Day 4 - Coober Pedy - Opal Town

Welcome to the Wild Wild West - The Final Frontier!!

This place is like nowhere else I've visited, the landscape looks like it's straight from the set of Star Wars. The people are bred as tough as nails out here, they live in underground homes in order to cope with the blistering heat and the bone chilling winter cold. As there is no "Bunnings" near by, if you need something out here, you're gonna have to make it. The ingenuity is amazing, what looks like scrap is usually an integral part of the opal mining process.

This was a common sight, waste not want not - there might be a need for something here later.

  

The boys on top of a roof.

Star Fighter left behind when filming was done here.

Crocodile Harry's House

We went and visited Crocodile Harry's, Scott had read about it on a travel blog, it's an underground house that was owned by what looks like a real character - Harry.  

He was a crocodile wrangler up in the Northern Territory before moving to Coober Pedy in the 60's.  His house was a bit "different" it looks like it's very popular with backpackers but was probably not the best for a family with younger kids - he obviously liked the ladies and his artwork showed this - we all got a giggle so that's the main thing.  

We did enjoy checking out the photos of Harry in his younger years, he was the Alby Mangels of the 50's by the look of it.

Front door and carport - Coober Pedy style.

Standing on roof, near ventilation pipes.

   50% of Coober Pedy residents live below ground in dug out houses and 50% above ground in conventional houses.  I was pleased to see the main real estate agent in town is Raine & Horne,

No mining is allowed to be done in the town area and no one is allowed to live or camp on their mining lease, there are huge fines for anyone caught even camping on their lease - all mines are leased not owned.


This a very multicultural town, there is the Greek Taverna, Polish Club, Yugoslavian Club and Club Italia in this small town of 3000 people - a lot of eastern Europeans settled here after the war.  This is very apparent when you listen to the thick accents of the jewellers and shopkeepers.

After a good look around the lookouts, aboriginal cultural centre, an underground house, The Catacomb Church - an underground church carved into the side of a hill and a drive around town we headed out to TOM's Underground Mine for a tour and some noodling.

Noodling is going through rubble and dirt that comes up from the mine, the off cuts or rubbish, digging through looking for smaller pieces of opal that the miner may have missed.

The boys (all three) really enjoyed looking for some gems, luckily they all found a some.  Scott was the most successful finding 4 or 5 pieces.  Declan found one after much persistence in the dirt and Mitch hadn't found one until we were about to get in the car and go and he found a good white one.

Declan Noodling

 

Blower - extracts the dirt and dumps in a pile.   

      Our tour guide was Ben the owner of Toms Mine. Ben is a Scotsman with a wicked sense of humor, he's been mining for opal here for 32 years and was a very informative guide.

We learnt a lot about opals and the mining of them - there are no company's that mine for opal only individual miners are allowed.

Coober Pedy produces 98% of the worlds opals.  The average age of an opal miner is 62 years old now (Ben would be on average) as there are no young men getting into it - it's a hard slog!

Mitch on the bosens chair - going up.

 The boys learnt how to make a pipe bomb today and how to calculate the ratio of nitro to diesel to make a pipe bomb - life skills 101, that's how we home school!

We did a bit more noodling after our tour with Ben. Once back at the caravan park we had a quick walk up the main street for some supplies and then back home to the van to prepare for the trip up the Uluru - bring on the red centre tomorrow!








Coober Pedy has exceeded our expectations, what was going to be a rest day has turned out to be very educational for the boys and for us.