10 February
We left Kimba heading for Pandurra Station or Nuttbush retreat as it is now called, the first piece of it was purchased in 1895 and now the army is taking a quater of the farm including the best grazing land because it wants to increase its tank training area. The piece of land they wish to have must have a pub and a hospital at either end, so in this case one end is Whyalla and the other end is Port August. The fact that the soldiers have been barred from the pubs already does not seem to rate a mention. Apparently they will leave the station with the land that the new homestead sits on, but take the land from the old homestead. Couple of problems, all the water bores are on the land the army is taking, the explosions that they will let of in the middle of the night are about 5 Km's away and are about 192 decibels, so no sleep for guests, as I said earlier its the best grazing land, they haven't yet paid them a cent but they have claimed the land. As yet the owners havent remove the sheep, intersting. I consider that bullying and harassment and would be looking at getting a very good lawyer...
11 February
This morning we walked out to the Nuttbush retreat old homestead, a 3km track which is the land these guys will loose. Then went for a swim in pool and did some work in the afternoon. Lovely BBQ under the stars in the evening
12 February
Left for Port Augusta and after checking out the two possible campsites ended up in the Shoreline CP which was quite alright. Had a lovely spot overlooking the bay, unbeknowsn to us right opposite was the railway shunting yard, I now know that railway carriages are shunted all hours of day and night, and they are at their noisiest at night. We also had car problems so took Suzi into the local Suzi dealer who gave us a rental car until ours was fixed, great service as far as the hire car is concerned, but the work was dodgy. Needed a new fuel pump, they fitted it and the car wouldn't start, so they thought it might be their injectors so they fitted 2 of those, and the car wouldn't start, thought it might be the plugs so they fitted 6 of them and the car wouldn't start. So on doing the diagnostics again, they found one of the mechanics had wired a coil the wrong way. So on that note we got 2 injectors and 6 plugs free, this took 3 days, the day we collected her we were heading north.
13 February
Spent the day around town and here is a bit of history about this place. My mate Matthew Flinders had been past here to see if he could sail to the inland sea, unsucessfully. The reason these guys thought there was and inland sea was taht many of the major rivers flow indland towards lake Eyre. Various others had called past but none had bothered to drop anchor, John Eyre also passed on land around 1839, and the first settlers started farming in 1940. The first pastoral lease was granted in 1851. In May 1852 Port Augusta was named after Augusta Sophia Marryat, who at the age of 22 married Mr Fox-Young who was the first civilian Governor General of SA, there is more on the subject but not this time. Water is another interesting fact here, the first water was carted in casks as there was no fresh water supply to be had. In 1865 a pipeline was laid from the Flinders Ranges to the town which was not sufficient and finally in 1944 they laid another pipeline which brought water from the Murray river. On checking the water it tasted OK, but was the colour of mud, thank heavens for our assorted water filters. This always reminds me of a joke I heard when I was about 12 and it goes like this. A woman was asked who she most wanted to be in life, Sophia Loren, 'No' she answered, how about Gina Lolibrigida, agan 'No', fiannly he asked 'Well who then?' She replies Vitoria Pipiline, 'Who is that'. To which she pulled out a newspaper article with the headlines "Victoria Pipeline, laid by 100 men in 200 days". Sorry, showing my age here!!!Colman went to a few employment agencies but there was very little here for the short period we were looking for, he did manage to find me a job at the local court, full time secretary starting in 5 days time, permanent.
