Coober Pedy

Coober Pedy looked like a town of dust with not a great deal going for it.  But once we went on the town tour with Yanni (John), who owned the family parks caravan park, he changed my mind a little.

It was still a town of dust but had some cool underground homes, an underground church, multi-coloured sandstone and lots of beautiful opals.  Yanni’s local went for 4.5hrs and he said if there was question about Coober Pedy  by the end he would give us our money back.

The best part for the kids was, he said if they were good he would give them all an opal.  They had it in their minds that they would be rich, hoping he would give them a black opal.  The most expensive of them all.  I must say they were very good, even when they were bursting to go to the toilet.

Yanni took us top see a working mine, but no one was working. They blow their budget digging and don’t find anything so they go and do something else to make money. He took us to “The Breakaways” which are beautiful coloured mountains and the set for quite movies, like Priscilla Queen of the desert, Red Planet, Mad Max and a couple others I can’t remember.

As we looked at an open cut mine Yanni told us the process of mining for your opals.  You can buy a permit to stake your claim and then you peg out the area you want and you can have 14 days to dig to see if want to secure that claim or continue digging. If you don’t find anything you have to pay the big bucks all over again, so its best to strike it lucky first round. Opals are very hard to find and its not about knowledge it more about having good luck.

 We stopped and looked at the famous dingo fence which was 1.6m high and went for over 5000km, runs from Surfers Paradise Qld to Bight near WA big job.  We also went to an underground house ( it doesn’t matter what the outside temperature is the house remains at 23°C to 25°C). Awesome idea considering the temperature can range from -5°C to 40°C +.  Another famous site was at the cemetery , where a man choose not to have a traditional headstone about used a keg instead on his grave.  Yanni did want us to know that just because they are in the middle of nowhere they don’t miss out on the fun stuff.  They have a sports oval, which is the only grass in the town.  The only problem is a few days before a football game the aboriginals go walkout and then there is not enough people for a team.  Coober Pedy also has a nine hole golf course with very small patch of green ( fake grass to tee off) then the rest of the greens is dirt sprayed with oil. The oil is to stop the dirt blowing everywhere and to highlight the holes and to stay on course.

Arriving back at the caravan park Yanni told the kids to come down to the office to collect their opals, so racing down there we waited for some time as one of the girls in the office told him why we were they.  A while later he appeared with a paper bag he passes it to Alizah and gave her instructions to wash them in a plastic container and then show all the kids at your school.  Thinking that was pretty good, we said thanks and got a photo with a really nice genuine man.  We walk out of the office and Alizah opens the bag and says “it’s just full of stones and cigarette butts”.  He obviously thought the kids wouldn’t come and collect their prize so in the rush he had to dip up his smoke garden. At a better look next day the bag had heaps of opals in it just waiting to be discovered. 

Yanni is also an award winning pizza chef, and has the most yummy tasting pizzas around and not to mention ENORMOUS. 

SO Coober Pedy was certainly a great place to visit but Yanni didn’t change my mind about wanting to live there.  So its back to the highway of road kill and burnt out cars.

The driving is taking its toll on Jamie and I so we invite games to play to pass the boredom. Our favourite is the “Wave Game”  you see a car/ caravan coming in the opposite direction and one person  has to say if they are a waver or not. Then the next level is what type of wave, the one finger, the whole hand or the hold tight of the steering wheel like they are going to crash.  The last level is who is the waver, driver or passenger.  I know its sounds silly to you all but there is a real etiquette to driving with a van on the back and I’m sure a lot of people are unsure about it as we were when we first started travelling. Some questions asked are …. If you have a van, do you wave to camper trailers, motorhomes or wicked campers or vice versa??? Should the passenger do all the waving so the driver can concentrate ??? The questions continue.  So I think after we arrive home I may write a book , TO WAVE OR NOT TO WAVE THIS IS THE QUESTION, A COMPLETE CARAVANERS DRIVING GUIDE. Your thoughts would be most appreciated.

See you in Ayers Rock

desert scenery

Coober Pedy mine truck

Can you see the mine truck

sunset over Coober Pedy

Trying to do some of the blog

opal bug

painted lady opal

We saw heaps of these things on the side of the road. We thought they were spider nests, but found out that they are  hairy caterpillar

open cut mine

the only grass on the oval

Golf course with oil tops

The Breakways

The breakways

Salt & pepper

underground home

Drilling styles undergound

moon rocks

Dingo Fence

underground kitchen

one of the mine holes

opal in the rocks

underground church

new house being built

Yanni & Alizah with her bag of opals

huge pizza

the leftovers from 2 pizzas

sunrise

our shadow

Hahndorf, Adelaide, Victor Harbour, Port Augusta

On our way to Adelaide we had to call into the Big Lobster, how often do you see one that's about 10metres high.

