Zealand Air Force while undertaking training with the Australian Air Force as an aircraft electrician.

This was early in the ’60’s. A time when society’s backdrop was an escalating Vietnam conflict and an emerging young culture that was challenging post war social norms. However, among all this I recall the period being a significantly positive and beneficial time for me. On my course at Wagga Wagga there were two lads from Mount Isa. Both of them were inseparably good mates and for whatever reason I was afforded ‘good mate’ status early on and we remained close friends right through to graduation. We often socialised together and through them I formed a visualisation of life in Mount Isa. Dads who worked dangerously hard underground in the mine. Mothers who toiled to raise families and maintain social cohesion in a fast growing company town and family fun at the beach without an ocean.
I can still recall our musings about the Mount Isa miners strike which occurred during our first year in Wagga Wagga. We were improbably naive young men back then but without doubt the topic was notably among my earliest political discussions. As the passage of time goes it took another 53 years and a Bazflyer trip to outback Queensland before my feet stood on Mount Isa soil for the first time.
The history on Mount Isa is synonymous with Australian life and values. A modern town literally built on top of the world’s largest copper, zinc and lead mine. Mining today is highly mechanised but 50 years ago the activity required men to descended kilometres underground and work shifts in small contract teams. The work place was invariably hot, dark and wet. Death was as close as a work-mates mistake or error. Safety down in the mine was intergral with ultimate trust in your mates.
These days Mount Isa hosts an informative underground experience appropriately sanitised for visitors like the Bazflyers. As we emerged from this not-so-deep underground simulation into the stark light of an outback sun, I thought about my ex air force buddies with a strengthened perspective on what their emphasis on the term ‘mate’ really meant. Without doubt I was hugely privileged back in the sixties to have those two Mount Isa lads adopt me as their mate.
So where are those two Aussie mates nowadays? Tragically, one of them never made it home alive to Mount Isa after graduation. As for the other one, we remain in contact but by his own admission he still misses his lost mate.
On approach to land YBMA (Mount Isa) runway 16