Despite Bill's continued ailing tummy, we had to leave our Adelaide-area home by 10 am on Saturday. That meant I had to count on the boys to help with the clean up and pack up, but by 10:02 we were on the road and headed to the Outback!
It was going to be a two day trip, a little over 10 hours in total. I did all of the driving on day 1 and most of it day 2 because Bill needed to sleep. We had purchased a GPS on our third day in Australia when we went to Adelaide: unlike NZ there is more than one way to get places, and we decided a tiny map and our aging eyes wasn't going to cut it. Ironically there is only one way to Coober Pedy from Adelaide, but driving alone with Sheila-the-GPS made me more comfortable. Cruise control was really nice too!
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| The Opal Mining Museum |
I set the GPS for the caravan park in Port Augusta (the only town of any size between Adelaide and CP) where I had booked a cabin for our stopover. Sheila said it was just before town, and she guided us there effortlessly. We pulled in, and my heart sank. The place was a big dust bowl with crappy old trailers on the perimeter and a few dilapidated cabins. Nothing green in the whole park. After some effort, we located where we checked in. The guy at the 'office' was surprised to see us, and asked me what I had been told the cost was. ($80 for a 2 bedroom cabin). We got the key and went to our room.
Before I go on, I have to take a moment to explain that I take great pride in my ability to find cheap, clean, and comfortable accommodation. I consult TripAdvisor, Lonely Planet, and whatever other resources I can. I look for pools or playgrounds for the kids, good cooking facilities, and clean washrooms. In this case, we were getting a 2 bedroom with a kitchen and bathroom in the cabin for only $80. A bargain!
Well, after walking past the garbage can overflowing with garbage and beer bottles at the door, we walked in. I nearly died, but kept smiling. Bill was still rather green, so after trying to get the A/C on without any luck (it was really hot -- gateway to the Outback and all), he just flopped on the dingy double bed (in the 'kitchen/living room/dining room') and I got the boys to load the food into the fridge. I was planning to visit town for dinner (to avoid the cooking facilities), then go back and get good and drunk so I could sleep. In the meantime, I checked my confirmation letter to make sure that this hell-hole was in fact the cabin I had booked. I saw there was supposed to be two real bedrooms and a swimming pool and a working A/C. So, I was going to send an email to complain to the woman I had made the booking with because the office guy clearly had no clue! As I scanned down the email, I realized we were actually in the wrong park!!!
I howled with glee, ordered the boys to pack the cooler again and got the hell out of there as fast as Gretta the Jetta would carry us!
The next place was up to my standards! I've never been so happy to sleep in a strange bed!
Bill was a little better the next morning, but I still did most of the driving to our destination. We saw live emus, and just a few cows and sheep. The road was flat, straight, and littered with dead kangaroos, dead emus, dead sheep, and dead cattle. The birds of prey, not vultures but maybe eagles, munching on the carcasses were massive! Their legs were the size of my forearms. Many of the carcasses were just skeletons. I don't know how often they clean up the road, if ever, but it really was pretty shocking to see all the dead stuff.
The landscape was a little rolling leading up to the Flinders' Ranges (think escarpment-ish landform), but then it was really flat and red as far as the eye could see. Every once in a while, we would see a salt lake shimmering white and some of them were the size of large lakes. The vegetation was mostly scrub bushes and a few trees. There was evidence of the bush fires from earlier in the summer, but we saw only relatively small blackened patches.
Finally we neared Coober Pedy and everything changed. Yes, it was flat and lacked vegetation, but now the fields were littered with perfectly conical piles of mullock (debris from the opal mines)! It looked like a serious infestation of ants!
We turned off the highway and into town, and found our motel after just a couple wrong turns. The Lookout Motel was pretty cool! Like most of the homes and accommodation in Coober Pedy, our motel was underground. This way, there is no need for air conditioning!
Opals were discovered in CP just before the end of WW1. When trench-digging soldiers returned to Australia, they felt right at home digging mines and living underground. So, Coober Pedy was first settled by these soldiers. As the years went on, others accepted that this was the most logical way to live in the Outback where temperatures can reach up to 50C! Consequently, most of the town is underground -- museums, shops, homes -- and so above ground looks pretty desolate. Once you enter the plain storefronts, however, you find sprawling stores and museums. Many are built in what were once mines, and all of the walls and ceilings show the markings of the tunnelling machines -- swirls on the walls and corrugated grooves on the ceiling.
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| What a face! |
We took a tour through an opal mine/museum, and later through the home of a local church's pastor. We learned that when people want an addition or a closet, they just bring home the machine from the mine and dig it out. The pastor told us that $50 000 worth of opals were discovered when his pantry was dug out. Unfortunately, it was a previous owner. We also learned that many of the residents are miners in addition to operating another business. The cost was about $150 to get a mining license and a 50 sq m claim, but you had to agree to spend a minimum of 20 hours mining each week. Pretty reasonable, I think! Though we didn't stake a claim, we did try our hand at noodling through the molluck searching for opals missed by the miners. We found some possible treasures, but we've yet to have them appraised.
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| Baby Pica. So cute!! |
In addition to learning everything there is to know about opals and opal mining, we visited a kangaroo orphanage operated by a souvenir store owner/miner. We fell in love with these beautiful animals, especially Pica the six-month old rescued from some aborigines who had planned to eat her. No, I won't be eating any kangaroo here.
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| 3 seconds' worth of flies! Ick! |
A final detour on our Coober Pedy trip was to see The Breakaways, a collection of big rocks in the middle of the desert. Lots of flies, not that exciting rocks, but we aren't going to Ularu (Ayers Rock), so it was our compromise. We passed by the Dog Fence designed to keep dingos to the north. It stretches for 5600 km from the east coast.
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