Hi all

So after a few hours driving the next day we arrived back in Coober Pedy, which by now was sweltering under a proper desert sun and was dusty as a Kate Moss sneeze. We pulled back into the underground campsite and stopped the woman as she started to go through her twenty minute spiel by explaining we’d been there the week before. We set up in double quick time and headed out to see Crocodile Harry’s place.

Now Crocodile Harry is an absolute legend in these parts. Some people love him and some people find him an absolute disgrace. Sounds like my kind of guy. Trouble is, the man himself actually died a couple of months before we arrived at the age of seventy odd, and I for one am absolutely gutted we never got to meet him. Now Harry’s real name was Arvid von Blumentals and he claimed that he was actually a Latvian Baron (he’s got a ‘von’ in his name which gives it some credence). They have a statue of a crocodile in his honour in the Latvian capital (the second part is definitely true). It’s rumoured that he fought with the Nazis in World War II (he caused uproar in Coober Pedy by goose stepping down Main Street and singing in German on Australia Day one year), but either way he arrived in Australia about fifty years ago and got work in various jobs as a crocodile hunter, miner and God knows what else. He seems to pop up all over the shop in outback lore. For example a famous hermit by the name of Joe Somethingorother (better known as The Hermit Of Borroloola) sold his house (actually a damaged 1000 gallon tank) to a crocodile hunter named Harry Blumental shortly before his death, and he also pops up in a book called ‘Ghosts Of The Big Country’ in which the guy who wrote it says he met him in 1966. What does seem to be indisputable is that he arrived in Coober Pedy in 1975.

But what is he famous (or infamous) for? Well, he was also an artist and an absolute shagmeister general. He lived in a dugout just outside of town, and decorated it with the knickers of the various women he’d slept with, and most have also left a little message to go with them. And there are hundreds of them. Hundreds I tells ya. From all over the planet. He also had over a 1000 virgins sign the walls in the name of art. Give me this over indigenous art any day. Since he found fame people have come from all over the world to visit, and the house is now covered in graffiti (from both sexes although 90 per cent of it is from women), bras, panties, baseball caps, various works of art and carvings in the wall (the last only by females). It is absolutely amazing. Or is that sleazy. In my opinion it’s both. We spent about an hour or so in there and we could’ve stayed a lot longer. The thing is, despite it’s apparent sleaziness, right up until his death he had women ‘calling’ on him, like it was some sort of international club, and rumour has it he has hundreds of children (and probably grand children by now) all over the world. Stories abound of him chasing buxom girls around his home when they came to visit, right up until his death. And the parties that went on there are legendary. I say parties but the guy who was looking after it the day we went gave the impression it was pretty much just one party. That went on for thirty years. Sweet. They filmed part of Mad Max 3 here (only a really small part) and by all accounts it took forever to get done because the cast and crew kept disappearing and were absolutely wasted the whole time. The guy told us that Tina Turner got on real well with Harry (said with a wink and a tone of voice that would’ve made Benny Hill proud) and left him the bra she wore in the film. Some f***er stole it a couple of years ago which I find really sad. But the crew also left him a sculpture of a naked woman with huge boobs. So that’s alright then. Although bizarrely, it now has a Burnley Football Club pennant over it’s front bottom. Kind of fitting though...

And the art/sculptures are cool as f***. There’s a huge Viking type figure on horseback (a nod to his Scandinavian bloodline apparently), a witch on a broomstick, a scary mermaid type thing, a guy on a bicycle, pictures painted directly onto the walls (although God knows what future archeologists will make of them) and loads of big and small sculptures the majority of which are also carved directly into the walls (most are of naked women in various poses). It’s a truly amazing place, but now that Harry’s gone nobody’s sure what will happen to it. Harry and his home are loved and loathed by the town in equal measure. For now though they have some guy out there looking after it and I for one hope they find a way of keeping it open. Superb.

We then spent an hour or so wandering around the town, and I got my photo taken with the bus from Mad Max and one of the space ships from Pitch Black. Yes, yes, yes, I know I’m a geek. You don’t have to keep going on about it. But a cool geek who’s had his picture taken with an old bus, so there.

These things are just laying around the town in various places, along with other pieces of sculpture. The thing is, it looks like no-one ever throws anything away here. As a result there are piles and piles of old junk (cars, trucks and machinery) just lying around. And some people turn it into art. Which means there are sculptures all over the place. My favourite was the ‘Spider Bug’ outside one of the opal shops. It’s a Volkswagen Beetle that someone has decided will look better with six huge legs on it (not sure why that makes it a spider bug though). It stands about fifteen feet up in the air and filled me with a real sense of joy. I love this kind of thing. When combined with my appreciation of Harry’s place, it looks like I do need my art spoon feeding to me after all.