14 February
Our last day in Port August and thought we would do some of the tourist things so went to the Wadlata Outback centre and were very pleasantly surprised. It was interesting, well set up, lots of variety and everyone was friendly and most helpful. Spent a good couple of hours wandering around the display and learnt quite a bit about aboriginal legends and history, and as always, this needs to be put into the diary. It started off by giving a geographical history of Oz starting 15 million years ago and how we separated from the Antarctic landmass, Africa and Asia. How the various parts were in fact underwater, (heavens, must have had global warming back then already), the massive inland sea that stretched across Australia and how live forms started in these lakes. Fossils of shells, squid type creatures and sea ripples can still be found now, outback, we did see some of these when we were doing our walk through Kings Canyon last year. There was also an Aboriginal legends that appealed to me about the Southern Cross. The legend is called the Muda Awi Hunters, two guys find themselves standing right on top of the tallest peak during a bushfire, even here the flames and smoke of the bushfire reached up to them. So to save themselves the two men flew up into the sky where they changed into the brightest stars in the sky, the pointers of Wildu Mandaawi, the Southern cross, which by the way means eagle foot, and if you take a good look at the Southern Cross it is in fact the shape of an eagle foot. Another funny story is about the Ghan and its lack of timeliness. A woman passenger continuously asked the conducted when they would arrive in Alice Springs. He finally got impatient and asked her what the hurry was to which she replied that she was due to have a baby. Annoyed the conducted told her she should not have boarded the train in that condition to which she replied she wasn't in that condition when she first boarded the train! We then went to the Arid Lands Botanic Garden which looked good but as it was a 35 degree plus day we opted against the 12km long walk. I would like to come back some time and do the walk but I reckon it would need to be winter. Another bit of trivia is that they have the worlds largest Eremophila Garden, now for all those (like me) who have no idea what that is or if its even legal, I checked it out and these are draught tolerant plants that are endemic to Australia, there are about 215 species.
15 February
Collected Suzi, hooked her up to Momo and left Port Augusta to drive to the Bon Bon bush camp on Bon Bon station north of Glendambo. Bush camp overnight, fine apart from the fact these damn trains seem to be following us. We wont talk about our generator or the state of our car, better that way.
16 February
Arrived in Coober Pedy and checked into the Stuart Ranges CP after perusing the others and finding this ones had the best pool. Then we went to investigate Coober Pedy, last time we were here was in 1990 so let's see what has changed. First of to describe Coober Pedy to anyone who hasn't been or doesn't know it. Many of the original inhabitant build their homes underground, so when you go into the town you don't see that many houses but you do see lots of pipes coming out of the ground, huge mounds of dirt and lots of things that look like small hillocks. Its only when you drive around and see doors leading into sides of these hillocks that you realise just how many houses there are here, underground. Now a little history, the first explorers arrived in 1858, the first opal was found in 1915. Originally it was called Stuart Range Opal Fields, in 1920 there was a vote that went something like this.
Hutchinson got 5 votes
Coober Pedy got 16 votes
Opal Range got 12 votes
Gemville got 3 votes
The name is derived from aboriginal words "kupa" and "piti" meaning white man and hole in the ground. The first miners dug the shafts by hand with pick, shovel, knife, pliers, windlass and cow hide buckets, they only needed to go down about three meters to find opal. Now it's all modernised and mechanised and they go down as far as 20-30 meters.If you feel like prospecting a Mining permit costs AUD$70 and a Claim cost between AUD$80 to $150 for three months, all you need then is a ute, a generator, tools blood, sweat and tears. This allows you to also go down some of the older abandoned mines and see what was missed. Another interesting fact is that Coober Pedy has first and possible only underground post office.
17 February
Today off to see the Breakaways Reserve, location of the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdom film which are located in Arckaringa and Eromanga Great Artisan basins and cover about 1.275million square kilometres. If you are into geology this is a fascinating place, as I'm not that excited by it I will just put in the basics summarised from the explanation boards. So here goes, the Breakaways are made up from flat-topped mesas and gibber desert. These are formed by the deposition of sedimentary layers forming a huge plateau, the uplifting of the rock and the subsequent erosion of the protective silcrete coating along weaknesses causes it to weather at different rates. So eventually this huge plateau was broken up and eroded away shaping what are now the Breakaways. the reason for the name is that looking at it, it looks like this area has 'broken away' from the main Stuart Ranges. On a happier note, temperature range from 45 to 65 degrees out here. Next port of call was Castle Rock, or as the indigenous folks call it Papa rock or two