Fri 05/09/14 Leaving NT today, have thoroughly enjoyed our time touring the Territory; we will be back! 730km drive to Coober Pedy. Food & fuel stops at Erldunda Roadhouse in NT and Marla in SA. Al & Kelly caught up with us here and we travelled rest of the way together. Long drive through flat, empty, seemingly endless landscape. Eventually a change .... no more red sand .... the opal mining rubble piles of Coober Pedy appear .... all shapes and sizes.....great white heaps of dirt .... thousands and thousands of 'gopher mounds' as far as the eye can see ... and not a sole or tree in sight. All a bit surreal and ghost townish. Arrived at the Stuart Range Big4 around 5.30pm. Bit windy, but our sites are right near the playground and camp kitchen, so all good. Water scarce here so have to pay 20c/2 minutes in shower & also to fill van tanks with drinking water. Setup, ordered pizzas and settled in front of camp kitchen TV with the Nicholls family to watch some finals football!

Sat 06/09/14 Tourisiting with the Nicholls today ... kids are wrapt ... they love spending time together... Lukas & Karla are both 10 y/o and get along great, Erica is 8y/o like Brodie & Alexis and they all very buddy buddy too. We took "Radeka's Town & Outskirts Tour", guide Nick very friendly. First visited the town cemetery, you notice the ages on the head stones - not everyone lives to a ripe old age in a mining town - also notice many nationalities including a few Hungarians. Apparently CP currently has 45 nationalities; the most recorded here is 46. Told that many long time miners prefer cremation followed by "a Coober Pedy send off" = ashes taken out the opal fields and blown up to spread them around! Next the Underground Serbian Orthodox Church, surprisingly large and high ceilinged with some detailed carvings done in the sandstone walls. Much cooler in than out; all dugouts maintain a temp of 21oC to 22oC all year round. Moved on to the "public noodling area"; the only safe, legal place to fossick for opal without a permit as it has been repeatedly bulldozed to ensure there are no mine shafts to fall down. We all managed to find a few pieces of "potch" (worthless opal); kids chuffed with their success. Continued to CP 18 hole golf course....kind of hard to decipher actually, as it is all white sand like everwhere else. Told that as day temperatures can reach 55oC in the shade / 65oC in the sun, golf is often played at night with head lamps, glowing greens pins and glowing golf balls.....not sure walking around a mine shaft town in the dark is a wise thing, but each to their own. Next stop is Crocodile Harry's (dec.). Once a crocodile hunter up the top end, became a kooky local identity who was always "improving" his dugout home; "adding rooms" (not allowed to mine in residential areas), making carvings in his walls, erecting sculptures of welded scrap metal and inviting in tourists to write messages or nail possessions to his walls...most infamously collecting signed ladies underwear.....kids of course found the bras, gstrings, boob carvings all hilarious; bizarre place. Took a walk through Harrys' actual mine behind the house, where Nick explained the opal mining process (which boils down to hand & chisel extraction) and showed us a few shafts looking from the bottom up; interesting but not my idea of a good time. Then we drove out to The Breakaways on the outskirts of town; landscape known for featuring in several movies - Mad Max 3, Vin Diesel's "Pitch Black" (space ship prop on display in town) and Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Area provides the geological evidence that CP & surrounds were all once under a sea that disappeared quickly leaving behind loads of silica that leached into the ground and caused the opalisation process (something like that). Heading for home we stop to take snaps of "the dog fence" that reaches from QLD to SA. Built to keep dingoes out of sheep country ... cattle to north of the fence / sheep to the south ... hunters still run fornightly shifts patrolling / repairing the fence and removing any wild dogs / dingoes they find on the sheep side. This fence is the longest man made structure in the world! Drive takes us through Moon Plain, so called for its barren lunar landscape; Nick advises that the minimal weeds /plants we see are a result of unseasonal rain 2 months ago and are not usually present. He assures us the coming heat will soon kill it all off and get things back to its usual lunar, dustbowl appreance...lovely. Back at camp,a quick dinner and we set kids up in the van watching "Ghostbusters", while adults hit the camp kitchen for Bombers v Kangas final; Kangas winning an exciting match.

Sun 07/09/14 Happy Father's Day! M presented with homemade cards and iMovie followed by bacon 'n' eggs brekky. Next phone calls to Granddad and Poppy. Then headed into town and checked out The Umoona Museum, Old Timers Opal Mine, did some more noodling, lunched at Johns Pizza bar, shopped Josephine's Gallery & Kangaroo Orphange where M bought a raark didgeridoo made in Katherine and a spear handmade by local indigenous elder 'one eyed Willie'. After visiting every opal shop in town, girls got letter pendants and earrings and Lukas chose a boulder opal on a leather choker. Windy, windy, dusty day....locals tell us this is just the beginning of their wind storm season...takes a certain type to live here I think....we all glad to get back to the showers. Kids all in the Nicholls van tonight playing DS & doing loom banding. Happy hour for adults, Al shattered at Tigers finals thumping.