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9hrs after leaving Uluru we arrived in the dusty South Australia town of Coober Pedy. On the way down from Uluru, across the Northern Territory (NT) and South Australia (SA) border we saw a whole lotta nothing as far as you can see. The highlight of the trip though was seeing quite a few Wedge Tailed Eagles feasting on roadkill, mainly squished kangaroo's at the side of the road. My god those are huge birds!!!!
Right, Coober Pedy. This town is famous as being the opal capital of the world, so you would think with a title like that it would be quite a prosperous place. WRONG! How can we put this politely........its a s*** hole! There, that sums it up nicely. The only other reason Coober Pedy is on the map is because the area around it has been used for a lot of film sets such as Mad Max and Red Planet.
We were told by people during our travels that Coober Pedy is a bit "rough and ready" and they probably keep it this way for the tourists. But my god, I think all they are doing if thats true is scaring half of them to death!! Within minutes of being in Coober Pedy we had a drunk bloke banging on the window trying to sell us opals! ARGH! The tourist info centre staff weren't much better either as while we went in there first of all to pickup some leaflets we heard another tourist ask the lady at the desk what a good tour is to do. Her response was "I can't tell you else I'll lose my job". EH!?!?!
Anyway, it was already almost 5pm so before we went to the campsite we had a quick drive around town, which basically consists of a main road about 2km long with houses dotted around the side streets. Everywhere is covered in sand / dust as its in the middle of the desert, and all the roads are lined with passed out aboriginal people. We found out just before we got here that Coober Pedy has a very high level of racism where basically the white folks wont let the black folks inside the shops except to buy beer so thats all they do. Weird? Trying to block this out we went to the town lookout which is a giant winch on a hill. That's it really. Its a giant winch on a hill, looking out over a road and a few houses with desert in the background. Not quite the same as Griffith Park in LA! Once we were done with this, as we started to leave a chinese woman walks in front trying to get us to drive into her yard which she had filled with the most junk you have ever seen!!!! We assume she was trying to get us to buy something, but strangely just then both me and Emma developed temporary blindness so couldn't see her so drove straight past, only to be instantly cured again. Strange that Following that we drove to the Underground book store to pickup a souvenir magnet and sticker for Bolt.
The campsite we stayed at was the Big 4 Oasis Park. Hmmmmmm...... Less we say about that place the better, but why in a town where you have so much space around you, do you cram everything into something the size of a shoe box! The mind boggles!
The next morning we were due to leave Coober Pedy to get to Port Augusta, but before we did we went to the Old Timers Mine. We couldn't come to Coober Pedy and not see some opal and this place wasn't actually that bad. Because Coober Pedy gets into the 50c temp range in summer, the locals have underground homes called "Dugouts". It was when one of these homes was being extended that they stumbled across a mine no one knew was there and they turned this into the "Old Timers Mine" attraction. For $8 each we got to don a hard hat and head underground into the mine tunnels for a walk, well hunched walk anyway to see how they used to mine opal and what it was like during those times in the 1970s. Actually quite impressive really and must have been seriously hard work for the people doing it so was definitely worth the trip. Part of this tour also went into an actual underground home which still had the original furniture in from when it was lived in during the 1970s so that was cool.
Overall not bad a bad experience, plus we both went to the loo in an underground toilet (only no.1). Sorry, had to say that
Last thing before we left was another underground exhibit to look at how life was in Coober Pedy during the old days and how's it changed now. Kinda interesting but it was free so we'll take it! Wish the Opals were free though......my lord they were expensive! Probably why the town is so run down is because they do all this mining for opals and then no one can afford to buy them! Oh well...... Andy's Mom mentioned that opal was her birthstone "with a hint hint, nudge wink" but at $200 for something the size of a pea, sorry Annie, you'll have to be happy with the plate instead LOL!
So thats Coober Pedy. We are now on our way to Port Augusta ready to start the long drive to Western Australia!
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