dogs (?!?). So called because the two mounds, one brown and one white reminded them of two dogs and obviously two dogs in aboriginal language is papa! They look spectacular also, but we couldn't for the life of us find the outline of two dogs, we've got a great imagination, this one stumped us. And our last outback port of call was the Dog fence, mentioned before but here is a little more. It is 2250km long and stretches over 5300km, I realise this doesnt calculate, but thats what the signs says and I always believe the signs!! It starting from Surfers Paradise in Queensland, through New South Wales, South Australia and ending in Bight near Western Australia. The protected sheep country being on the southern side of the fence. I think I read somewhere that it is bigger and better than the Great Wall of China and better at keeping 'things' (including rabbits - sorry Aussie joke!!) out. After a long and bumpy ride we arrived back in Coober Pedy and visited some other sights. First the Serbian underground church with scalloped ceilings and beautiful stained glass, the cemetery with lots of stranger graves, all wildly decorated and many Greek, Yugoslav, Polish and German names, this certainly is/was a colourful town. Surprisingly not a very big cemetery.Then we checked out the Golf course with its scrapes greens or black as the case may be. Thet requested that you keep off the grass but for the life of us we couldnt find and a blade, however this golf course is (apaprently) the only course that has reciprical rights with St Andrew Golf Course in Scotland
18 February
Did a little sight seeing, first to the Catacomb church built in 1944 cut out of sandstone in the shape of a cross, the cross, lectern & communion table are made from local mulga wood and an old miners winch. In this church they talked about the Greek word ICHTHUS, which is Greek for fish and which is painted on the wall behind the communion table and was a secret code used by the Christians during the roman persecution. Apparently the letters represent
I jesus
CH christ
TH gods
U son
S saviour
I do love Dan Brown stories. Then off to St Peters& Paul's Catholic Church, a natural heritage listed church, the first underground church in CP and possible first in the world, it was dingy, gloomy and smelt, favouite church - Serbian Orthedox, hmm might convert. We also went to check out the big winch which is for sale and sadly neglected. Next door is something called a museum, sculpture park but I would just called it a junk yard with things perched here and there made of heaven knows what including keyboards, computer monitors, exhaust pipes and more. Apparently Coober Pedy's first tree was planted here, overlooking the town, made of scrap metal and still standing without the need for too much water.
19 February
Today we went to the Old Timers Mine, an original opal mine dating back to 1916. In 1968 a maze of hidden mines that had been dug sometime earlier was discovered when the owners of an underground house wanted to extend their home to create a bedroom for their two daughters. They had started to dig out the room when they broke through into mine tunnels, the shaft leading down had been backfilled in around 1916, in this backfilled area they found a huge opal pocket. No one ever returned to lay claim to the mine so the opal was left there (well most of it anyway) and it was turned into a museum. I like the fact that in CP every time you need a little more cash you just dig out another room. You cannot mine in the town anymore, but no one can stop you from extending your underground home. In the old days the way they got into the mines was by digging holes and then climbing down them, so if you were little you would only need a little hole, then you dug out little notches where you could position your hands and feet and down you went. Apparently the English & Welsh dug square holes, the Chinese round holes and the Aussies boat shaped holes. Not sure what to say about that. The only light they had back then was candles and that is what they used to find opal, so a little about opal. Opal is a solution of hydrated silica, due to evaporation this was concentrated and formed a gel which seeped down into the sandstone and deposited itself in cracks and cavities. Between 2 million to 70 million years ago, this then hardened into opal. Only 1 quarter of 1% of opal is precious gem opal, the stuff that glimmers with colour, the rest is common opal called potch. Difference between light and dark opal are the amount of trace elements contained, the more of these elements the darker the opal. Coober Pedy is the opal capital of the worldwide more than 75% of he worlds commercial opal comes from here. One of the largest pieces weighs 3.5kg. There are three ways of using opal in jewellery, you can use the entire stone, cut and faceted. You can use a base and glue a slice of opal onto that base (doublet), or you can use a base, glue a thin sliver of opal onto this so thin that it takes the colour of the base and then glue a perspex rounded plate on top to reflect and enlarge (triplet). After all that excitement went back to the Momo, went for swim and organised for tomorrow. In the evening we went to one of the slag heaps in the centre of town where you can watch the sun go down over the Breakaways, in the car park there is a movie prop left over from the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black, something that looks like a big space ship. Apparently the Americans left it there as a thank you after filming part of of it around here.
