Coober Pedy

Campsite Rules, Opals and Politics

We had decided to stay in Coober Pedy for 2 nights and booked 2 tours for our free day. The first was around the town and also looking at the Opal Mines. The chap who runs the tour is also the camp site owner. He is a lovely fella and we found out later ex-army, which probably explains all the signs around the site with what you can and can't do, however his politics seemed a bit extreme. At one time he went mad as next to the Australian flag there was the flag of the indigenous people. More surprising several of the group seemed to agree! The tour took us to an underground church and an underground home. To combat the heat people build their houses either underground into the hills, when you look at the hills you see about 50 white pipes coming out which are the extractor fans in each room of every house.

Coober Pedy is an Opal Town and recently this seems to have picked up again. It does mean the whole area looks like there has been an invasion of giant moles as the mining is often done by digging a shaft up to 30 metres and creating a big mound with the earth that has been removed, once one shaft is done they move to the next but don't refill the old shaft. It all seems quite labour intensive and very much individual who pay for an area of land for a year and hope to strike it rich. You can guess which people have had success as their land will have more activity and the bigger machines.

Things to Do in Coober Pedy

The town has just had a new drive in cinema fitted after the old one was blown away but I think the best entertainment we saw was the golf club/course. It was built on sand and looks like something out of a lunar or Mars film, the greens are smoother sand and when you need to putt you rake the path to the hole to give the ball a better run. There were some people playing but at 42C at the time we left them to it. We also saw the local cemetery where Crocodile Harry is buried his epitaph is "have a drink on me", when crocodile hunting was cancelled he became an opal miner and also appeared in a film, our guide said this made him Coober's sex symbol and women would leave their underwear outside his house with notes for him!

We spent the afternoon in the pool to try to get out of the heat. It is a small pool but covered so despite the outside heat does remain refreshing.

Red Moon Rising

The evening tour was a sunset tour with a bit more politics thrown in. However it was excellent and included watching the moon rise after the sun had set. It was a day after a full moon and watching a red sphere coming over the horizon was fantastic. The sunset was excellent too but I can't recall ever watching the moon rising from the horizon before.

On the tour we saw the Dog Fence, aka the Dingo Fence, which is fence across Australia to keep wild dogs away from sheep and other farm animals it runs for 5600km. In each area someone is employed to look after it and repair any issues, for example a guy in Coober Pedy looks after 287km of the fence.

We also saw The Breakaways an area in the desert with some massive rocks, which was one the areas where Priscilla Queen of the Desert was filmed and one of the Mad Max films. It was a great tour and George's knowledge and enthusiasm was great however we again got his view that all local crime was down to indigenous people and he wasn't too keen on the land going back to the "original owners" as they just don't look after it. As outsiders though it hard for us to comment or view these fairly. The other low point was the flies, never seen so many! They are constantly around your face, landing near your mouth and ears, a fly hat may be needed!

We've enjoyed our time in Coober Pedy but headed off the following morning for Erldunda. We've been amazed on this journey how little traffic we have seen. The first vehicle coming towards us on the Stuart Highway was after 40 minutes of travelling. The scenery for the whole 480km was very similar, plain outback and desert with a few shrubs!