Morry Queen on the Desert

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Left at 7am to go outback! Drove up and through Port Augusta first but then it was amazing how quickly if felt like the middle of nowhere once we turned onto the Stuart Highway which goes all the way up the middle of Australia. It's one hell of a big long straight road! It's great fun to drive - makes you feel like you're in a film. This area was still shrubby with the occasional lake (or layer of salt where a lake used to be) and distant table mountains which I still haven't worked out how they're formed. There was a roadhouse about every half tank of petrol - about every 200k. But we weren't even worried about breaking down - there was a car every 5 mins or so - it's really nice out here as well because everyone raises 1 finger off the steering wheel (the right way round) to say hi as you pass them - we've got about 3 in 4 cars doing that anyway. Quickly had our first encounter with a road train, the first of which wasn't very impressive but since then we've seen really tall 3 carriage ones pulled by cool American style big rigs and up to 4 carriages of oil tankers! Apparently these aren't good ones to get to stop though - they take 3km to come to a halt and the extra petrol they use to get back up to speed usually wipes out their profit - I'm guessing it's probably them that kill most of the roos on the side of the road - to them they must seem like rabbits!
We passed through Woomera prohibited area - up till about 20 years ago you couldn't travel on this bit of road without a permit! Quite far off the road and quite popular with off-roaders are areas where the UK did atomic bomb tests - some areas have sheets of glass where the sand has fused - although if you off-road you have to pass thruogh quickly because it's still radioactive! We were safe on the road though and got up to Coober Pedy (half way between Adelaide and Alice) by 5 (we're not allowed to drive in the outback after dark because there're too many roos).
Coober Pedy's a crazy place - for about 50k on the way in, there are just holes and piles of earth, which have barely been fenced, on each side of the road, where people have mined for opals - Coober Pedy is the world centre of opal mining but it's very haphazard because they're found in such small seams. The whole place is sand and most of the houses are underground or semi-underground with earth piled up on top to keep them cool when it gets up to 50C and warm during the freezing nights. Mad Max III was filmed her along with many other films where they needed a bit of a whacky landscape and there's a huge pod-racer type film prop lying at the side of one of the streets.
The first place we went to was the Opal Cutter (apparently one of the better shops) where I treated myself to a small white opal necklace and earrings. The blue ones are put onto a dark background and there's a huge variation of price depending on how much fire the opals have in them. The owners were a bit crazy but very nice and very helpful. The shop's one of the ones underground so while we heard of lots of other underground place you can got to - including churches! - we kinda felt like there was only so much you could ooh and ah at underground houses. We were tempted to go to Croc Harry's underground house - a Latvian baron who worked with the Russians and Germans in the war then emigrated to the Top End (round Darwin) and became a croc hunter - but we were a bit scared!
Instead we went and got some coal so we could have a bbq and a crate of Castlemaine XXXX Gold. Mmmm! We watched the sun set across the huge expanse of desert incredibly quickly and went back along the road to the campsite. Even better, the palce had a gas bbq - so we had brugers and sausages and went to the TV and internet room which was also in a cave!
When we went back out the stars were the clearest we'd ever seen and you could even see the strip of haziness which is the milky way. I spent a while setting up Lucy's star chart telescope and think I found a few constellations but the cold was etting in so will have to try again soon!

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Comments

[me]

where are they
reckon they musta got kidnapped by a kangaroo - anyone received a ransome note yet?