Another early start, this time up at 06:00 for about half of
the group who wanted to go noodling; this is basically looking for opals. There
we were, all sat around in the rubble amongst the piles of discarded rock from
the mines, hunched over examining rock after rock and then discarding rock
after rock! A few actually found opal, but not the real good stuff; we found a
couple of slithers of what could well be low grade opal. This was a dream
crushing experience really, on a chilly
morning with the sun rising, as we’d set our sights on finding a huge black
opal so there would be no more noodles to eat on our seven month trip!
We picked up the others and headed out of town, stopping
briefly at the Coober Pedy sign (mounted under the mining device known as a
Coober Pedy blower – a rock vacuum invented in C.P) and the painted wall;
including a painted on Mad Max and the three from Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
We had a quick stop in Glendambo for fuel etc but the main
attraction here was its population sign: 22,500 sheep, 2,000,000 (approx.)
flies, 30 people!
Next on the list of stops was Lake Hart; a huge salt lake
where we stopped to take pictures and also saw what the cobweb-like things in
the bushes along the roads are – caterpillar nests.
Lunch was in the military spy town of Woomera. This place
was an odd town, very quiet and very empty, yet with lots of amenities. There
are only about 300 residents here yet they have: a theatre, bowling alley, and
a very green football oval. It was like being in a ghost town but we had a look
around and saw some of the wreckage from fallen satellites and rockets that
were launched from the salt lake we’d just been to.
After lunch it was on to Quorn where we’d be staying for the
next two nights; and we managed to end up with a room to ourselves again, which
meant that we had basically received the private room upgrade for free!
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