Alice Springs to Coober Pedy

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Today was the first of a 3 day tour from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy and it was an early start with the bus arriving at 6.30am. It was a 20 seater bus with a separate trailer for our luggage, so we packed our luggage into the trailer and climbed aboard the bus. We were the first to be picked up and there was only 8 people in total, so there was lots of room to spread out. We met our tour guide Sam, and the other people on the tour; 2 German girls, 1 Swiss and 1 girl from Greenland and 67 year old friend of the company who works as a chef at a hostel in Alice Springs but was using the tour as a way to start his holiday down to Adelaide. We started the long 800km drive down to Coober Pedy, stopping at a few look out points to take photos and gas stations for use of the facilities.We stopped for lunch in a picnic area in one of the gas stations where everyone helped out to make lunch - ham, salad and wraps with Tim-Tams for dessert.

It was a long stretch of dessert which we drove through, and we saw eagles flying above us as well as an emu at the first gas station in Eldundra. We arrived in Coober Pedy around 6pm, where we drove to a look out point to see a view over the entire town. Most of the houses are built underground as they have both cold and hot temperature extremes in the middle of the dessert and living underground keeps the temperature at a constant level around 20 degrees.

We were staying in an underground bunk house – the entrance was on ground level but it was built into the side of the rock, so was really a cave. We unpacked our bags from the bus and had showers before walking across town to the local pizza restaurant.

Our guide filled us in on the area – Coober Pedy means ‘White Man Burrows’. There are around 3,000 people now living in the town, but it was 6,000 at it’s peak. Coober Pedy is an opal mining town, with 80% of the worlds Opals coming from Australia and 95% of those coming from Coober Pedy. It’s a very multi-cultural town considering that it’s in the middle of the dessert as people came from all over the world in the 1960’s in the hope that they would make their millions in the world of opals so there are a number of Croatians/Greeks/Italians etc. There are a lot of temporary pre-fabricated houses in the town which they can move in and out of the town as needed to cope with fluctuating populations as miners arrive or leave the town.

After dinner we went to an underground bar in a hotel in the town for a few drinks. We met another Aussie at the bar who was travelling from Alice Springs down to Adelaide for work so he joined the group for a couple of drinks. The town was very quiet but we were keen to check out all the local hotspots (there was only 1 more) so we decided to make our way over to the final bar in the town for a quick drink before walking back to our cave for the night.

After a couple of beers outside the cave we decided to go to bed as it was another early start in the morning; plus the boys ha a couple of tinny’s in the fridge to drink!

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