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.

DAY 3 - Peterborough to Coober Pedy

We woke up to a freezing cold morning - that's thick ice!

That turned into a sunrise like this.

Today was an easy day, just getting from point A to point B and seeing some more of the countryside along the way.

The first leg of the journey was beautiful farming countryside, reminded us of Scone and surrounds.  There were lots of grand old homes on massive pastoral and cropping properties.

We crossed the Flinders Ranges - Stunning!

Into Port Augusta to refuel, swap drivers and back on the road.  As soon as we left Port August the countryside changed back from lush farming land to the outback scenery we were used to.

There were lots of salt lakes along the way, some looked like huge oceans stretching through the desert.

The scenery was very similar to the stretch between Kalgoorlie and Esperance.

Everything is big out here, the trains stretch forever, the trucks aren't semi's they are triple road trains.

The boys spent 2 hours making oragami puppets on the first half of the trip.

We stopped at Pimba which is the "town" next to Woomera for lunch and to refuel.

Pimba consisted of Spuds Roadhouse and a free camp set up by the town association.






The fuel was $1.90 per litre, the dearest so far but by this time next week we'll be thinking that was cheap I'm sure!

The long road North.

Every hundred kilometres or so we'd pass a sign that stated the property / station name and that there was no fencing so watch out for cows - how fortuitous that I took the camera out for this sign - The Twins!

We did see a few dead cows and one of the road workers we spoke to at a rest stop said that we'll see plenty more as we head north - so cow alert has begun.

After an easy 8 hours in the car we had reached our destination.

Day 2 – Spring Hill to Peterborough with Broken Hill & Silverton

Boys at Broken Hill Visitor Centre 

Today started with a fantastic sunrise, we had a relaxed morning and enjoyed chatting to the other campers at the rest area – mostly grey nomads and all heading off in different directions, the couple next door had a few mechanical issues so we assured them we’d be coming through behind if they didn’t make it to Broken Hill.

Not long out of camp and Bob the Emu and his 2 mates decided to cross in front of us, we’ve been pretty wary of the Emu’s as they are so scatty and like to run across and then back again but Bob the Emu decided to cross, cross back and then stop in our lane – right in the middle of our lane – seems to be a theme in the first hour of our trip that some form of wildlife tries to stop us in our tracks.

We only had an hour & half in the car and we pulled into Broken Hill.

The Visitor Information Centre was a good first stop and we soon found out that the main lookout over the town and mine was only available  to people on an organised tour, which unfortunately for us had left half an hour earlier.











Mum had said we’d feel right at home as it’s very similar to Kalgoorlie and that it is!  Big slag heap on the edge of town, ornate buildings hinting at fortunes of yesteryear and a pub on every corner.

After a drive around Broken Hill and fuelling up we decided to head to Silverton and check out the ghost 

town, quirky galleries and Mad Max Museum.

The boys loved Silverton, especially Declan who spent his whole time scurrying around looking for quartz, no one will be surprised that he spent a lot of time on the ground (shock horror – Dec on the ground - think soccer games, camping trips, Star Struck!).

We wandered around the Goal, old Municipal buildings, art gallery, ruins, old train station then up the hill to the Mad Max Museum – once again the sight-seeing gods weren’t smiling and we noticed the sign saying CASH ONLY.

So we saved ourselves some cash,  took a few pictures outside and then headed down the dirt road to the Historic Silverton Hotel for a drink and lunch. 

Mitch was happy to have the McLeod name featured on the menu at the pub!

I can imagine the Silverton Hotel filling up and having some wild wild nights, there is a huge stage out the back with an old Bedford truck either side holding it up, the bar staff were all back packers and even on a winters day almost every table in the beer garden was full.

We are now in State number 2 of the trip - SA

We hit the road again after lunch heading for Peterborough, we drove along through the low scrub and red dirt stretching on seemingly forever, then about an hour from Peterborough we went over a rise and all of a sudden there was a bit of grass on the ground, gum trees peppered around and the barren outback seemed to have disappeared.

Closer in to Peterborough it greened up even more and there were crops growing, the change in terrain was incredible in the space of 3 hours.

Peterborough Caravan Park is home for the night, super clean and tidy, dirt sites that are wide and views off to the fields and hills in the distance, a bonus for the boys is that it’s right next door to a beautiful park and great playground so they got to head there while we set up this afternoon.  Even bigger bonus was that when I checked us in the man at the desk said 2 adults?  I said no 2 adults and 2 kids and when I said their age he said oh don’t worry about paying for them – so $30 for a powered site is pretty great!

We are pleased we got a powered site and we aren’t free camping again as the overnight temp is going to be -4, the little fan heater we bought is buzzing away and I think it will stay that way overnight. 

Happy Campers with the playground next door!

Day 1 – Saturday – Newcastle to Spring Hill Rest Area (Between Wilcannia & Broken Hill)

 The day started at 3.30am.  Scott went to wake the boys up and I jumped in the shower, the boys woke easily and even did a couple of fist pumps in the air – our adventure was finally here!

We left home at 4.01am – only minute behind schedule.  This should have hinted at more delays to come.

An hour down the track, and only 5 minutes down the Golden Highway, a Skippy the size of Godzilla decided to play chicken with us. Now I was happily in snooze land, the boys were sound asleep and I awoke to Scott cursing at the giant marsupial – Skippy won this battle as Scott pulled the van up just before impact.  I helped out from the passenger side by trying to put my foot through the floor to stop us.

We stopped for our first break just after sunrise on the side of the road near the Cassilis turn off, the cuppa was hot, the air was fresh and the ground underfoot was frozen with a thick frost brrrr.  Recharged and ready to go, we swapped drivers and headed off once more.

I drove through Dubbo and onto our morning tea / early lunch stop at Narromine.  During this part of the drive we left the ranges behind and the terrain flattened out and the drive was becoming easier.

 

With the kilometres ticking by we soon passed through Nyngan and Cobar, the countryside was flat and the road loomed ahead with little change to the landscape.  

We saw a lot of wildlife along this stretch, Emus, sheep and hundreds and hundreds of wild goats – they were everywhere but luckily the goats seemed to have a bit more common sense about them as we only saw one dead goat for every 50 dead kangaroos on the road.

As the sun was getting lower in the sky this made us a little nervous, so after driving through Wilcannia we came to the conclusion that we would NOT make it the extra 2 hours to Broken Hill today.  With light starting to fade and having seen far too much road kill to take on Skippy for a second time, we decided to be the Bald, Red & Blonde Nomads and free camp.

We looked up the “Camps” book and saw that there were a few possibilities on the other side of Wilcannia. We opted for Spring Hill Rest Area, giving us an easy 120km drive to Broken Hill the next morning.  We were pleased with our choice, and set up camp for the night with a beautiful outback sunset as our backdrop.

For those of you interested this rest area offers great facilities, just back from the road, good toilets, playground and water which would be why there were 6 other vans here when we pulled in for the night.

With camp set up and an easy dinner of 2 minute noodles it was time to get some rest for the next day of adventures, with all four of us in bed by 8.30pm zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz