Blogs from Coober Pedy, South Australia, Australia, Oceania

We stayed in luxury last night at the Crowne Plaza in Alice Springs. We started the day with a buffet breakfast (included in the price). We then waddled to the car and drove to Coober Pedy. We are staying at the Caravan Park. We haven't decided yet where we will spend our last night but will let you know tomorrow.... read more

3rd September 2012 We left our Ayers Rock Resort campsite just after 8am. We fueled up at Erldunda and continued to the NT/SA border rest area, where we met Mum and Dad as planned. They have travelled down slowly from Alice Springs since having their hitch repaired the day we drove to Kings Canyon. We continued south, camping in the rest area 35km south of Marla. The rest areas in South Australia are not as well set up as those in the Northern Territory, as the NT ones usually had water, picnic tables and toilets and the SA ones do not. However we found a fairly quiet spot and had a campfire. Mum made golden syrup dumplings for dessert. 4th September 2012 We continued towards Coober Pedy, across vast flat desert land with sparse, low vegetation. ... read more

Hey, second day at Coober Pedy. Spent yesterday afternoon exploring the Breakaways, hills 30kms from town, very spectacular, then survived the big storm that blew in, very, very windy and lots of great lightning but little to no rain. This morning we have done the underground opal mine exploration before trying to check into our hotel, Desert Cave for a nice night and dinner. Off to south of Kulgera tomorrow, big drive with not much to see like yesterday! There is lots of nothing out here...... Trouble coping with computer access or lack of! Anything modern seems to give the wireless access cafe's the wobbles but using their circa 1985 computers with modern web sites and apps is just not a good mix......currently typing this in the office of the Hotel....as their wireless seems to only ... read more

Arrived in Coober Pedy yesterday after a long drive from Port Augusta. We passed through many sheep stations along the way. The soil is slowing turning to outback red as we head further in land. There were some spectacular slat lakes along the way. At Glendambo we refueled the car and then drove a short distance on to Woomera - the old rocket range - and had a look around. Will would like to build a rocket when we get back to Melbourne. Grace and Will are having a rest this afternoon. Will has done an aboriginal style painting of a kangaroo and Grace is doing one of the random stuff. We'll take some photos and send them back. We had a look around Coober Pedy today and went in to some underground buildings including the ... read more

Now where was I??? Ahh yes. Numerous typing errors & Alice Springs. We ended up staying at the BIG 4 in Alice Springs for two nights. We spent Sunday travelling through the beginning of the West McDonnell Ranges. First stop was at Simpson’s Gap. It is a break in the range following creek that they used to transport defence force gear north during WWII. From there we potted about a bit as the scenery was awesome. Took some photos & stuff like that. Eventually Suz decided on visiting an old Lutheran mission called Hermannsburg that had some interesting history & beautiful paintings by a famous Aboriginal landscape artist named Albert Namatjira. That took us a fair while so we headed back to camp via yet another servo. The camp had some cool things like a didgeridoo ... read more