Not far from Adelaide we found the turn to the popular Hahndorf, a German town. I only wanted to go there because I heard it had a chocolate factory nearby and to find it sold German sausages was a real bonus. But not eating them at the same time of course. The buildings were just beautiful and the town was very busy when we were there.  We found the information centre to find out where this chocolate factory was as it was getting late.  It was actually at another little town so with sadness I said maybe we should come back tomorrow.

When we arrived at our Adelaide caravan park, which was called Levi Park, we were suprised to see sooo many caravans.  The whole way around Aus so far the parks have been very quite and we could pretty much can choose any spot we wanted. This one had cars and vans on everybit of vacant ground. Thinking a little bit more about Adelaide, I guess this is the point where people stop before they go up to the desert (NT) or over the desert to WA or even the desert of SA.

We didnt really look around Adelaide as when you have seen as many churches as we have seen in the last 3 months they all start to look the same. So we headed out to the  Melbas chocolate & confectionary factory and I found my new home.  They had every sort of chocolate/lolly that you could think of and free samples. Definitely heaven. Next store to the choccy shop was a cheese factory, (all I needed was wine and I wouldn't have left) to try goats cheese for the first time. Yummy, and brought a slab of "goat on a hot tin roof (chilly) ", will be buying that when I am back home. From there we headed down to Victor Harbour to see the penguins again but the centre for the injured birds was closed. Once again we are not suppose to see all these bloody animals, so we have decided not to look for anymore, they can come to us.

But Victor Harbour had the most fantastic whale museum for the kids, complete with a couple of question sheets. We need as much help with school work as we can get.  I can't wait to send them to school in Darwin. This was also the place Kaine did his first poo in the toilet. Yay, no more nappies!!! Just thought you might be interested in that little fact.

Then we headed over on a horse drawn tram to explore Granite Island, Zara thought it was the funniest thing when I told her the horse was wearing a bag on its bottom to collect the poo. She thought I was crazy, every in the tram had a bit of a chuckle. Mentioning that the animals could come to us from now on, they did. We saw overgrown seagulls that we later found out to be albatross, a seal and a pod of about 30 dolphins. Granite Island also had a fantastic walk around it checking out the massive granite rocks.  Leaving here late, we had our first run in with the navigation lady on Jamie's phone. She tried sending us home on the expressway, which sounded like an awesome idea as it took about 15mins off of our hour trip. Heading towards the expressway we found they decided to close it, for what reason I have no idea.  So we continued driving and she rerouted us to another road for a few kms then told us to get back on the expressway again. Silly women, its closed. Eventually we did get home only making the trip 45mins longer than the original time.  Never mind, just another one of the joys of travelling.

Leaving Adelaide the next morning we had a big drive ahead of us to Port Augusta. The beautiful green grasses and beach side views had changed to brown grass and junkyard properties.  We stopped for a bite to eat at Port Germein which boasted to have the largest timber jetty in the Southern Hemisphere, originally measuring 1676m but a little bit of it had fallen down.  Back in its hayday Port Germein was Australia's largest grain shipping port. The kids an I had a great walk out the tide was out quite a bit and the water was crystal clear.  We saw a new way of launching a boat with a home made tractor, pretty funny to watch.  Once we left Port Germein the scenery changed again and we had some great views of the Flinders Ranges. 

Arriving in Port Augusta by 2pm which was a lot earlier than we expected we went to check out the local town. I must say not very exciting at all. The most exciting thing we saw was a guy spray painting the local skate park park with a spray can. He was very talented. The caravan park we stayed at gave us the worst night sleep ever, (even worse than the 100km winds of Kangaroo Valley). Straight over a river opposite the park was were the 3km trains pulled in and I'm not sure what they were doing but all you heard all night was metal scrapping and engine noise. My ipod with Pink blaring in my ears still didn't cover the sounds.

Next up is the 6 hour drive to Coober Pedy.

Really big Lobster

really nice old buildings in Hahndorf

I have my baby trained well.

another nice building

Big chair out the front of  a pub, complete with speakers and we think a heater

scuptures of Adelaide

Church - Adelaide one of many

The busiest caravan park yet

Just a couple of my favourties

Really wanted these for Jamies old employer

My new home



The tram that takes you to Granite Island

Granite Island rocks

Cool tree- it was actually almost on its side winds must get strong

Little bit of schooling

Looking for fossils

Levi wanting to be a Ninga turtle

Port Germein Jetty

Homemade tractor heading out for the long drive to the water

Flinders Ranges in the background, not much of anything else though