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Published: November 14th 2010
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Coober Pedy - back in the cave. I am not a bat and the dank smell of underground is not so great. There is always a feeling of dusty fine powder on your skin. I am glad we are moving on first thing in the morning.
Ian and I walked across the street from the cave motel to get some pizzas for dinner and narrowly escaped being plowed down by some crazy lunatic who couldn't be bothered lifting his foot from the accelerator to the brake to slow down enough to allow us to get across the road and instead decided to swerve and use the footpath we had just left as his path to the pizza restaurant. This is as I have said 'wild man' country. The Greek Taverna sells a good pizza but standing outside the shop front is clearly dangerous.
The cave is dark - I know this sounds obvious - but it is also quiet, which means that instead of being woken either by light or birds we all keep on sleeping. Instead of getting on the road a little after 6am we are not moving until 8. The temperature is 17 degrees and the
rain has started to fall again.
Heading out of Coober Pedy, past the Croatian Club and the Serbian Church we all comment on how this is a place that is hard to comprehend.
The rain continued to fall all the way back to Port Augusta. We had planned to stop along the way at the salt lakes and walk on the surface to see what the salt crust was like, however, the lakes were no longer dry and instead we were able to see the reflection of the hills in the surface. Just beautiful.
Along the side of the road we occasionally saw Sturt's Desert Peas which are much much larger than you think and the deepest brightest red. In Coober Pedy we saw on TV plants and animal species were being collected on Bon Bon station - a station on the road from CP to Augusta. It is amazing to think that some species have not been evident for decades and all this rain had set forth a chain of activity. In Uluru, they made it quite clear that the environment is so fragile and that stepping on a plant could be catastrophic to its life
cycle. Traveling at this time in such a good and wet season makes you realise how Australian plants and animals have adapted to the harsh environment.
In Esperance and Albany we couldn't get over the pure whiteness of the sand and at Uluru the redness is equally as breathtaking. I know Australia is supposed to have a "red centre" but I had always thought it was a bit of a cliched catch cry for the international tourist. However, I am wrong and the beauty of the 'red centre' is arresting.
The salt lakes especially Lake Hart on the return journey to Port Augusta, with the low grey rain clouds hovering over them were beautiful again and as we entered Port Augusta the clouds lifted a little to reveal the top of the Flinders Ranges again.
Back to reality and the caravan life. Hitched up the van and headed off to McLaren Vale. We had planned on traveling to Port Broughton on the western side of the York Peninsula but it predicted to be rainy for a few days and since it is a water/beach side park we decided to push on to the next leg of our
journey through to Adelaide. McLaren Vale is 40 kms south of Adelaide and the difference between 48 hours ago and here is too may worlds apart. The hills of wheat and vines gently undulate up and down the Fleurieu Peninsula. The Caravan Park is quiet and green with our van and annexe being situated this time under a Plene tree. As I write this the kids are in the pool and we are planning our day. It is supposed to include some school work but unless the kids can be started on it early it never seems to eventuate.
We went into Adelaide yesterday and had a bit of a wander around. Rundle Mall in the city could be in any Australian Capital City, Perth, Sydney or Brisbane. The buildings though that house the museums and library and the University of South Australia are like all the numerous churches made of stone and are beautiful. The city is easy to get around and like Perth offer free buses around the city centre. SA is playing England in cricket at 'The Oval' today, but we are pretty busy just finding our way around that we decided not to make a
journey out there.
The Torrens river runs through the city in many ways dividing the botanical gardens, Adelaide Zoo "the Oval" and other green spaces from the urban landscape. It is a really beautiful city.
Trams run from the city to the beach, much like Melbourne to St Kilda. We drove out to Glenelg, dodging the trams. It was packed with people on a Sunday afternoon, that really was too cold to be swimming at the beach. It seems like a mixture of a Gold Coast - low rise holiday accommodation resort style place and St Kilda, with interesting shops and the welcome lack of chain stores. We may go back here as McLaren Vale is really only 20 minutes away.
McLaren Vale is beautiful. We had dinner at the Chinese restaurant here on our first night after our epic journey from Coober Pedy. We all agreed that we have never had such fantastic chinese food, not even at the "golden Century" in China Town in Sydney. We have read that you can't get a bad meal in Adelaide but we didn't think it would extend to the local chinese.
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