With the sun starting to get low in the sky we headed up to The Big Winch to get a look at the sunset. After getting slightly lost and ending up in the Aboriginal community housing area (elsewhere they’d probably be called ghettoes) we eventually parked at the bottom and walked up (despite Mand’s theory that we could probably drive Priscilla up the walkway) and the view was gorgeous. From here we were afforded a vista of pretty much the whole town. Which isn’t really saying much. It looks like a cross between a shanty (it’s not) and a wild west frontier town. In the dying light with the domes of mined soil in the background as far as the eye can see it was an eerie almost alien landscape. But beautiful nonetheless. For the first time I caught a glimpse of why people would want to stay on here when their mining days are done. It’s gorgeous. We’ve found yet another place we’d like to live.

Back at the campsite and it was time for a tour of an opal mine. To be precise, the opal mine that the campsite is built around and the one owned by our genial hosts. The campsite is called Riba’s which is short for Rick and Barbara’s and this is where Rick had his first mine, and how he came to mine there is a story in itself. He bought the land, complete with the mine already on it. Not long after, one of the two guys who had originally mined it came back, convinced that there were still opals to come out of it. Why he left in the first place has slipped my mind but I think it had something to do with a goldrush. Anyhoo, by this time they’d banned mining inside the town limits and the conversation between the two apparently went like this. ‘There’s opal in that mine’ ‘Really?’ ‘Yep. Anyone told you it’s illegal to mine inside town limits yet?’ ‘Nope’ ‘Then I reckon you still don’t know’ and with that they became partners. At least for the eight months or so it took the town regulatory body to realise what was going on. As it turned out there weren’t many opals to be found (‘I took a lot of dirt out of that hole’ was how Rick termed it with a smile) but the real value in it all was that Rick did get a crash course in mining. Let’s just say his later ventures weren’t all about dirt.

Our co-tourists on this little tour were a middle aged Swedish couple, and a young Austrian guy. He was actually here with a French guy and girl all inhabiting the same tent and judging by the noises coming from there the following morning they were all pretty close friends. These crazy Europeans... For their part, the Swedish couple spend nine months of the year sailing round the world. When their nine months are up they fly home for three months, then fly back out to wherever they’ve left their boat. That is by far the coolest thing I have heard travel-wise, ever. Anyway, the upshot was that me and Mand were the only two who really had any idea of what Rick was saying and we were definitely the only ones who understood the dry sense of humour he displayed throughout. So, where to begin? I guess with how the opal is formed.

I have no idea. That’s not true obviously and I’m gonna do my best to explain it. I’m probably going to get loads of it wrong. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to raise your hand and I’ll happily make something up. Ok. Silica. This is what opals are made of. It’s been around for millions of years in fact I think it was here when the Earth’s crust was formed. But don’t quote me on that. So as the Earth cooled and cracked, the molten silica slid down and became trapped between the rock below (this is why it forms into veins and why when miners are prospecting they’re looking to trace where the silica flowed and hopefully pooled). Next up, what’s needed is pressure. Now I’m sure you all remember from school about refraction of light in precious stones. Of course you do. The balls of molecules in all precious stones are all the same size so light bounces out in direct relation to how it goes in. Hence rubies always look red, emeralds always look green etc etc. This is because to form these stones, the pressure has remained constant. Opal is the exception that proves the rule (I’ve never understood that saying but what the hay, if the cap fits and all that). This is because if the pressure is constant on silica the balls of molecules are the same shape, and this results in non precious opal which is just like white stone. In the trade this is called ‘potch’. However if the pressure (remember we’re talking over hundreds of thousands of years here) isn’t constant, the balls of molecules come out different sizes and when the light goes in it bounces around a bit before it comes out and this endows the silica with wonderful rainbow like properties and gives us...precious opal. Cool. I think that’s right anyway. There’s every possibility it’s actually the other way round :o)

So now to the actual mining. The best way to do this is to find a slide i.e. somewhere where the molten silica has slid down a crack in the plates and hopefully has come to rest in a pool at the bottom. This is still no guarantee of opal of course (it could be the pressures were constant giving potch) but is as good a place as any to start. But how do you find a slide? Now the thing is, that there are no big mining corporations involved in opals. They’re all independently owned by one or two people. All of them. So spending millions on geological surveys is out of the question. So you get yourself two pieces of L-shaped pieces of material, take one in each hand and you wander around divining. Seriously, this is how it’s done. And it works. We had a go on the site of the slide in this mine and we all found it. At some point the ends of the sticks move together. I can’t explain it any better than that. It’s f***in freaky, but it happens. How? Nobody knows. It works with wooden rods as well as metal ones so it’s not magnetism. For me it’s gotta be some sort of subconscious realisation of the slant going on under your feet.

