Opals, Rocks and er.. Spaceships?

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Lindsay - Our Outback Adventure was beginning to draw to a close, with our last proper outback night spent in the opal mining town of Coober Pedy. It’s a hell of a long way from Kings Canyon to Coober Pedy, which meant another ‘crack-of-dawn’ departure, sneaking out of the campsite with no lights and trying not to wake anyone up with our squealing van. We drove back to the Stuart Highway without event, watching the sunrise, passing the Simpson Desert to the east, and disturbing great flocks of galahs and cockatoos - which I suppose had roosted on the ground, and watching them rise together and swirl by the side of the road. At one point two kangaroos appeared and hopped across the highway just in front of us, much to Russell’s excitement. Well, firstly to Russell’s faint panic, but after he slowed down and we didn’t hit them - then to his excitement. Oh alright, mine too!

However we did first have to travel across the Northern Territory - South Australia border, and as the signs appeared we were reminded that we were not allowed to carry fruit and vegetables across the border. We debated a spot of onion running, but then we thought of the potential consequences (and Russell saw the sign saying ‘big fines’), so we had to pull over and dispose of our onions and mushrooms into a seemingly bottomless quarantine bin. Much to my annoyance, as unfortunately this was going to be our dinner. We considered stopping and eating the evidence, but couldn’t be bothered to start cooking. Later I cheered up, thinking that if there were no grocery stores in the town (a la Hughenden) then perhaps we would be eating out at last - then realised that if a town lacked a food shop, the chances of there being a nice little Italian bistro were perhaps pretty slim. There was a distinct possibility I could be going hungry (which isn’t to say we weren’t carrying plenty of food of the supernoodle variety. Russell certainly wouldn’t be going hungry).

We were looking forward to a visit to Coober Pedy - firstly it continued our current Priscilla theme, and secondly because the guidebook makes it sound pretty surreal, describing the landscape as apocalyptic and otherworldly with its dusty and mining cratered appearance. Several movies have been filmed here. Mad Max is the example constantly brought out, but also Pitch Black, Red Planet, Stark - although that was supposed to be an Australian mining operation so I don’t count that as otherworldly, and of course Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Of these Russell only knows Mad Max and Priscilla. Not sure what you want to make of that. Apart from the fact that lots of opal mining takes place in Coober Pedy (supplying 75%!o(MISSING)f the world’s opals you know!) and it is a very dry, hostile environment (as the guidebook says - the rainfall is scant and bottled water expensive) what is there to know about the town? Well, although the translations from the Aboriginal dialect vary slightly, the name Coober Pedy is generally taken to mean “white man in a hole”. I think this just about sums up that there was nothing else here before opal mining!

The appearance of Coober Pedy definitely did not disappoint. As we approached from the north conical piles of stony dirt started making an appearance, along soon after with large pieces of strange machinery. We looked out for signs of a town - we had after all just picked up our first radio station in literally hundreds of kilometres. Eventually we saw a small collection of buildings and a turn from the highway. Though not enough to suggest a town of nearly 3000 people, not including the tourists. The explanation we knew - due to the inhospitable conditions (baking hot summer days and freezing winter nights - I had come to appreciate the freezing nights all right) the people in Coober Pedy have developed living in ‘dug-outs’, and nearly half the population live underground (like hobbits I imagined) with only a front door and ventilation pipes stuck out of the hillside to show.

We stopped at the Visitor Information Centre on the way into town to check out the accommodation options, when we had a piece of bad luck. A 4x4 travelling too quickly off the joining unsealed road spun a rock (just think, it could have been a chunk of opal) spinning straight into the passenger side of our windscreen, leaving it with a very large and nasty cracked chip, and totally blowing our travelling budget. We had a look, checked our insurance policy (yes, we have to pay for it), had a quick hug to commiserate and decided to try and put it out of our minds until we get to Adelaide and can arrange a repair more easily. There goes my bistro dinner!

As we checked-into our campsite we checked-out the newspaper clippings pinned to the wall behind the counter. The news story was from the fairly recent NASA probe that landed on and took pictures of Mars (with sub-heading ‘Search for Beagle 2 continues”!). The photographs of the surface of Mars were twinned with pictures of the landscape around Coober Pedy, with the headline “There’s No Place Like Home.” I have to agree - weirdly similar.

As feared we found that water was rationed at the campsite - we were not allowed to fill our tank, and the showers operated on a 20c coin system (one coin at a time) to discourage you from staying in too long. Reminders about wasting water were constant, although everyone also pointed out what good quality their tap water is - filtered using reverse osmosis from deep bores out of town. There is a water filling station for caravans to fill their tanks at the far end of the town, and apparently when Coober Pedy people travel to strange far away places like Adelaide they always take their own water with them.

We went for a walk in the evening to take in the ‘ambiance’ and also to find an underground pub for a beer. It might be a cliché, but in the dusk the town really did start to look like a moon base, with the white lights coming on from windows in the hills, and the streets with few buildings or people around. In fact it looked like a moon base under construction, with diggers parked everywhere and big piles of rubble giving the place an unfinished appearance. We found a little ‘miners supermarket’ (yay!) and headed back to the campsite with our newly purchased non-contraband vegetables, to make some dinner and book a tour to see some more of the town in the morning.

