19th July 2009

Easy packing up camp this morning then queued for fuel before hitting the road to Coober Pedy - more rough dirt road. Got to Coober Pedy at lunch time so set up camp and made lunch before going for a drive around town and up to the Big Winch. Coober Pedy is a very different place! It's an opal mining town built in a very barren landscapre. It gets very hot in the summer so half the towns folk live undergroun in houses called "dugouts". The dutch backpacker camped next to us said "It's the s***test town I have ever been too!" The town resembles a bit of a junkyard and Matt thinks the whole place has been caught in a time warp. It's all very 70's! We spent the arvo chatting to the people in the caravan next to us. We are meeting lots of grey nomads (I suppose that happens when you stay in caravan parks!) and so far they have all been really nice and we have enjoyed their company. Cooked ourselves dinner and then Eric (the dutch backpacker) came over and Matt and him settled in for a quite a few beers. I went to bed and read my book as it is bloody cold.

20th July 2009

Very cold last night! I think it was the coldest night we have had so far. Got organised mid morning and went to the Old Timers Mine & Musuem which is an old mine that you can walk through with info on Opal mining. There is also a 'dugout' or underground house that you can walk through and a very interesting musuem on opal mining and Coober Pedy in general. Then we saw how the 'blowers' work. They are Big homemade vacum cleaners that suck the rocks and dirt out of the mines. Then we drove around and saw some undergourn churches. The Serbian Orthodox Church was lovely. Then it was back to camp to try to do some stuff on the internet but the compuer battey died so not much got done. We went to the Greek Restaurant for dinner but it was booked out so we went to the pub instead - it was also right out the 70's!