Coober Pedy

Our first night after Uluru was spent at Kulgera Roadhouse, that sits just north of the South Australian border.  It is a roadhouse with a very quirky pub attached as well as the campground.  After we had set up our camp we headed over to the pub for sundowners.  We had a great time talking to the couple that are set up beside us in the camping area.  They were from Canberra.  We may just catch up with them again in the Flinders Ranges.

We have to once again cross a border with fruit and vegetable quarantine so when we got back to the van I made a large pot of tomato pasta sauce full of vegetables that I can't take over the border and we juiced lemons that are also a no no.  Guacamole was also another dish to use up banned avocados.  There are lots of items on the  list. The next day we set sail for Coober Pedy.  We crossed the border and can you believe it, it is not manned and is simply an honesty thing.  I suppose it was good that I didn't know that!  

We arrived into Cooby Pedy around 1pm.  The first thing you notice as you enter the town boundary is the thousands of mullock heaps across the landscape. Everyone of those mullock heaps has a mine shaft beside it.  You would not want to walk around this area at night.

 We once again went through the routine of setting up camp and then decided to head to the Big Winch 360 degree Restaurant for dinner.  Our friends Kate and Mike were here in Coober Pedy a couple of weeks ago and recommended it.  We wandered around the outside area that houses the "Big Winch" before heading into the restaurant that is also the perfect place to watch the sunset over Coober Pedy.  We didn't order a large meal just Arancini for me and Philip wanted soup but had to settle for a Baked Brie as the soup was off the list.

Our second day in Coober Pedy included a visit to the Old Time Miners Museum and a tour in the afternoon.  First up was the museum.  We had read quite a bit about this museum and it didn't disappoint.  It is actually a working mine shaft complete with living area that has been converted to a tourist attraction.  After we have paid our entrance fee we are given hard hats and shown to the entrance door.  Even though the floor has been excavated to allow people to navigate the narrow mine shaft corridors we still managed to bump our heads quite a lot and walked through the shaft hunched over to avoid more bumped heads.  It is a very well laid out museum with plenty of information regarding the mining of opals for you to read.  I liked looking through the underground home section.

After spending an hour or so inside the museum we finally headed to the exit.  It was well worth our time.  We had a couple of chores to do before heading back to the van.  Fuel for the car and replenishing our fruit and vegetables.  I made us a quick lemon pasta for lunch (so delicious) and once we had washed  the dishes it was time to head to the meeting place for our tour that included a town tour, a visit to an underground home, the Serbian Underground Church, a short drive out of town to The Kanku Breakaways and finally a visit to an underground opal mine.  It would be a five hour tour.

Our tour guide, Jamie, was right on time and almost all the tour participants were staying right here at the Big 4 Van park.  Our first stop was the underground home.  Around 70% of Coober Pedy's resident live in underground homes and as our tour guide said "Even those buried in the cemetery are underground" 😁 It is an impressive home and when the owner wants to add extra rooms he simply excavates further into the hillside.

Next stop was the Serbian Orthodox Church.  If we thought the home was impressive we were in awe of this church. There were stained glass windows, a choir balcony, wall carvings and paintings.  I did ask the question as whether they found opal when excavating but was told that if they did it wasn't advertised.

Now it was time to get back on board our bus to travel along gravel roads to the Kanku Breakaways Conservation Park.  I was very impressed with these beautiful rock formations with such wonderful colours.  The breakaways are formed when they "break away" from the main range and years of erosion give the breakaways wonderful shapes and colour.

We followed the dingo fence for part of our journey into the Breakaways.  It is 5,600 kilometres in length and runs from Jimbour on the Queensland Darling Downs to west of the Eyre Peninsular on the Nullarbor Plains.  Its soul purpose is to keep the dingos away from stock.

Our last stop for this tour was into the opal fields and a visit to a working opal mine.  We stop in front of two giant openings and lead the short distance inside where we are given a talk on how the opals are mined and found.  Of course these days it is all done with machines, not like in the beginning with picks and shovels.  It is still hard work and to find an opal would be very exciting.  We were shown a small vein inside the mine that can only be seen under UV light.

We enjoyed this trip but Philip would like to have seen a "working mine" as would I.  It would be interesting to watch all those machines in operation.  We leave Coober Pedy tomorrow and head to Woomera where we will have an overnight stop and then on to Quorn where we will be all aboard the Pitchi Richi Heritage Train.