Day 68 25/08/2013 Yulara NT to Coober Pedy SA.
Not a cloud in the sky....once again...and not too cold this morning. We left Yulara just before 8am. Dave had unlocked the hubs and inflated all the tyres to highway pressure......no more off-road driving for this trip....it will be sealed roads all the way home! The Lasseter Highway is a busy road with tourists coming to and leaving from Yulara.
Dave was feeling a bit below par today.....maybe too much fine dining! Our first short stop was only about 40km down the road, to look at Mt Conner, which is a large flat-topped Mesa, which some tourists often mistake for Uluru when they are approaching from the east. It is understandable that they might do that, although once you have seen Uluru, you can see that they are very different. When standing on the sand dune to take a photo of Mt Connor which is south of the road, it is easy to miss the view to the north.....I almost did! I was glad that I turned around.....there was a large salt lake to the south. I tried to find a name on the map, without success.
We reached the intersection with the Stuart Highway by 11am and re-fuelled at the roadhouse there. We turned south here, in the direction of Adelaide, some 1330km away. Of course, some of you might be wondering why we are heading south, when we really want to go east......but there is just the 'small' matter of the Simpson Desert blocking our path! It is possible drive across the very sandy Simpson Desert.....in fact we have, several years ago. However this is a major trek in itself and it is not advisable to go alone. So, south it is......we would need to go south at some stage anyway. Our route took us through the small township...basically just a roadhouse...of Kulgera. If we had taken the dirt road east from there, for 112km, we would have been at the exact geographical centre of Australia! We crossed the border into South Australia around mid-day and stopped for our lunch about an hour later. Unfortunately we had to eat it in the car because of the number of flies! This is what happens when it starts to get warmer in the desert! Yes, we are still in desert country. Even though the road is sealed, we are travelling in a remote area. The distance from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy, where we are camped tonight, is around 700km, and there is not a lot in between, except for a couple of very small townships, basically only offering fuel, some take-away food and maybe a place to camp for the night. For part of the route, we ran parallel to the Adelaide to Darwin railway line, along which the Ghan travels, twice weekly! (A previous blog has a photo because we were in Alice Springs when the train left there en route to Adelaide). We were taking turns driving today and averaging 100km/hour. This enabled us to travel almost 700km as far as the town of Coober Pedy. We arrived at about 4.30pm. Coober Pedy is an Opal Mining town. On the way into town we passed literally thousands of mullock heaps which indicate where the opal digging shafts are. There are advisory signs everywhere warning tourists about open mine shafts! It gets very hot in summer here, and prior to the advent of air-conditioning it would become very uncomfortable for the miners. This led to them building 'dug-outs', which meant basically cutting into the rock in a cave-like fashion and making an underground shelter. Nowadays these dug-outs have become more sophisticated and many of the permanent residents of town have 'underground' homes, which have the advantage of being the same temperature.....I think around 20 degrees, all year round.
After setting up our camp we had time for a very short drive around the town and had a look at some of these strange homes. We also saw a church built into the side of the rock and were able to go inside the Desert Cave Hotel, which had a mining display in the underground tunnels! Unfortunately, it was late on a Sunday afternoon and none of the other attractions were open. We only intend to stay tonight. Hitting the bitumen again tomorrow!