20 February
Coober Pedy to Erldunda was a long drive but we wanted to get to Alice Springs, its been a rough few days and we needed to calm down. The Erldunda Homestead was nice enough, had a pool which went down a treat as it was around 37 degrees. Was fairly barren place but showers were free, oh I forgot to mention that in Coober Pedy we had to pay 20 cents for 2 minutes of water, I managed on 40 cents just. Hopefully Trevor isn't reading this blog, Kimba showers could have cost me a fortune!! So showers were free and judging by their lack of concern over dripping taps and such like, water wasn't a great issue to them. We met a cute little tabby who took a liking to us, we called her Triptych, one of her feet had been squashed and she limped, mind you she ran fast enough when there was a pat or food on the offering. Another funny thing was that a tour group that had camped at the same campsite as us in Coober Pedy was also here. Now this would normally be fun, people to talk to etc, well these were the most miserable bunch of people I have encountered in a long time, couldn't even say 'Hello'. Not even Colman got a word out of them and that is unusual, Germans we've discovered!
21 February
Spent the day at Erldunda, spent the day sewing and updating CV's, swiming and a shandy at the pub, nothing too exciting.
22 February
Packed up early to head for Alice, after a bit of checking booked into the Heavy Tree Gap campsite on the way into Alice right next to the Todd river with a big fence separating us from the other side. Campsite is lovely with a big pool, longer than any of the previous pools we've been to so my 20 laps almost killed me yesterday. Finished settling and then decided to have dinner at the Tavern right next to the campsite. It was an interesting exercise and one I suspect we wont be repeating soon. The meal of the day was fish and chips for $10, not bad, served wrapped in paper with plastic cutlery, yes we are sitting in the pub, there are Pokies to the left of us, Kino behind and screaming kids all around. The wine was "dry white", I guess we should count our lucky stars, it could have been "fruity white". We also discovered that this was the pub we came to on our last visit in 1990, we were sent here back then because it was a family friendly pub with good food and a nice atmosphere. My only recollection is the guy hurling a glass over my head aimed at his girlfriend (?!?) who was just running out the door following full scale yelling match at the table behind us. It smashed into pieces and everyone just kept on eating, no one batted an eyelid. Now as then, we finished our food, which wasn't too bad, and headed out the door.
We left Kimba heading for Pandurra Station or Nuttbush retreat as it is now called, the first piece of it was purchased in 1895 and now the army is taking a quater of the farm including the best grazing land because it wants to increase its tank training area. The piece of land they wish to have must have a pub and a hospital at either end, so in this case one end is Whyalla and the other end is Port August. The fact that the soldiers have been barred from the pubs already does not seem to rate a mention. Apparently they will leave the station with the land that the new homestead sits on, but take the land from the old homestead. Couple of problems, all the water bores are on the land the army is taking, the explosions that they will let of in the middle of the night are about 5 Km's away and are about 192 decibels, so no sleep for guests, as I said earlier its the best grazing land, they haven't yet paid them a cent but they have claimed the land. As yet the owners havent remove the sheep, intersting. I consider that bullying and harassment and would be looking at getting a very good lawyer...
11 February
This morning we walked out to the Nuttbush retreat old homestead, a 3km track which is the land these guys will loose. Then went for a swim in pool and did some work in the afternoon. Lovely BBQ under the stars in the evening
12 February
Left for Port Augusta and after checking out the two possible campsites ended up in the Shoreline CP which was quite alright. Had a lovely spot overlooking the bay, unbeknowsn to us right opposite was the railway shunting yard, I now know that railway carriages are shunted all hours of day and night, and they are at their noisiest at night. We also had car problems so took Suzi into the local Suzi dealer who gave us a rental car until ours was fixed, great service as far as the hire car is concerned, but the work was dodgy. Needed a new fuel pump, they fitted it and the car wouldn't start, so they thought it might be their injectors so they fitted 2 of those, and the car wouldn't start, thought it might be the plugs so they fitted 6 of them and the car wouldn't start. So on doing the diagnostics again, they found one of the mechanics had wired a coil the wrong way. So on that note we got 2 injectors and 6 plugs free, this took 3 days, the day we collected her we were heading north.
