Caution: Cattle Keeping it Real

Bill Bryson says in Down Under that "the great virtue about driving through emptiness is that when you come to anything - anything at all - that might be called a diversion you get disproportionately excited." In my opinion, truer words have never been written.

Jesse and I and our new English friend Paul (our third English friend named Paul actually) embarked on a four day drive through the Outback from Alice Springs to Adelaide today.

Anytime we saw ANYTHING, including a passing car, a bird, a tree, and especially any and all roadsigns, we almost crapped ourselves with excitement. Some highlights include a cow crossing the road, a pile of tires and a series of roadsigns stating "Caution Cattle" to which someone had helpfully added creative verbs. The first was "Caution Cattle Jumping" then "Caution Cattle *****", and finally "Caution Cattle Keeping it Real".

After hours and hours of driving through nothingness, the sight of the hundreds of mounds of gravel and dust that are Coober Pedy was absolutely thrilling! I think this is the only circumstance in which I'd feel that way about such a sight. And that's pretty much all Coober Pedy is. Mounds of dirt. It's an opal mining town and that's the sole reason for its existence I think.

The big tourist attraction is the fact that almost everything is underground. We even camped underground which was pretty cool!

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