Mount Isa, Queensland: Where you'll find the best cowboys in Australia

You hear a lot of unlikely claims to global fame when travelling through outback Queensland. Most are mostly true – the snakes are some of the deadliest in the world and the flies are definitely the friendliest. And I'm willing to believe the roads are the dustiest, and the sky is the biggest and (more often than not) the bluest. But when the folk at the Mount Isa visitor centre eagerly informed me that the hilltop lookout at the end of Hilary Street had been rated by Trip Advisor as the "No. 1 lookout in the world", I was sceptical.

It's a monumental claim and one I was unable to verify online, although the City Lookout was definitely rated as the "No. 1 thing to do in Mount Isa".

"You don't see so much from one spot anywhere in the world," enthused one breathless reviewer. But almost every other traveller confirmed that the lookout provided a "view over the city". But having been to the top of the hill – in both daylight and after dark, at the insistence of the visitor centre staff – I think Trip Advisor's InfinityandBeyond86 nailed it when she/he suggested that "if you really need to see a view of Mount Isa, just climb on the roof of your car".

After all, you can see the town's major landmark, the fuming smoke stack of the mine which locals will proudly tell you (every chance they get) is 10 metres higher than Sydney Tower, from 40 kilometres away. Although this turns out to be a bit of tall tale – the stack is 270 metres high and Sydney Tower is 309, if you measure it to the tip of the spire.

But given that The Isa, as it is known by locals, is surrounded by vast stretches of nothingness, you could probably see InfinityandBeyond86 standing on the roof of his/her car from 40km away as well.

Truth be told, there's not really all that much to see in Mount Isa because, like most mining towns – it's one of the world's leading producers of copper, silver, lead and zinc – this is a place where the action happens underground. Donning a hard hat and lurid orange overalls, I joined a tour of the Hard Times Mine, riding a steel cage down into the purpose-built mine museum beneath the centre of the city.

It might not have ever been a working mine, but it looks and feels just like one. And the 2½-hour tours, led by former miners, give you a great feel for what life would have been like for those who toiled almost 2km below the surface. The best bits are the off-the-script stories that emerge during the tea break in the crib room.