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COOBER PEDY
If Coober Pedy were a theme park it would state above the entrance 'Welcome to Crazyland'. It's pretty much a 'one street town' but with one big difference, which is that about 50% of the population live underground! Have you ever spent a night in a cave? Neither had we until we came to CP! If that wasn't enough, it is also the Opal Mining Capital of Australia, if not the world. As such the place is filled with people who have come from all over the globe to seek their fortune - pretty much everyone has a story here. Everyone we meet is impressively bonkers and so nice with it. Our hostel is run by a wonderful French lady from Jersey who has lived in Oz for 20 years and is mad as a badger - even by French standards. She spends her time showing people her collection of pet lizards. They are pretty impressive. Especially the one that eats flies from the bar (see photos). They very kindly lend us Mad Max 3 on DVD as well, which completes our viewing of the trilogy whilst in Oz, the timing is perfect as tomorrow we are going to see the place where parts of the film were shot.
The following day, after a surprisingly relaxing and great night's sleep in the underground cave, we spend our morning exploring the town/street. We visit a few of the opal shops and the underground museum, before doing a bit of browsing in the underground bookshop. Then we pass the wreck of a spaceship - honestly - but we are guessing it is a prop from a filmset, unless of course aliens have actually landed here which is always a possibility and would explain a lot - before meeting back at our hostel to set off on out whirlwind tour of the rest of the sights. And yeah we do totally loath tour groups by now and hate participating in them, but with no transport we have no other option, so off we set with the rest of our little group.
On the tour we visit an underground church and one of the Opal mines before visiting the (in)famous Crocodile Harry's place; which is the paraphenalia-filled underground home of a crocodile wrestling ladies' man and eccentric Aussie legend, used in numerous films including Mad Max 3. As we expected this place is truly insane and mesmerising at the same time. Very sadly the great Harry passed away in Autumn of 2006 so we are a few months too late to meet the man himself,. After this we drive out to the Golf Course - a golf course with no grass? Before exploring the surrounding landscape to see various sights from films, notably 'The Breakaways' used as a backdrop for a great scene in 'Priscilla - Queen of the Desert'. Finally, our tour guide, who true to CP form is mental as anything, takes us to his own underground house. Brilliant. Coober Pedy is so fantastically eccentric that it's hard to put into words but we leave with a smile from ear to ear, glad that we have finally experienced this weird and wonderful place.
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