We had the first lie-in of the trip and so were up at 07:00
this morning ready to make our way down to the Opal mining town of Coober Pedy.
Our first stop of the day was at a place called the
Breakaways; formed by the receding of the inland sea millions of years ago and
leaving this vast and picturesque landscape after erosion etc (won’t bore you
with the details… Google it! ) This place, along with much of the route we had/
would be taking, is also where lots of “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” was
filmed – a film our guide made us watch but we couldn’t hear it very well so
we’ll have to watch it again for the dialogue! Here we saw a large rock known
as the emu, though we couldn’t see the resemblance, and another formation known
as the castle/ salt and pepper/ the two dogs due to their look and contrasting
white and brown colours.
We moved a little further on the dirt road we’d taken (this
made us all really feel well and truly in the outback) until we pulled up at a
long fence; the world’s longest fence no less and actually the world’s longest
man made structure (longer than the Great Wall even.) It used to be over
9,000km long but is now over 5,000km long and is known as the Dingo Fence/ Dog Fence. The
fence was basically set up; individually in sections to keep dingoes from
getting onto the cattle station land and eating sheep until the farmers decided
to just join all of these fences together. Someone does have the job of
maintaining this entire fence too which must be fun!
Just before getting into Coober Pedy town we pulled up at a
sign warning us of the million or so abandoned mining holes all over the place
and letting us know to mind our steps… Our guide informed us not to anger the
locals as it’s easy to go missing here!!!
Coober Pedy is the
opal mining capital of the world and mines over 80% of the world’s opals. It
only has around 3,500 residents of over 40 nationalities and over 50% of those
residents live underground; as we would be doing tonight. This place was chosen
for much shooting from films such as Mad Max and Pitch Black due to its
landscape. On our tour of the town we had a brief stop at the lookout, not that
there’s much to see from it, and this is where we saw the Big Winch and the
metal tree (made as C.P didn’t used to have any trees and so the locals
introduced them here, making this sculpture to commemorate that.) We also
stopped at the Cemetery where, resting in peace, a couple of interesting
characters lie. The first: a man called Crocodile Harry who wrestled crocs all
his life (don’t think he was killed by one though) and seemed to be a hit with
the ladies as there’s another site to do with him and it’s adorned with lots of
ladies underwear apparently! The second grave’s for a local man who discovered
he had bowel cancer; he didn’t tell anyone about this but instead took out a
$200,000 loan and bought everyone in the town a beer before later passing away.
His headstone is a beer keg which says “have a drink on me” which we thought
was pretty funny! We also passed a shop where a man sells lots of Pitch Black
movie set pieces (all which look rather battered now) but were advised not to
go into the yard or shop as he’s a very good salesman!
We then went to our underground accommodation where our
guide sorted the two of us out with a room to ourselves (the other couple had
paid extra to have private rooms all the trip and we’d had them each day so far
for free!) It’s an odd sight as most of the town is underground but you still
see houses on the surface; though you see lots of mandatory air vents poking
out of the ground giving away the fact of more rooms underground. One house is
meant to have over 20 rooms as many are under the earth. This type of room also
ensures that the temperature is always about 24 degrees regardless of the
outside temperature which would make a nice change from the sweaty past couple
of nights.
We then had a cave tour where we were shown more examples of
the living conditions of the houses, along with: examples of the different
kinds of opals, how the mining was done, a chance to see their “pet” deadly red
back spider (which Danny thought was fake until it moved – everyone was very
cautious when walking underneath it!), and finally a look around the opal shop
where Danny got Corrie an early birthday present – an opal necklace… though a
cheaper one due to the budget!
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| Red Back not in focus but on the model's right side of chest |
We then had some free time before tea so we nipped next door
and took a picture of the, rather battered, ship from Pitch Black. We also went
to the supermarket for a couple of things, coming across Sambuca flavoured
coffee beans – Yuk!
Later we all walked down the road to see the feeding of
young big bed kangaroos at a kangaroo orphanage. We also saw baby roos and a
picture of a new-born survivor that’s clinging on for life in the back room
there.
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