Well we bid a fairwell to Ulluru and start the long drive to our free camp just outside Coober Pedy and the drive was the longest we were going to do yet!!! Driving now is more of a chore than an enjoyment, no music as I decided to do some unsuccesfull electrical work to our speakers, no air conditioning as our air conditioner doesn't work, red landscape which all looks the same and the fact Ellie can't drive (her map reading skills arn't the best even on a straight road). We started to sing to ourselves things like "Lamby Loo Laa" in a high pitched tone and "Wha Wha Wha Wipe Out". These thing all aided our lenghty journey. We passed through the tropic of Capricorn, the NT/SA border and we still had 400Kms to go. The landscape as we got further south started to change dramatically, and when we say this we mean something to absolutely nothing. There was no bush just rocks and even the dead animals were less and less. We must've stopped at a few roadhouse to fill up with petrol and take a break. We finally arrived at the rest stop and by now I think I was ready for a break. We'd been on the road from about 7am till 5pm doing a distance of nearly 700kms and driving at a snails pace of 80kms.

The rest stop was like the moon, just flat and exposed to the elements, but there were a few people there. Unfortunatly they wern't Neil Armstrong or his band of fellow spacemen. We had our dinner and slept with the van shaking due to the ferocious wind. We can positivly clarify this wind wasn't of the warm or eggy type!!!

We headed into Coober Pedy and the drive was very eventful, although only a mere 70km run i'd drastically underestimated the amount of petrol we needed and with 50kms to go we were below EMPTY arghhh!!! We prayed hard and prayed even harder and like a miracle we arrived at the garage. Coober Pedy is a very very strange place. The minute you get close to it you see mounds and lots of activity. This town is the biggest Opal Mining community in the world and apparantly has the most diverse ethnic build-up in OZ. We saw houses that were underground and other random stuff as we drove to our caravan park!!! We put some washing on and then went out to discover this wild and wonderful area. We first went to Croccodile Harrys which was down a very long dirt track and then suddenly you arrive. Mr Harry was a croccodile hunter and when the croccodiles ran dry he found mining as an alternative means of income. He was apparantly a ladies man and loved his knickers which were all over his house. Other whacky things we saw were

• Student Union cards
• Driving licences
• Those Knickers
• Bras
• Random models in unasuming positions
• Lovely pics of Harry with Skantley clad ladies
• Harry and his Croccodile
• Beer Mats

Outside was a unicorn thing, man riding a bike down hill, a s***orium, a weird lady on a broom stick and loads of cars just scatered around. Harrys dead and the caretaker showed us around. Mad Max was filmed here and other films too. Can imagine Tina Turner running aroung doing her funky dance moves in the s***orium!!!!

We went to the underground Serbian Orthodox Church next which was, you guessed it Underground. It was soo cool and very peacefull. This is the reason all the houses are built underground. The weather here is soo harsh (has been known to get upto 55 c). We then went to the Big Winch which is a look out over the moon, I mean Coober Pedy!!! we drove up and took the turn too early. We got approached by a man from Hong Kong who is a miner and tried selling us Opals, we refused and drove away to the real lookout. The view we were presented with disgusted both of us and we felt very sad for the peaople who live here and promised if we won the lottery we would knock this place down and rehouse those poor souls!!! We then went back to the caravan park and got ready as we had a date with an exclusive bar in a really posh hotel. This place gets really busy so we made sure we got there early. The bar's underground and we ordered 2 VB's, as the night dragged on the bar filled up and we could hardly move, only joking there was only us two and a random German bloke chatting up the ladies, nice!!! Claim to fame, this bar has the only underground gambling machines in the world!! We were ready to leave Coober Pedy now!!

Next day we got ready to go, filled up with petrol and water at a outside machine and got approached by a really nice aborigianl man. We spoke to him for a while and then started our descent to civilisation, we couldn't wait. I think for the first time I was doing 110kms and hour and it felt soo much quicker. We passed through an area called Woomera which was a huge area where Britain tested rockets and Nuclear weapons, this was just flat nothingness and very mundain!!!! We passed a few salt lakes and the landscape started to change once more to greenery, with trees and bushes, hooray!!!! We entered Port Augusta and we were both smiling again, we both decided to head straight for Woolworths and stock up!!! We made a short run to our free camp which was through english like countryside and it was perched up a hill with a glorious Vista. There were other caravans there and we settled in very nicely to see the sunset. A man who we heard moaning about chainsaws and generators came over to us and started up a conversation. His favourite word was Bull Dust and he used it all the time. For example "Why do people need to use chainsaws to burn wood and why do people need to burn wood, Bull Dust" or " Don't go there it's Bull Dust". We got invited into his van so he could give us some tips on the journey ahead. Next morning we awoke to Bull Duster talking to us and giving us more advise then giving us loads of reject food, Bull Dust!!!! So we set off and bid Bull Dust to Port Augusta!!!