Tuesday was a week since we left Melbourne and we have already seen so much!
We left the quiet town of Glendabo about 10 am and out of the other 20 caravans that were there we were the second last to leave.
The next petrol station was at Coober Pedy so we made sure we filled up before we left as it was 254kms away.
The roads seemed quieter and the landscape was much the same as our drive from Port Augusta, lots of dry flat land with the odd tree that looks like it's straight from the Texas chain saw set.
Once again there was not a lot of stopping in between Glendarbo and Coober Pedy, only about three rest stops and only one with a toilet, and seeing as the female toilet was out of order it was into the men's toilet for me, and a word of warning, when in the outback- at a rest stop loo - NEVER LOOK DOWN, because as I found out these toilets are just holes in the ground!
Back on the road the wind started to pick up and the tumble weeds were a'tumblin!
It was about a half hour past this stop that we saw the police up ahead and a van that looked liked it had crashed, when we got closer we realised that there had been an accident and there were tyre marks all over the road.
It was a wicked camper van and must have ran off the road because of the wind, we didn't see anyone except the policeman and another fellow who we assumed was the driver, a few broken windows and a reminder to us to stay alert!
Once again we were sitting on set speed of 80kms/h and at times 60, and only realised we had traffic piling up behind us when we turned off into Coober Pedy, including a road train and a handful of cars and caravans.
We headed straight to the visitor centre to have a look at the different caravan parks, nearly all the outback towns with a population of at least 200 have them and they are a great place to start. We chose the Stuart caravan park which is on the right as soon as you turn into the main strip of Coober Pedy.
It's $27- for a powered site, and has showers which are coin operated, 20 cents for 3mins, toilets are free though!
If you want to refill water cans for drinking and other things it is also coin operated and costs 20 cents for about 40 litres.
Its great to keep as much change on you as you can if you are staying at caravan parks often, especially $1 and 20 cent coins, for laundry and water depending on the town.
It was about 2 p.m. when we pulled into the park and it was already busy and by 9 it was full.
We set up camp and went to have a look around town, the mines are all over, it looks like some kid has been having a field day in a sandpit. This is the first real dusty town we have been to, we checked out a few underground stores and and even found an op-shop.
Back at the caravan park it was extremely windy and we couldn't even sit outside and enjoy the little bit of sunshine that was left.
We cooked up some chicken with rice for dinner and sat down to watch some 'Scrubs' on our T.V.
Wednesday was an action packed day, we started it off by having a big cleanup of the caravan, then did a load of washing and managed to sqeeze our sheets and towels into the same washer, even though they are a lot smaller than your average top loader!
It was another windy day so we saved ourselves some money by hanging our clothes out instead of drying them in the dryer.
We then hopped on the bikes and went to have a look around Coober Pedy, we rode around the backstreets and had a look at all the weary houses that were not underground, we also rode out to the wind turbine and then back through town, it was a great little ride, although tough at times in the wind!
We also had a tour booked with the caravan park that left at 1:30pm so it was straight off the bikes and onto a bus, there was about 20 of us on board and after a quick introduction from Jim our driver, we were off.
We were heading to the opal mine museum and on the way he stopped at a few little local places and told us some interesting tales of this opal town, including one about the olive trees they planted so they could have a footy field with lawn, as the olive tree’s find their own water.
There was another story about a local called Ivan who liked to blow things up, including a Federal Police Car, sounds like a top bloke!
Once we got to the underground museum we sat down in the theatre and watched a movie about the start of Coober Pedy and the opal industry, we found out that Coober Pedy means 'white man in a hole' or 'white mans burrows' and was named by the Aboriginals although they spelt it differently.
You would not want to be claustrophobic at this museum, because after the movie we headed down into the mine and it did get squishy at times.
They talked a lot about how the mining was done and showed us various dig areas and explosives that were used.
After the mine it was into one of the dugouts that many of the locals live in, even when the temperature is 50 degrees outside, inside one of the dugouts its always between 23-25 degrees, although the down fall to living in one of these places is that your toilet is a 30 metre hole in the ground, but don’t worry they say it takes 20 years for a family of 4 to fill it!!
Only the main street in Coober Pedy has proper sewerage and even though our caravan park was on the main street, it had major stink moments!!
They still had room for little luxury though:
After all that we headed through the town and onto the Coober Pedy golf course, it has 18 holes and not a blade of grass, but the locals take a square of synthetic turf to tee off with, you drive through here at your own risk but with the speed our driver was doing I knew we would be safe, he took the mini bus to speeds I didn’t know they had!
From the golf course it was into a Serbian orthodox church that was a dugout and had some amazing carvings of religious nature inside, it was huge!
We all herded back onto the bus and it was through the mine fields we went, apparently you used to be able to stop and take photo’s but too many tourists fell down the holes that are not backfilled, that’s why Cooper Pedy looks like another planet at times.
After a hair raising drive through the dirt and a few terrible jokes by Jim, our friendly tour guide we arrived at The Breakaways, an area of low coloured hills that change with the light, it's hard to believe nature can produce something so perfect! Apparently many of millions of years before it was all ocean, and they are still finding fossilised shells every day. This is aboriginal land so you need to organise a permit if you are not with a tour. Just try saying the name of the tribe that is belongs to!
The view was simply breathtaking and the tour was worth it for this moment, we drove around and had a look at the hills from all different angles and saw the hills they call the salt and pepper hills, although the aboriginal people refer to them as the two dogs.
There had been a heap of movies filmed here, es pecially at the moon plains which we also drove past, including Pitch Black with Vin Diesel and apparently the day they filmed it was over 48 degrees because they wanted to get the heat haze coming of the hills. Kangaroo Jack had parts filmed here, Mad Max, Escape From The Red Planet and the Aussie favourite Prisilla Queen Of The Desert.
Next stop was the dog fence, it used to be called the dingo fence but seeing as the only pure bred dingo’s are on Fraser island they cant call it that anymore.The two-metre high dog fence stretches across three states for more than 5,300 km in an effort to keep northern dingoes away from southern sheep and is the longest fence in the world.There are all different people who look after the fence and the local from Coober Pedy has 300kms of it to look after and apparently does it each week over 2 days,
The drive back was enjoyable as we got to watch the sunset over The Breakaways, I tried to take some pictures but there is no capturing how amazing it really was.
We got back to the caravan park at about 6’o’clock, the sky at this stage had a purple haze to it, the smell of the caravan soon brought us back to reality though and it was off to the showers for a 20 cent 3 minute shower, okay so maybe it was a 40 cent 6 minute shower, 3 minutes is just not enough!!
We had an early night because we aimed to leave early, for a change.
Thursday we woke up and were off by 8am!! A big moment for us as we have never managed to get out of anywhere before 9:30am.
We had a great time at Coober Pedy and it only filled us with a sense of adventure of what else there was to see in our great southern land.
Leaving early was great, there was no wind and the roads were the quietest we had seen them, we were only aiming to get to Marla but the wind never picked up and we were doing great time so we kept driving hoping to make it to the Finke creek rest stop area for a free nights stay which is about 130 kilometres from Alice Springs.
We are going to use this as our base and then head back with a tent to Ayers Rock.
xxx
