Day 33: 2/2/13
Today we left at 5:45 to head on an 800km journey to Coober Pedy. That's a crazy length to be driving!! Dan, the driver/guide, wasn't looking forward to it and wanted people that weren't going to sleep to sit up the front and entertain him. Ellinor, one of the Swedes, and I sat in the front seats as neither of us sleep in a bus. We chatted, played 20q, had a quiz, listened to music- basically had to try and keep him entertained. He gets annoyed pretty easily- if people flashed a camera, if people put on songs he didn't like, etc. It was like mollycoddling a child! I just asked him lots of questions about music, as he plays the guitar and sings; and questions about guiding- he likes to talk and tell stories so that kept him awake! When he's in a good mood he's interesting and full of information, but it can be touch and go! A bit of gaiscing going on too!! So he reminds me a lot of one particular man I know that likes to talk a lot too- thankfully not all the time though!
Most people slept all day in the bus. We stopped a few times though- to see the sunrise, to take a picture of the South Australia border where there's an hour time difference. We stopped for toilet breaks, breakfast and lunch. Most of the landscape is extremely bleak- just a straight road stretching in front of you, with sandy, bushy flat ground all around. As we drove the ground got less red and more green. We met a fair bit of traffic, mostly trucks; but in the whole 12 hours we were on the road, only 2 cars overtook us! We passed lots of dead kangaroos that had been hit by a car with birds feeding on them. Some of the birds were big eagles, they were massive!!
Finally, at about half 5 in the evening we got to Cooper Pedy. It's an opal mining town. We went straight to a tour of the mine. We watched a video first about the history of opal. This whole area was a seabed millions of years ago and when the water evaporated, silica soaked through the rock to form opal- something like that! There are opal mines in Hungary that kept the world supplied with opal until the Australian mines were discovered. The opal here is slightly different. It was discovered in Queensland first around 1890. Before 1914 they discovered the mine in Coober Pedy but then people went off to war. When they came back they were used to digging trenches so they had no bother digging mines. They dug into the sides of the mountains for shelter and made houses from them. Coober Pedy is the aboriginal name for white man's burrows.
The mines used to be all hand dug but now they have machines for a lot of it. We were brought through some old mines that have been set up specially for tourism now. You could see the difference in the hand made and machine made mines. When they find a section of opal though they still use picks and work by hand, even today. Anyone can mine for opal as long as the buy a permit, which isn't dear. The cost of digging out the mine is expensive though so you need to find something!
The lady giving the tour also polished some opal for us and showed us some real opal and potch (like fake opal with no colours through it) and how they make some jewellery. Some need backing a on it and maybe a clear front cover aswell if the opal is very thin. These are doublets and triplets. They have a gift shop of course which had lovely jewellery in it. There was a ring for $6000 there but a lot of the stuff was affordable. I didn't have much money on me and my cards were packed away in my rucksack so I couldn't buy anything over $60. I didn't like any of the cheaper stuff really (of course!) so I didn't buy anything. It would have been nice to have opal from there but I didn't want to waste my money on jewellery I didn't love either.
After the tour we were brought on a surprise. We didn't know what it was going to be, but we were brought to a craft gallery to look around for a few minutes. Then we were brought out the back where they have a kangaroo orphanage and we got to feed the kangaroos!! They are really cute animals. They had a baby kangaroo too which they brought out after a while! It was grey and skinny and awfully cute when it was hopping around!
We bought some drink on the way back to the accommodation and were told to bring a chair and the drink up to the hill beside were we staying. Up there you could see all around the town as the sun was setting! The guide picked up pizza too so we had pizza and beer while looking at the sunset! That's the life!
We were staying in accommodation cut out from the side of the hill, so technically underground. We got a bed this time so there wa excitement over that! 60 or 70% of people in the town life underground and just have shafts up through the ground to get some air. We were in one in the mine tour and they are done up like a normal house, except the walls are rock and there are no windows. They like to live underground as its a desert and hot, but they get lots of sandstorms too. You could see stick like things sticking out of the hills around the town and they are all air shafts in people's homes!
We had a chance this evening to sit around with a few drinks. Everyone was in a good mood and there was plenty of chat. Some of the group are only about 19 and you can tell when some music comes on and they are dancing mad! Also, the drink seemed to go to the younger people's heads a lot quicker! Everyone is really easy to get on with though. The Swedish in particular are very friendly. There are two guys travelling together and two girls travelling together that are all from Sweden and I constantly find myself in the middle of all the Swedes! They talk Swedish now and again but generally talk English a lot more than the Germans do. They taught me how to count to ten in Swedish! Eight, nine an ten are very like Irish! On the bus the Swedes are just called the Vikings. One of them today was trying to get his phone out of its cover and was having difficulty. Then one of the girls said 'Vikings don't have nails, they have fists!!' It's very funny said in a Swedish accent!!