Coober Pedy

 A Road Train, it's all one vehicle.

 Vast open spaces as far as you can see.

The town sign, which is a machine called a 'blower' that helps dig out the dirt.

 An Aboriginal piece in the gallery.

 Joe the opal miner being lowered into the mine.

 The Breakaways.

My underground bedroom.

Sunday, April 3^rd.

All the other people here left before sun up. Obviously everyone is trying to make tracks. Me too. Off at first light.

As soon as I headed north the farms ended and the bush began. There were some small trees but lots of scrub and bushes. The earth is red. As I drove the sun came up and the colours were revealed.

I knew I had about 500 kms to go today so I knew I would get to Coober Pedy early afternoon, so I was under no pressure. 

I saw no cars going north for the first couple of hours and only big trucks coming south. They call them Road Trains and they have one truck cab pulling three oversized transport trucks. This saves them driver expenses as they only pay one guy and he hauls three. They can do this because there are no big hills and it's all open road.

I stopped at a Roadhouse for gas and some fruit and yogurt. Talk about an isolated place.

There are signs on the road telling you to watch for not only wildlife but also cows and sheep as this is open unfenced range. I saw lots of dead animals that the trucks just mow down overnight. As for live animals, I saw a few sheep, about ten cows, hundreds of crows eating the carrion, one emu in the distance and one kangaroo that hopped across the road in front of me! Luckily I missed him.

As the day went on the clouds disappeared and the heat went up. By the time I got to Coober Pedy it was thirty degrees. I found the Underground B and B I booked a couple of weeks ago. My room is in the B and B portion of their home and is underground. It is very nicely appointed and several of the walls are of carved rock. The rock around here is sedimentary and contains gypsum, which is quite soft and makes lots of dust when mining. The main part of the house is above ground. 

My host, Ken, gave me some tips of what to see and do in town, so I set out. I checked out the underground Serbian church, which was small but nice, an overlook called the Big Winch that gave a good view of the town and drove around this small mining town looking at the houses. The area is a large of opal mines. The interesting thing here is that some of the houses, including my B and B are built into the hills and dug underground to get away from the heat. During the summer it is regularly well over 40 degrees.

Turns out there is a half hour time zone change from Victoria to South Australia and the hours went back an hour too. So instead of 3:00 it was 1:30.

Then I drove to Tom's Working Opal Mine. They run tours but I was the only one there, so the wife of the owner showed me a short DVD of opal mining and then she took me underground. It was well lit and the tunnels were quite square and large. She gave me some information and then let me wander around by myself.

Then I went to Jim's Pizzeria which Ken recommended. It is rated as one of the best in Australia! I had one of their signature range of outback pizzas. It was called “The Coat of Arms” and is “a truly original fusion of sweet cranberry preserves and savoury Australia game meats, with the subtle flavours of asparagus and Camembert cheese acting to balance the overall taste sensation”. All of this in a mining town in the outback, and what's more it was delicious! Best pizza I've had in years.

I also went to a Aboriginal souvenir shop where there was a locally famous artist painting. There was a tour going through so I listened as he explained about the art, the didgeridoos and the boomerangs. I piece I posted is different from most. The others are mostly patterns.

Finally, I went for a drive to a scenic overlook that Ken suggested called the Breakaways, which are rock formations that look to like they have broken away from the Flinders Range. They were eleven kilometres down a dirt road north of town. They were beautiful and reminded me of rock formations in the Painted Desert in Arizona. I wanted to sit there and enjoyed them and the solitude, but the flies drove me back into the car. The outback is infested with small flies that must be looking for moisture as they go for your eyes, nose and mouth. I had to put a shirt over my head to get rid of most of them. Thankfully they don't bite.

On the way home I stopped at the local IGA (yup, they exist in Australia!) and bought some fruit and granola bars for the drive tomorrow. This one is very big and has a large hardware store incorporated in it.

When I got back to the B and B I discovered there was another couple here, an older couple from Adelaide who will stay here for three days. There are three rental rooms and they are in the large suite and I'm in the one with two twin beds. We share kitchen and livingroom but not bathrooms. I talked to them for a bit, then they settled in to eat their take out dinners. I did some blog work and then had a hot tub, which felt really good, and got ready for bed. Long day driving again tomorrow.

Total of 651 kms driving today.