Blogs from Coober Pedy, South Australia, Australia, Oceania

I get chatting to the motel manager over breakfast. She says that her occupancy rate’s currently well down, which she attributes almost entirely to the well publicised recent civil unrest in Alice Springs. She tells me that lots of bus tours through here have been cancelled, and even some of the scheduled Ghan services haven’t run due to lack of passengers. She says that the situation in The Alice is deplorable; gangs roaming the streets armed with guns and machetes, smashing cars and property, and injuring people. She says that the curfew has helped, as have additional police services, but it’s far from a complete solution. Hmmm. Alice Springs is our next stop, and I’m suddenly feeling relieved that we’ve opted for accommodation a few kilometres outside town. This is all incredibly sad. It seems to ... read more

The long four and a half drive to Coober Pedy provided a good lesson for us in outback travel, and that is to fill up with fuel at every Roadhouse opportunity. We only just made it to Coober Pedy with zero kilometres showing on our petrol gauge range. Travellers we had met along the way had described Coober Pedy as being different. It certainly was, with large mounds of white rock from the numerous opal excavations dotting the horizon, similar to a moonscape. The town was not established until after 1915, when the first opal was discovered by Wille Hutchison on 1 February of that year. Opal miners started moving in around 1916. The name "Coober Pedy" is thought to derive from the Aboriginal term kupa-piti, which means "whitefellas' hole". By 1999, there were more than ... read more

1 500 000 … that’s, One Million Five Hundred Thousand … that’s how many opal shafts have been dug since opal mining began in and around Coober Pedy. Advice, don’t get drunk and wander off. Coober Pedy means, “White Man in a Hole”. The area has over 70 fields, the largest opal mining area in the world producing 85% of the world’s opals. Its surrounds look moon-like (not that I’ve visited the moon … yet) with the landscape dotted with shafts and mullock heaps. CP lies on the edge of the erosional scarp of the Stuart Ranges, on beds of sand and siltstone 30m deep, topped with a stony, treeless desert. Due to the regions very low rainfall, a modern water desalination plant using reverse osmosis process, produces frsh drinking water for all … however … ... read more

As we were driving along the Stuart Highway towards Coober Pedy, we were constantly amazed at the changing landscape. Silly me I've forgotten the gadget that downloads my big cameras photos to my iPad so I'll need to post them later. I'd booked us into the Lookout Cave Underground Motel. Our room was fantastic but way too modem to give us a appreciation of what it was really like living underground.the fan had to be on 24/7 to circulate the air and keep the room cool as it was a constant 25 degrees underground. I did get a bit concerned when every morning there'd be chips off the wall on the floor and bedhead. Unfortunately we didn't find any opal. We did the mail run tour our first day. The tour is run by a local ... read more

Coober Pedy (Aboriginal for "White man burrows") Due to the winds I delayed my departure about an hour from the Ayers Rock resort. It was cooler but windy for the first hour or so of my ride out of Uluru back to the main road (152 miles). Once I hit the Stuart highway, I had a 304 mile trek down to Coober Pedy. Note: the Stuart highway runs from the top of the country starting in Darwin in the North to Adelaide in the south. I caught Stuart Highway at Tennant Creek and will ride about 2/3 of the length of the road by the time I reach Adelaide. The winds died down and the last leg of the ride was relaxing. About a 100 miles from Coober Pedy I entered the state of South Australia. ... read more