We had some cereal for breaky then dismantled the tent, loaded the car and headed out. We popped to 'The Dutchmans Stern" range area and got out for a 30 minute walk before we headed to Coober Pedy. It was worth the stop as 2 minutes along the walk we saw a Kangaroo sitting by a bush eating the shrubs. We took a few hundred photo's then headed on. Then on the way back the Kangaroo was still there so we took a few hundred more photo's before heading back to the car and heading on towards Coober Pedy.

We stopped off at Port Augusta for a potter round the town. We had a bit of a panic when we noticed there was liquid leaking from the bottom of the car, but thankfully it was only the condensation from the aircon. We found a cheap airbed which we decided to get as Rachel hadn't slept a wink the night before on the very expensive £4 roll mates. We stopped at a couple more places along the way to switch driving and to get some snaps of some amazing scenery. We finally arrived at Coober Pedy around 6:00 and spent half an hour driving round town before realising the underground campsite was 5km outside of town.

It's Rachel now hehe. We headed to the campsite and booked to stay in the underground campsite. The lady there said that we could get the first night free if we booked a mine tour for that evening so we decided to. We quickly bagsied our tent area underground. You had to go down a ramp into the hill and it was like a warren. You could pick your own little section. I was panicking that we wouldn't get the tent up before dark and before our tour, but each little section had a light which was quite cool. So we didn't need to worry - except we were the only people down there it seemed. Graeme said no one else would be crazy enough to stay down there which reassured me greatly hehe!

We went to do our mine tour which was on the site with a cute little old man who took a group of us down into the mine. He showed us various instruments used to mine for Opal which is what this area is famous for apparently. It was very interesting, apparently you can find Opal all around the area and the right type is worth a fortune. He seemed so chuffed to be talking to all of us about it, he'd come out there when he was young and loved the mining so much he stayed (and must have built the campsite). After the tour we headed to the eating area to make pasta for dinner, then headed to our tent.

The next day we drove into the main town of Coober Pedy for a wander. We visited a couple of underground churches, one of which was dug out by hand. We visited an underground hotel which had a free museum and we had a cup of tea in the underground café. We then went to The Old Timers Mine, which was a really cool museum where you take yourself through a mine and look at artefacts and stuff. We also got to watch a free talk on the machines they use to mine for Opal. One machine was used to clear up dirt to make mining easier. We had a go at putting rocks in and they just got sucked up! This man again seemed so chuffed talking about it, he'd found lots of Opal but also had some rock on display to show the Opal so he wasn't there to try and make a million, was obviously there just cuz he loved mining for it and sharing it with others bless him.

After the museum we decided to drive to the Breakaway mountains. Our petrol was a little low but we thought it wasn't too far…we were wrong. It was about 30km out driving along what's called the dog fence, which is a giant fence across Australia, longer then the Great Wall of China, used to keep Dingo's out of the sheep areas. We could have gone further to get more close to the Breakaways but we watched as our petrol dropped, so decided to turn back early just incase we got stuck out there, but luckily we went far enough to see some good views. We headed back to the town to John's Pizza bar to use a 10% voucher on food mmm. Then headed back to the campsite.