Adelaide to Coober Pedy

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Adelaide is a small city in Southern Australia. We spent five days at Annie's Backpackers. This was one of the cheapest and best places we've stayed in so far. Everyone was really friendly and we had a great time there.

For the first couple of days it was really hot - about 44 degrees. We sunbathed at the botanical gardens and looked around the city mainly. The Tour Down Under was on while we were there so we saw a lot of lycra-clad, padded-bummed men around on bikes. We also spent a day at the seaside town of Glenelg. It's about 30 mins on the tram from Adelaide and is really nice. It wasn't very hot that day and it was more like going to the beach in England than Oz.

We went to a brilliant comedy night at a pub in Adelaide - Aussie comedians are great. Oh and we all chipped in and had an awesome bangers and mash meal one night. That was really good - we hadn't had mash or gravy for ages!

On 20th we woke up hideously early and started our 900km trip up to Coober Pedy along with 20 other people from our hostel. It took about 10 hours. There wasn't much to see along the way - the scenery was all the same: flat, with red soil and the odd tree, a lot of them black from bushfires. It was suprisingly quite green in patches too though as there's been a LOT of rain in the past couple of weeks. We saw several emus and a couple of kangaroos, eagles and camels too.

We arrived at Coober Pedy (the most important opal mining town in the world) at about 5pm. It is the wierdest place we've ever seen. The landscape looks like Mars. It's red with loads of weird rock formations and piles of rock and dust from the mining. The people that live there are all 'bogans' (hicks) or Aboriginals who bug you for money all of the time. The strangest thing about Coober Pedy is that people don't live in houses, they live underground. One of the reasons for this is because of the weather - 55 degrees in summer (still up to 40 at night) and 0 degrees in winter. They just drill into the rocks and make their homes there. A lot of people have become seriously rich as they've found so many opals whilst making their houses! We also stayed underground. It was a real experience! We all went out to an underground bar after dinner and then got an early night ready to head up to Alice Springs early the next day.

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Photos

Beagle 2
It may have thought it made it to Mars but it was actually Coober Pedy!

Funky pigeon
This sums up Oz; everything like England but cooler!

Adelaide pigs
Horatio, Oliver and co. All Aussie cities have at least one quirky thing about them.

White man's burrow
a.k.a. 'Coober Pedy' as named by the local Aboriginals.

Our caveman dorm
A year-round 24 degrees whatever the weather outside.

Miner
One of the many miners. The sign on his truck made sure we made a fast getaway.

Eerie place
Ignore the foreground and zoom in to see the Mars-like landscape behind.

The Underground bar
Fred and Barney would've fitted in well here - just their scene.

Comments

[Mum]

Weird place.
How strange that people should live underground. Was it claustrophobic being down there? It looks a pretty desolate place from the photos, certainly very different to the places you have visited so far. And the leading question, did you find any opals?!! Dad has just printed this blog off for Grandad and I am taking it over to him this afternoon.Speak to you soon. Love Mum xxxxxxxxx