Coober Pedy

---

The next day we were up at 5am for the long drive to Coober Pedy where we arrived at 2pm. Coober Pedy is roughly half way to Uluru. On the way we stopped at a salt lake that Doc (the tour guide) said is normally dry but today it had water. You could see the salt that had dried on the floor around the outside of the lake.

Getting to Coober Pedy we had a little tour of the town where we went into the underground church. A lot of the population of 3000 lives underground because in the summer the temperature can reach over 50 degrees! The town is famous for opal mining, a lot of Australia and probably the world's opals come from here. We saw a short film, had a talk about the types of opals and demonstration of cutting the opals, had a tour of an old opal mine and saw a set-up of an underground house. We were staying in the other side of this museum in underground bunkhouses. We went noodling for opals which isn't as cool as it sounds. We basically dug with our hands in piles of ground for opals. Considering this was stuff the miners had already been through and numerous other tourists the chances were pretty slim so we gave up after 10 minutes!
That evening we went for pizza and were joined by another group from the same company coming the other way from Alice Springs. Claire and I played very long games of air hockey in the underground bar. They went on that long that we ran out of time on the machine. We were either both very good or very bad; we decided very good!

Another early night that night before getting up in the morning for another long drive, this time to Uluru! We were to stay at Yulara which is where most people stay; either in the very basic tents like us or in a hotel. We didn't go to the sunset viewing of Uluru like we were supposed to as it started raining but went on the Mala walk round some of the base instead looking at the Aboriginal art and features of Uluru having their functions explained.
We camped in tents that night with some opting to sleep outside by the fire in swags.

---