What are those pink eyes in the torch light??

---

By second day we were beginning to consider everyone a new friend....packed in a bus, sharing meals and kitchen duties, and using neccessities of life together tends to do that. A couple from Sweden, nurse from Holland, guy and girl from Germany, a girl from Maine, an asian girl who grew up in Melbourne, (all twenty something)and a Kiwi, Les, the old guy on the trip, celebrating his 60th birthday by retracing his single days in Alice. Erica was our leader, she's got a great playlist (read Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler/ and more) on her MP3 player, so we know we're going to like her....not to mention we are always headed north and right into the sun...glad she's driving.

Up at 5:30am for breakfast and headed to Wilpena Pound for a good hike. A really interesting land formation of a mountain range developed by plate tectonics where they formed a large bowl. They call it a pound because history has it that there was only one way in and one way out. They fenced these passages and put in 200,000 sheep for pasturing.

We have now seen a good bit of the AUS wildlife, lots of emu, kangaroo, wallaby, wallaroos, and lots of differnet birds. Now we are really confused...kangaroos, wallabies, and wallaroos, not sure we can tell one from another. It's amazing any of these can live out here as the "green" is very limited and we never see water.

Our night's stay is at Rawlins Cattle Station. Another great dinner on the gas grills that are provided everywhere. Ruth and I took a nighttime walk back to our room through the desert. I was carrying the torch (flashlight) and kept scanning the area in front of us, and saw two big pink eyes looking back at us. Luckily Ruth did not see them and I didn't say anything until breakfast the next morning.

Then we got up at 4:00am because we had a lot of ground to cover. First part was same landscape as yesterday, so Erica wanted to save the daylight for later in the day. There are so few sealed roads that we are doing some back tracking. First stop was a salt lake. Interesting how they are developed out in the middle of nowhere.

Drove through the longest manmade structure...a Dingo Fence, 5300km of fence to keep the Dingos out of the sheep pastures to the east of the fence...it's serious business and they monitor regularly. We stopped at a salt lake. They are developing everywhere as the continent continues to dry out. Australia is the dryest continent in the world, discounting Antartica. There is some sort of dire prediction that 1/3 of the agrigulural land will be lost by 2025. We've seen areas where dead trees are visible as far as you can see where the salt content has gotten too high for trees to live. Once they die the root system can no longer maintain the water table and a salt lake develops as salt raises to the surface.

Erica put on the song "Highway through the Danger Zone" then explained that Great Britain experimented with A-bombs in the 50's and that know one knows for sure the effect it had. All they knew was that many of the native aborigines and men working on the project came down with all kinds of problems. They supposedly "cleaned up" enough to get a road bed through to the other side of the country, but you must not stray from the road right of way. Additionally the gov't is in a tough spot because under a great deal of pressure they are having to give back a great amount of land back to the aboriginal people. It would cost millions and millions to clean it all up, so they are coming up with all kinds of reasons to not give back this region.

If you think we have problems with tractor trailers on the highways, you should have a "road train" zoom by...it's crazy!! They have four trailers following the tractor. If the climate was not harsh enough for these poor souls, the flies are unbelievable, and supposedly we're hitting it at the best time of the year. They go in you nose, mouth and ears whenever given the chance.

Toward evening we started approaching an area that literally looked like giant ant hills...they were opal mines of Coober Pedy. Around 1914 a father and son along with others, were exploring for water for the cattle ranchers. It's a long story, but the 14 year old son was to stay at camp and watch things, but got bored and started investigating on his own...he was gone for a long time and assumed to be lost when he showed up unharmed. Before his father could scold him, he reported he had found not only the water, but also opals. Unfortunately he drowns a year or so later and didn't benefit from his discovery. Anyway, like a gold rush people poured into the area. It was after WWI and the returning soldiers had learned to dig foxholes, etc. and they found they could keep cooler undergroound. The underground mines turned into houses, etc...even today 70% of Coober Pedy is underground.

Supposedly the population is 2,500, but we were told it's closer to 5,000. The opal trade is essentially in cash and a lot of people don't exist as far as the gov't knows. Can't believe some of the stuff going on. They have found the best explosives for their mining process is homemade bombs from agricultural fertilizer (yep, same as terrorists). A weekend family activity can include sitting around the kitchen table rolling bombs for the coming weeks work. Greeks 2004 Olympic soccer team won, so the CP greek locals set off some celebratory bombs...problem was they must have been a little drunk and blew out half the windows in town. Then you have the stories of angry lovers dropping bombs down the toilet standpipes when they are jilted. They also had to post a sign that explosives were not allowed at the town movie drive-in. People were carrying explosives in the back of their pickups and a then people were flipping their cigarette butts out the car windows...to date all emergencies have been avoided.

We were taken on a tour of town. The homes underground, dug into the side of the mountains, are quite beautiful. The stone is a pretty gold color with rust colored veins. They apply a sealer to the stone to prevent rust. The rock is soft enough to cut grooves and istall a grout to hide electrical wires. The toilet and kitchen are always at the front of the house so the plumbing can run to the street. They are very quite and your bedroom is totally black which makes for good sleeping. They have fresh air shafts up through the rock to maintain good air quality. We visited a church, museum and then had beers at the local pub, which boasts of being the only underground casino..they play "pokies."

---