13 February
Spent the day around town and here is a bit of history about this place. My mate Matthew Flinders had been past here to see if he could sail to the inland sea, unsucessfully. The reason these guys thought there was and inland sea was taht many of the major rivers flow indland towards lake Eyre. Various others had called past but none had bothered to drop anchor, John Eyre also passed on land around 1839, and the first settlers started farming in 1940. The first pastoral lease was granted in 1851. In May 1852 Port Augusta was named after Augusta Sophia Marryat, who at the age of 22 married Mr Fox-Young who was the first civilian Governor General of SA, there is more on the subject but not this time. Water is another interesting fact here, the first water was carted in casks as there was no fresh water supply to be had. In 1865 a pipeline was laid from the Flinders Ranges to the town which was not sufficient and finally in 1944 they laid another pipeline which brought water from the Murray river. On checking the water it tasted OK, but was the colour of mud, thank heavens for our assorted water filters. This always reminds me of a joke I heard when I was about 12 and it goes like this. A woman was asked who she most wanted to be in life, Sophia Loren, 'No' she answered, how about Gina Lolibrigida, agan 'No', fiannly he asked 'Well who then?' She replies Vitoria Pipiline, 'Who is that'. To which she pulled out a newspaper article with the headlines "Victoria Pipeline, laid by 100 men in 200 days". Sorry, showing my age here!!!Colman went to a few employment agencies but there was very little here for the short period we were looking for, he did manage to find me a job at the local court, full time secretary starting in 5 days time, permanent.
14 February
Our last day in Port August and thought we would do some of the tourist things so went to the Wadlata Outback centre and were very pleasantly surprised. It was interesting, well set up, lots of variety and everyone was friendly and most helpful. Spent a good couple of hours wandering around the display and learnt quite a bit about aboriginal legends and history, and as always, this needs to be put into the diary. It started off by giving a geographical history of Oz starting 15 million years ago and how we separated from the Antarctic landmass, Africa and Asia. How the various parts were in fact underwater, (heavens, must have had global warming back then already), the massive inland sea that stretched across Australia and how live forms started in these lakes. Fossils of shells, squid type creatures and sea ripples can still be found now, outback, we did see some of these when we were doing our walk through Kings Canyon last year. There was also an Aboriginal legends that appealed to me about the Southern Cross. The legend is called the Muda Awi Hunters, two guys find themselves standing right on top of the tallest peak during a bushfire, even here the flames and smoke of the bushfire reached up to them. So to save themselves the two men flew up into the sky where they changed into the brightest stars in the sky, the pointers of Wildu Mandaawi, the Southern cross, which by the way means eagle foot, and if you take a good look at the Southern Cross it is in fact the shape of an eagle foot. Another funny story is about the Ghan and its lack of timeliness. A woman passenger continuously asked the conducted when they would arrive in Alice Springs. He finally got impatient and asked her what the hurry was to which she replied that she was due to have a baby. Annoyed the conducted told her she should not have boarded the train in that condition to which she replied she wasn't in that condition when she first boarded the train! We then went to the Arid Lands Botanic Garden which looked good but as it was a 35 degree plus day we opted against the 12km long walk. I would like to come back some time and do the walk but I reckon it would need to be winter. Another bit of trivia is that they have the worlds largest Eremophila Garden, now for all those (like me) who have no idea what that is or if its even legal, I checked it out and these are draught tolerant plants that are endemic to Australia, there are about 215 species.
15 February
Collected Suzi, hooked her up to Momo and left Port Augusta to drive to the Bon Bon bush camp on Bon Bon station north of Glendambo. Bush camp overnight, fine apart from the fact these damn trains seem to be following us. We wont talk about our generator or the state of our car, better that way.
16 February
Arrived in Coober Pedy and checked into the Stuart Ranges CP after perusing the others and finding this ones had the best pool. Then we went to investigate Coober Pedy, last time we were here was in 1990 so let's see what has changed. First of to describe Coober Pedy to anyone who hasn't been or doesn't know it. Many of the original inhabitant build their homes underground, so when you go into the town you don't see that many houses but you do see lots of pipes coming out of the ground, huge mounds of dirt and lots of things that look like small hillocks. Its only when you drive around and see doors leading into sides of these hillocks that you realise just how many houses there are here, underground. Now a little history, the first explorers arrived in 1858, the first opal was found in 1915. Originally it was called Stuart Range Opal Fields, in 1920 there was a vote that went something like this.
