We got the call on Monday afternoon to say that the car would be fixed that day and we planned to head off early on Tuesday morning.  We were up at 6am and left the site at 6.44am which was pretty good since it was raining and we had to take the tents down.  We had a very long journey ahead of us as we were planning to travel to Cobber Pedy in one go – 793km in total.  After a couple of hours we stopped for breakfast and Bob noticed that the transmission fluid was leaking out a bit.  Not to panic but was rather concerned.  After 300km we stopped at Pimba where there was a mechanic who crawled underneath it and found out what was wrong.  Two copper washers had been over tightened and split – he couldn’t do anything for us apart from selling us more transmission fluid but we would get it sorted at Coober Pedy. 

The countryside has really changed now and we have much longer stretches of desert like area with red dirt, salt lakes and shrub like plants. We stopped at this very large salt lake called Lake Gairdner.

 

 

We finally arrived after a very long day in the car at Coober Pedy at 6.45pm. 

The word Coober Pedy is an Anglo Saxon version of an aboriginal word that roughly means “White man’s hole in the ground.”

 

 

Coober Pedy is a fantastic town to explore with a fascinating history. The town didn’t really develop until the 1970’s which was very much due to lack of water. In the past the town was completely dependant on rain water but now they have a declination plant and this has allowed the town to expand to about 3500 people. 

We had decided not to stay in the caravan park and found a site behind the op shop – it was far cheaper than the caravan park and Gary who managed it was great.  He showed the children how to find opals and he came to Coober Pedy about 7 years ago and never left. He says that he walks the opal fields everyday for a few hours and finds pieces of opal and sells them which makes him about $100 a week. He lives in his old bus which doesn’t look like much on the outside but has been decked out as a bachelor pad inside.  It basically was a car park and we pitched the tents on gravel with a loaned tarpaulin under one and our fleece under the other, but it was fine for the McKeons (he he).

 

 

 

Wednesday 25th march

The first morning Bob left before breakfast to sort out the car Bulls Garage was the place Gary had said to go to and the mechanic was great. He got Bob to put the car on the ramp asked a few questions and went round the gearbox with a torch checked it thoroughly found a box with new copper washers and replaced the leaking split ones checked the levels and sent Bob on his way back to breakfast all fixed!!

Then we started our explorations at the Old timers mine. It is a network of old opal tunnels that you are allowed to walk through. Abbey disliked the mannequins saying that she thought they were creepy. The mine itself was a fascinating thing to walk around and you certainly got a new respect for those early miners. It was not until 1923 when the first women miner staked her claim. It was certainly a game of chance!! The mine was rediscovered in the 1960’s when a family were extending their underground house and accidentally broke through into one of the mining tunnels. In the mine is an opal seam that was found when it was being opened for tourism which in today’s money is estimated to be worth $ 30,000. Some poor miner had missed his fortune by about 25cm.

 

On coming out of the mine there was a little opal rubble sandpit which we fossicked in for a while. We did not come across our fortune but we did find a few little pieces of opal. There was also a geocache next door in a well which Veronica, a recent convert to Geoching and Phil couldn’t resist going and finding. We also took the opportunity to visit an opal shop called Opalios. The people that ran the shop had lived in Coober Pedy for 47years and did their own mining. She was a very generous lady and gave the kids a bag of opal rubble and also some semi precious stones. We spend about 40mins chatting to them and given their generosity Bob decided that making a small purchase would be kind so spoilt Phil and brought her some opal ear rings.

After lunch and an explore of the OP shop, which had very high prices!! (No bargains to be had in Coober Pedy). 80% of the people in Coober Pedy live underground and the houses don’t need heating or cooling as they generally stay at about 25 degrees all year round. Generally the people who live above ground do so because they are claustrophobic or for cultural reasons such as with the aboriginal people. We visited the Catacomb church which was dug out in the shape of a cross. It was inspired by the catacombs in Rome.

 

We then headed over to Faye’s underground historic home. Faye’s house was hand dug by Faye and two other women. It took them 10 years to dig out but this was mostly due to the fact that they also had full time jobs. The house still had all her original furniture, an extensive wine and bar area and also the first indoor swimming pool in Coober Pedy. Faye sounded like an amazing character who is still alive today but lives up in Brisbane. When she left Coober Pedy she actually opened up the hotel in Laidley QLD which she owned for 10 years. The underground houses are an interesting concept and people still dig out their own extensions. No need to buy book shelves, if you want a shelf you just dig one out!! The tour guide was saying that one friend of his has a house with 23 rooms in it. Apparently as he began extending he found opal and so just kept extending, the opal he found was sold for about $300,000.

 

 

 

This last picture is how her house started life as the Garage for the postman with just one room cut in to the hill.

 

We finished the day with some Noodling on the public noodle site in town. Much to the children’s sadness we didn’t have much luck in this area and so decided that a quick visit to the local opal shop was needed to purchase our own souvenirs. We did have a lot of fun and if we had more patience then we would have most likely found a little more opal.

Back at our camp we showed off our opal finds to Gary and the other couple we had befriended. Han’s and Annika were a lovely couple who were Dutch of origin but had lived in Australia for over 37 years. Their camp set up was amazing and they were so friendly. Annika’s knowledge of Australian history was amazing and the stories they shared of their adventures was inspirational. Hans is a very practical man with an artistic bend. They have a beautiful Kelpie dog who is 17 years old.

 

Thursday 26th March

We had another early start this morning as today we travel to Ayers Rock or Uluru depending on whether you are being politically correct. It is about 680km from Coober Pedy with very few towns along the way. We left the campsite at 6:30am and it was still dark with a sky full of stars. We saw the sunrise behind us and we continued our journey North.

 

Just south of Marla we were pulled over by a road block of police. We pulled over and they informed us it was a drug trafficking operation. We all had to get out of the car and the drug dog smelled us and also went over the car. Bob was breathalysed, twice now in three months… They had been there for the last two days and apparently this is because it is one of the main ways the drugs get moved into this area. Just as we were getting back into the car Mick says “do you want to check the caravan?”. The police officer responded by saying “DO I need to check the caravan? Is there something I need to look for.” Lucky he said it was a smile and we all got back in the car.

As we travel along the road you constantly see signs indicating whether the road is fenced or unfenced and there are cattle grids almost every 10km or so. Yet, there has not been a cow insight. Then just as I write this in the car we spot a whole group of them. The landscape is relatively flat but littered with lots of low strangely shrubs and rocky red ground.

We crossed the border into The Northern Territory at about 12noon we are now in the Outback.

 

Goodbye to;

And Hello to;

Lunch stop was at Mt Ebenezer roadhouse (2hrs from Uluru) and the Managers (Louise and Phil) were just lovely. The highlight was that we got to hold a baby red kangaroo. The joey was so soft and Phil offered to take it home. The McKeon’s invested in fly nets as there has been a noticeable increase in the fly population, Veronica’s was pink of course.