After yet another freezing cold night, we wrapped ourselves up against the perishing weather in order to see Coober Pedy. Our guide & bus driver Rudy was an opal miner for 40 years and took us for a quick tour of the town and mining areas. In recent times the town has been zoned, and no mining is allowed in the residential area. However if you think there might be opal to be found by your dug-out home, what you can do is ‘renovate’ - you know excavate a couple of dozen bedrooms, an indoor squash court, that kind of thing and if you happen to incidentally find some opal then that’s great. The town area has pretty much run out of space for dug-out homes, so more people are having to live above ground in conventional houses. We stopped first at a normal house to take a look at their garden. Plants are notoriously difficult to look after here - for every tree at our campsite a hole had to be drilled into the ground and the plant constantly watered by hand. The lady owner of this house has created a green ornamental garden and planted a lawn, battling against the extreme climate and at a cost of over a thousand dollars a year in water alone. It stands out against the acres of bare dust and rock surrounding it. The only other spots of green in the town are the school yard (watered by waste water from the town) and the football oval (well, naturally). The town does have a golf course, built by the miners with their machinery. No grass here though - the course is made in the dirt, with the ‘greens’ turned black by mixing sump oil into the ground to stop the dust from blowing away.

We went to visit our first underground building, which was the Anglican church. The temperature inside was certainly a lot warmer, which is one of the main advantages of living underground. The temperature is always fairly consistent at about 24 degrees, in summer or winter, day or night. The sandstone walls of the dug-outs are sealed with wood glue to stop you getting dusty. We also stopped at the public ‘noodling fields’ to see if we could find any opals of our own. Noodling is where you go through the excavated materiel to see if you can find any left-over opals. Noodling was a term coined by the Aborigines who passed through - they would not mine the land, but some did look for opals in rock that was mined and brought to the surface. Even now people make opal finds by noodling. Russ and I had a go, but lets face it - we’re the people who couldn’t find seashells on the beach. We came away with two tiny fragments of ‘potch’ - worthless, colourless opal that other people would throw back. Not us! We were proud of our find!

We continued our tour at the Umoona Mine and Visitor Centre. Starting off with a film on ‘The Story of Opal’, not quite as good as the extravagant prose of Russell Kelly, but there were a few giggle worthy moments (I could describe how opal is formed, but I think you could just look it up on the internet if you’re interested. Go on, you’re already connected). And we went on to look at a modern dug-out house, complete with chandelier, zebra print furniture and a 1970’s bar and drinks cabinet. We went to the lower levels to see on old mine, complete with opal still stuck in the walls. Our Umoona guide told us stories about families sitting together to make bombs on an evening for Dad’s work the next day - with all the ingredients coming from the local store. Reassuringly she did also say that it was getting more difficult to get the ingredients, and you now need several licenses in order to make home-made bombs. Which hasn’t stopped people misusing them - such as the guy who bombed the local newspaper office for misprinting in their TV listings when Star Trek was due to come on. I know the feeling. The tour inevitably concluded in the opal shop, but having stocked up on all our opal needs in Sydney we went to look around the exhibits in the centre and to look outside. What we had missed on the way in was what looked like a spaceship parked outside. We went for a closer inspection wondering if we really were in the twilight zone, and found that it was a hollow shell - a prop from a movie we deduced (real smart we are). Pitch Black we learned after a few enquiries (‘which one was that?’ asks Russ in confusion ‘it had Vin Diesel in it’ I say. ‘Van diesel?’ He replies, bewildered).

Our tour headed back to the campsite, where we had to begin our drive onwards to Port Augusta and the coast, but finished with a quick drive through and around the town, with Rudy pointing out the mining claims and sites of opal finds, and also the supermarket, chemist and cafe with wonder. Well when he arrived in the seventies there was no sealed road, one shop (open once a week) and one supply truck a week - and if you didn’t get there quick you didn’t get anything. Even in recent times when wet weather has closed the road, people have run out of food and supplies have had to be helicoptered in. And not to mention rationed water until about 1985! Now as our bus driver remarked in amazement you can have as much water (on tap!) as you want - provided you pay for it, and there are shops open until 7pm (which is more that can be said for most of the cities we have been through) willing to sell you whatever you want (I would disagree as I couldn’t find the fat-free blueberry cheesecake flavoured yoghurt I wanted, but I think he would have died in amazement that such a thing existed. Thinking about it, probably nothing really surprises him any more).

Anyway time was getting on and we couldn’t afford to spent much more precious time in Coober Pedy - we need to get on to Adelaide, to restaurant dinners, cheesecake yoghurt and windscreen repairists.

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Photos

Coober Pedy
Landscape or is that Moonscape

Noodling
How not to get rich quick

Underground House
Who would live in a house like this?

Opals
As promised some Opal

Spaceship
See we are not delusional