Coober Pedy

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We've just had our second day in Coober Pedy. I'm kind of glad I didn't post a blog straight away as my first impressions of the town were not great. It's rather a shanty town with as many closed abandoned buildings as there are open shops. However, I've found that much like the desolate landscape around Coober Pedy you have to chip away at the surface to uncover the gems in the town. One such gem is the place where we're staying, an underground B & B called Down to Erth, run by Rose and Alex. When we arrived and couldn't work out which house was theirs (there were no numbers or signs and the area somewhat resembled a quarry) Rose came out onto the road to wave us in. Last night they lit the woodfire for our BBQ while we were still out sightseeing and they supplied the boys with 'noodling' equipment.

Yes, our boys have discovered Noodling, which is a far different pursuit to 'canoodling' and much more family friendly. It involves sifting through the piles of rubble left by the opal miners in the hopes of finding your own little piece or pieces of treasure. It has kept our boys fascinated and filthy for 2 days.

We have toured an old, hand dug, opal mine as well as a modern, working opal mine just to see how the big boys do it. Our boys have also had a chance to operate some of the machinery they use. Today we took a (loooong) drive through the Painted Desert, which I think was rather lost on the boys with Ryan saying on our return "Why did we never get to where we were going. We just kept driving."

But I'm happy to say we discovered one final gem in the form of the local Pizza House, which makes just possibly the best pizzas in South Australia (wonder if they deliver...) we've just polished off our 6th pizza in just over 2 days while watching a DVD in our little underground haven.

Tomorrow we travel to Erldunda for a one night stop en route to Uluru.

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Comments

[Krista]

Yay, this post has appeared
Looks great! But the important question: did you find any opals??? :P Mental note to self: go to Coober Pedy for pizza. Also, love the pic of all the boys in the Old Timers Mine. Lovely stuff!

[Ourexcellentadventure]

Hi Krista, Sorry, just realised I can reply to comments. Yes! the boys found opals. Matthew's prize possesion is an opalised sea shell he found in the driveway of the place we were staying on the day we were leaving! :)

[Krista]

ooo pretty! Sounds like a very lucky find :P