Coober Pedy, South Australia

With the Flinders Ranges behind us we were looking forward to visiting Coober Pedy, Outback South Australia.  It seemed that everyone we met back home always dreamed of getting there and getting in with a pick and finding their share of a great Opal find.  We travelled up the Stuart Hwy and stopped the in the afternoon as an overnight stopover in Glendambo and we were lucky enough to have a swimming pool.  It was only a hotel-motel caravan complex with a bar and restuarant.  It boasted 200 people, 20, 000 thousand sheep and 2,000,000 flies and they weren't wrong.

Next morning we only had about 180 kilometers left before hitting Coober Pedy.  We set up at the Oasis Caravan park luckily enough it was a pretty mild afternoon with prospect of the weather changing.  Setting off from the Visitors Information centre with map of the city in hand we headed to see the Great winch but not before being pulled in by a little Chinese bloke wanting to show us his Opal wares, which we politely thanked him for.  A few pictures here and onto the underground Churches.  These were small but very interesting.  Everything underground almost smelled of sulphur yet it was still quite cool.

Heading off in sight of the Opal Shops and there were lots of them on this one main street, but nothing that grabbed our attention so we headed back to camp.  A few more caravans had arrived at the park and we got talking to a few of the people who had pulled up but in particular this British couple, Stewart and Lesley,  who had come back down from Uluru and Kings Canyon and were heading back in the direction we were headed after Coober Pedy. 

Daniel and I headed off to the Moon Plains, the Breakaway Ranges, where we ran into a couple from the Netherlands for third time we're we said goodbye before they went on to Alice Springs.  She at least managed to buy an Opal bracelet, lucky girl! On to the Dog Fence which is the longest fence in Australia, 5300kilometres stretching across from Surfers to the Western Australian border.  Built in the 1920's by farmers to keep the dogs out from the north of Australia to stop them attacking sheep and other livestock in the southern region before it was  consolidated into the one long structure it is today.

The landscape here at this time of the year was unusually green due to all the rain this region had experienced where normally it was typically an arid, dry landscape.  Packed and ready to go we decided on Woomera as the stopover for the night. This time I was allowed to pull the van but the headwind was pretty strong and Daniel blamed me for my driving and chewing up the fuel! This was an interesting town built in the early 50's to initially house a population of 16,000.  It's current live in population was only 200 the rest of the housing was owned by the Defence Department. The main Hotel was very nice we had a beer here before setting off on our bikes to the one and only supermarket for bread and milk and a bottle of white wine planned for dinner.

Word of advice for anyone contemplating Coober Pedy, you only need to see it once and it can be done in a day.  One main street, Opal shops but the surrounding landscapes are beautiful.  It was a town of about 7,000 in the 70's and current population was around 2,000.