Hutchinson got 5 votes
Coober Pedy got 16 votes
Opal Range got 12 votes
Gemville got 3 votes
The name is derived from aboriginal words "kupa" and "piti" meaning white man and hole in the ground. The first miners dug the shafts by hand with pick, shovel, knife, pliers, windlass and cow hide buckets, they only needed to go down about three meters to find opal. Now it's all modernised and mechanised and they go down as far as 20-30 meters.If you feel like prospecting a Mining permit costs AUD$70 and a Claim cost between AUD$80 to $150 for three months, all you need then is a ute, a generator, tools blood, sweat and tears. This allows you to also go down some of the older abandoned mines and see what was missed. Another interesting fact is that Coober Pedy has first and possible only underground post office.
17 February
Today off to see the Breakaways Reserve, location of the Mad Max Beyond Thunderdom film which are located in Arckaringa and Eromanga Great Artisan basins and cover about 1.275million square kilometres. If you are into geology this is a fascinating place, as I'm not that excited by it I will just put in the basics summarised from the explanation boards. So here goes, the Breakaways are made up from flat-topped mesas and gibber desert. These are formed by the deposition of sedimentary layers forming a huge plateau, the uplifting of the rock and the subsequent erosion of the protective silcrete coating along weaknesses causes it to weather at different rates. So eventually this huge plateau was broken up and eroded away shaping what are now the Breakaways. the reason for the name is that looking at it, it looks like this area has 'broken away' from the main Stuart Ranges. On a happier note, temperature range from 45 to 65 degrees out here. Next port of call was Castle Rock, or as the indigenous folks call it Papa rock or two dogs (?!?). So called because the two mounds, one brown and one white reminded them of two dogs and obviously two dogs in aboriginal language is papa! They look spectacular also, but we couldn't for the life of us find the outline of two dogs, we've got a great imagination, this one stumped us. And our last outback port of call was the Dog fence, mentioned before but here is a little more. It is 2250km long and stretches over 5300km, I realise this doesnt calculate, but thats what the signs says and I always believe the signs!! It starting from Surfers Paradise in Queensland, through New South Wales, South Australia and ending in Bight near Western Australia. The protected sheep country being on the southern side of the fence. I think I read somewhere that it is bigger and better than the Great Wall of China and better at keeping 'things' (including rabbits - sorry Aussie joke!!) out. After a long and bumpy ride we arrived back in Coober Pedy and visited some other sights. First the Serbian underground church with scalloped ceilings and beautiful stained glass, the cemetery with lots of stranger graves, all wildly decorated and many Greek, Yugoslav, Polish and German names, this certainly is/was a colourful town. Surprisingly not a very big cemetery.Then we checked out the Golf course with its scrapes greens or black as the case may be. Thet requested that you keep off the grass but for the life of us we couldnt find and a blade, however this golf course is (apaprently) the only course that has reciprical rights with St Andrew Golf Course in Scotland
18 February
Did a little sight seeing, first to the Catacomb church built in 1944 cut out of sandstone in the shape of a cross, the cross, lectern & communion table are made from local mulga wood and an old miners winch. In this church they talked about the Greek word ICHTHUS, which is Greek for fish and which is painted on the wall behind the communion table and was a secret code used by the Christians during the roman persecution. Apparently the letters represent
I jesus
CH christ
TH gods
U son
S saviour
I do love Dan Brown stories. Then off to St Peters& Paul's Catholic Church, a natural heritage listed church, the first underground church in CP and possible first in the world, it was dingy, gloomy and smelt, favouite church - Serbian Orthedox, hmm might convert. We also went to check out the big winch which is for sale and sadly neglected. Next door is something called a museum, sculpture park but I would just called it a junk yard with things perched here and there made of heaven knows what including keyboards, computer monitors, exhaust pipes and more. Apparently Coober Pedy's first tree was planted here, overlooking the town, made of scrap metal and still standing without the need for too much water.
