Day14 - The Red Centre - Coober Pedy to Port Augusta

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Hi again, day 14 and we have commenced our Southbound journey. We slept overnight in a converted underground mine. No windows, no natural lights, 17 meters underground and no noise. Well we all slept in, even me. I stirred at 7.30am. This is unheard of. The lack of noise and natural light is unnatural but I could get used to. Anyhow everyone had a great sleep. We had breakfast at the hotel underground. The grandchildren had a ball, at least we didn't have to worry about the walls being damaged. We headed off for our drive to Port Augusta. First we stopped at the "Welcome Coober Pedy" sign and took some mandatory tourist shots. We had 535 km to drive and by 9am we were on the road. The road was uneventful, and we stopped quite a few times for toilet and food breaks. The best part of this trip occurred about 15km before reaching our destination. At the previous stop Xavier had decided to not fill up with diesel as he felt he would be able to make this distance with the diesel he had left. Not an issue for both Paul and I as our tanks are twice the size. Anyhow at the 15km markPaul asked Xavier on the CB Radio what his fuel situation was. Xavier quietly said his car computer had him running out of fuel in 14km and we had 15km to go. Now this would normally not be funny but we heard Tracey complaining in the background telling Xavier that she had told him to fill up and you could tell she was hyperventilating. What didn't help is Paul's laughter over the radio. Anyhow we fixed the issue by slowing down to 100km per hour instead of the 110km per hour. This made a big difference to fuel usage and Xavier limped into Port Augusta with both Paul and I having a good laugh at Tracey's expense. We settled into the cabins and then we had drama. Poor Grace got a splinter in her foot (Yes she was running around barefoot). Well, three people had to hold her down, while she was screaming and I heloped to get the splinter out. Not a big splinter at all but let me just say it was a life threatening event in Grace's eyes. Half an hour later she was back to normal even having ripped off the bandaid. We headed off into town and Xavier wanted to check out the boat ramp. Well would you believe it, there is NO boat ramp. We even asked the local Information desk. Well back to the cabins before we head off to dinner somewhere even though the children spotted the Golden Arches and commented that they had finally reached civilisation.

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Photos

Underground Lounge area
Cohen and Olivia at the underground piano.

hotel / Mine entrance
After checking in the is the ramp we used to go down to our rooms. All the wall, apart from the front glass brick walls that you can see are sandstone.