So now you have to decide which way the slide goes, after all you don’t want to be mining into the back of it and the claims you’re allowed to stake aren’t exactly huge (50 metres by 50 metres or 50 metres by 100 metres measurement fans). So if you peg it out wrong then you get nothing and your neighbour gets rich. Not good. The only way to find out which way the slide goes is through trial and error. Go find an already mined slide, mark a series of lines in the dirt whenever you feel the divining rods move, and then work out where these marks are in relation to the front and back of the slide. Easy peasy. Right off you go then...

But first you need to know the complicated rules governing the registering of a claim. When you register it you’re given four tickets and you stick one on each of your posts. And that’s it. Oh yeah, and you have to agree to work it at least 20 hours a week.

So now you and your mate start mining (using explosives - woo hoo) and before you know it you’ve got yourself a pile of opals. Now if you had any sense whatsoever you’d set about quietly mining them and tell no-one. Then you’d strike another claim next to it and so on. Trouble is sooner or later you’re going to have to sell them and as soon as you do the secret is out. It’s in the opal buyer’s interest to have as many people mining a strike as possible cos then he can keep the price low. What’s that? Nah got loads like that already...

Opals, because of the various pressures involved in their creation are readily identifiable with the field they came from. Rick reckons he can probably identify opals from eighty to ninety percent of the opal fields surrounding Coober Pedy by their colour and texture. So even if you refuse to tell the buyer where they came from, chances are he’ll know anyway. Nice trick.

So enough of the boring s***e, what about the stories of people finding fortunes. Well, every couple of years someone finds an absolute fortune around Coober Pedy. The last one was a couple of years ago and the guy netted around $2 million. The thing is, when people hit it big (or even small) they then have to pay off all the people they have been borrowing off. And that’s exactly how it works. It’s the culture here. Everyone borrows off everyone else on the understanding that they’ll pay them back next time they strike. This can go on for years. And it’s a matter of honour for them to pay up. And survival, cos if they didn’t pay up no-one would lend to them any more. But occasionally someone does make enough to comfortably retire. But they don’t. They go spend the f***in lot. After all, they can always come back and mine for more. This is an attitude I can readily identify with. As those of you I do/have owed money to will no doubt appreciate :o)

One guy who made a million bucks or so, paid off everyone he owed and then returned to his home town in Greece where he showered everyone in his family with gifts until he had none left. Then he phoned his mates in Coober Pedy to borrow money to buy his flight back. Serious. But apparently it’s all good. Because now when he dies his family will mourn him as a great man. Despite the fact he’s back living as a virtual tramp. Bizarre.

There are also stories of people out noodling through the molluck (more about that later) among the dis-used mines, and falling down shafts. This is not just tourists you understand, but locals as well. The thing is you can’t fill in the mineshafts because obviously it won’t compact back to how it was before you mined it. So if someone else then comes along and mines into your shaft, all that soil just pours into their mine and crushes them to death. Hence the huge piles of dirt (and holes) surrounding the town.

A German girl was out there photographising a lizard a few weeks before we got there. Every time the lizard moved she stepped after it whilst watching it through the viewfinder. Eventually she took one step too many and fell down a shaft. A broken arm and a broken leg later (she got off lightly, people often die) and she was back on the plane home. A couple of local brothers were out noodling with a UV light (opal shines like mad under it - so does potch though so it’s not all good news). Now one of the brothers was slightly smarter than the other one and let his brother go first. The theory being that if they failed to see a shaft it wouldn’t be him that went down one. As the brother in the lead found a promising pile, he turned round to find the smart one had disappeared. His first thought? He must’ve found a better one than me and nicked off. He retraced his steps and found a shaft that somehow he’d stepped round, but his brother had fallen straight down. His question of ‘Are you down there’ was met with the immortal line ‘Of course I am. Where the f*** else would I be?’. Thing is, this guy was an experienced miner and knew that the best way to halt the fall is to thrust your arms out to either side and wedge yourself to a stop. The skin on his hands took months to heal, but at least he survived to tell the tale.

There were loads of stories, but I’ve just realised how long this postcard is and I can only remember fragments of them anyway so I’ll think I’ll call it a day for now. Suffice to say that Mand had a mild case of opal fever by now (in fact she was openly sweating) and it was with a feeling of impending fortune that we made our way to bed. Sweet.

Laters all

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