19 February
Today we went to the Old Timers Mine, an original opal mine dating back to 1916. In 1968 a maze of hidden mines that had been dug sometime earlier was discovered when the owners of an underground house wanted to extend their home to create a bedroom for their two daughters. They had started to dig out the room when they broke through into mine tunnels, the shaft leading down had been backfilled in around 1916, in this backfilled area they found a huge opal pocket. No one ever returned to lay claim to the mine so the opal was left there (well most of it anyway) and it was turned into a museum. I like the fact that in CP every time you need a little more cash you just dig out another room. You cannot mine in the town anymore, but no one can stop you from extending your underground home. In the old days the way they got into the mines was by digging holes and then climbing down them, so if you were little you would only need a little hole, then you dug out little notches where you could position your hands and feet and down you went. Apparently the English & Welsh dug square holes, the Chinese round holes and the Aussies boat shaped holes. Not sure what to say about that. The only light they had back then was candles and that is what they used to find opal, so a little about opal. Opal is a solution of hydrated silica, due to evaporation this was concentrated and formed a gel which seeped down into the sandstone and deposited itself in cracks and cavities. Between 2 million to 70 million years ago, this then hardened into opal. Only 1 quarter of 1% of opal is precious gem opal, the stuff that glimmers with colour, the rest is common opal called potch. Difference between light and dark opal are the amount of trace elements contained, the more of these elements the darker the opal. Coober Pedy is the opal capital of the worldwide more than 75% of he worlds commercial opal comes from here. One of the largest pieces weighs 3.5kg. There are three ways of using opal in jewellery, you can use the entire stone, cut and faceted. You can use a base and glue a slice of opal onto that base (doublet), or you can use a base, glue a thin sliver of opal onto this so thin that it takes the colour of the base and then glue a perspex rounded plate on top to reflect and enlarge (triplet). After all that excitement went back to the Momo, went for swim and organised for tomorrow. In the evening we went to one of the slag heaps in the centre of town where you can watch the sun go down over the Breakaways, in the car park there is a movie prop left over from the Vin Diesel film Pitch Black, something that looks like a big space ship. Apparently the Americans left it there as a thank you after filming part of of it around here.
20 February
Coober Pedy to Erldunda was a long drive but we wanted to get to Alice Springs, its been a rough few days and we needed to calm down. The Erldunda Homestead was nice enough, had a pool which went down a treat as it was around 37 degrees. Was fairly barren place but showers were free, oh I forgot to mention that in Coober Pedy we had to pay 20 cents for 2 minutes of water, I managed on 40 cents just. Hopefully Trevor isn't reading this blog, Kimba showers could have cost me a fortune!! So showers were free and judging by their lack of concern over dripping taps and such like, water wasn't a great issue to them. We met a cute little tabby who took a liking to us, we called her Triptych, one of her feet had been squashed and she limped, mind you she ran fast enough when there was a pat or food on the offering. Another funny thing was that a tour group that had camped at the same campsite as us in Coober Pedy was also here. Now this would normally be fun, people to talk to etc, well these were the most miserable bunch of people I have encountered in a long time, couldn't even say 'Hello'. Not even Colman got a word out of them and that is unusual, Germans we've discovered!
21 February
Spent the day at Erldunda, spent the day sewing and updating CV's, swiming and a shandy at the pub, nothing too exciting.
22 February
Packed up early to head for Alice, after a bit of checking booked into the Heavy Tree Gap campsite on the way into Alice right next to the Todd river with a big fence separating us from the other side. Campsite is lovely with a big pool, longer than any of the previous pools we've been to so my 20 laps almost killed me yesterday. Finished settling and then decided to have dinner at the Tavern right next to the campsite. It was an interesting exercise and one I suspect we wont be repeating soon. The meal of the day was fish and chips for $10, not bad, served wrapped in paper with plastic cutlery, yes we are sitting in the pub, there are Pokies to the left of us, Kino behind and screaming kids all around. The wine was "dry white", I guess we should count our lucky stars, it could have been "fruity white". We also discovered that this was the pub we came to on our last visit in 1990, we were sent here back then because it was a family friendly pub with good food and a nice atmosphere. My only recollection is the guy hurling a glass over my head aimed at his girlfriend (?!?) who was just running out the door following full scale yelling match at the table behind us. It smashed into pieces and everyone just kept on eating, no one batted an eyelid. Now as then, we finished our food, which wasn't too bad, and headed out the door.
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