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Published: October 20th 2014
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Opalised Shells
These shells and bony centres of squids (bellemites)have been turned into opal over 120 million years since they died. We left Cadney Homestead at 9.40am and hit the road for Coober Pedy – corrugated as it was. The council also repaired the bitumen on both sides to smooth out the surface. It looked very odd as the two sides were covered in green pebbles and the centre still had the original brown colour stones and the white lines had been left, too. This meant that the road was brightly colourful and the white lines really stood out.
One Rest Area we went into was already occupied with a motorbike rider in full leather kit. I chatted with him and found out that the T-shirted riders I’d seen yesterday were taking part in a race to Uluru from anywhere around Australia. Each rider had sponsors who paid a small amount for each of the kilometres they managed to achieve. The raised money goes towards research into and education on prostate cancer, a deadly form of the disease that many men don’t know about and so fail to have check-ups for. The more than 400 riders taking part were also raising awareness of the problem in the community. The Long Ride evidently happens every year culminating in a different location each
Wild Flowers on the Way to Coober Pedy
I especially liked this patch of purple ones of in the distance. time – combining fun and helping with a serious problem at the same time. Good for them!
We arrived at Coober Pedy, having passed hundreds of colourful mullock heaps which signalled its approach, around midday and found the Op Shop Caravan Park. Actually, we nearly missed it and were about to walk into the Op Shop itself when a man, Gary, came out of the large corrugated steel gates at the back to meet us. He opened up the gates and ushered us inside. It was quite small inside and the site was just stones and dust, about what we’d expected out here. The fee for a powered site was $15 a night and we could stay as long as we liked and pay him before we left on the last day. First time we’d ever heard that arrangement! There was one toilet at the back of a building next door, which also had a shower – with only cold water. Think we’ll shower in the van this time. The water was safe for drinking but we couldn’t hook up to it as the pressure was too low. We could fill our tank from the tap if we got
Our first Glimpse of Opal Mines
You can see the Blower over the top of one of the mullock heaps. These heaps dominate the landscape around Coober Pedy. low, instead.
Gary lived in an old bus also in the yard. He asked us to keep the gates closed for security at all times. There was a small latched gate to walk through and then open the big ones (a lot easier said than done as they didn’t fit well together and made a lot of noise while you tried to do it – as we discovered!). Gary also had an old dog who barked at passers-by and so alerted him to anyone entering the site. He then gave us a Coober Pedy Tourist book and town map on which he’d already marked the best and cheapest attractions not to be missed. He explained all about them and had even drawn in where the public noodling area was, which wasn’t on the map. He then left us to set up and said to knock on his door if we needed anything. What a helpful and friendly man! Wish all caravan park managers were like him.
He’d told us which supermarket was cheaper, an IGA, so that was our first stop to restock the fridge. We then went up to the Big Winch Lookout for a view over
Coober Pedy
This was taken from the Lookout at the Big Mine. the town. It only has a few streets and most of the shops and businesses are along the main road, Hutchison Street. All over the hillside below us we could see pipes sticking out, which we knew were the ventilation for the rooms below in the underground houses. They are built into the hillside and so appear to have normal entrances, for the most part, but no building attached.
Next we went back to Hutchinson Street where I’d noticed that the Underground Art Gallery had its roller door open, which had been closed when we’d arrived in town. Inside we were greeted by the owner, Andy Sheils, and got into conversation. He’d originally come from the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne 42 years ago and loved it here. He said he was involved in the volunteer Mine Rescue and SES Squad which had spent the last few days digging out old mines looking for the body a Karen Williams, a young woman who had gone missing in 1990. Evidently some new evidence had come to light and the police thought they knew where she might be. Digging out mines is a specialist job so they’d called in the Rescue Squad
to help them. Unfortunately, they’d found nothing. Andy told us the squad regularly had to go out and rescue miners whose shafts or tunnels had collapsed and that they were not always in time to save the injured party. That must be very upsetting.
We looked around the gallery, which had some lovely paintings of the features in the area as well as some Aboriginal artworks, including wood carvings. He also had a small display of opals, most of which had come from his own mine. I liked one ring which wasn’t too expensive but didn’t want to buy from the first shop I’d been in so I told him I’d come back later and have another look. He said he might not be there as he was getting antsy being in the shop and wanted to get back down his mine. He thought he’d go in a day or two. I said I’d risk it, thanked him and we left.
Our next stop was Umoona Opal Mine and Museum, which we’d been into during our Lake Eyre Tour. It has an excellent series of displays as you enter underground, which explain the early history of the geological world in Australia and in the area, what animals were around in ancient times, how opals form, what types there are and how some of the fossils of the early animals and plants had become opalised. Basically, weathering of rocks during the Tertiary Period (1.8 to 70 million years ago) broke down the minerals in them to produce kaolin (clay) and soluble silica. As the soluble minerals dissolved they left cavities, even in some of the fossils. When the water table lowered, periodically, it drew the silica-rich solutions down and left deposits in the cavities that had been created. This became opal. The deposits in South Australia are believed to have been laid 15 – 20 million years ago. The colour in precious opal is caused by white light diffracting on the silica spheres in the stone and breaking into the colours of the spectrum.
Fossils of dinosaurs, such as the Plesiosaur, have been found opalised and such shells are quite common in the mines. Opal has been mined in Coober Pedy since 1915 when 14 year old William, son of Jim Hutchison, who along with his two partners had been unsuccessfully looking for gold in the area found a piece of opal on the surface. Coober Pedy is now the largest producer of opal in the world. Together with nearby Andamooka and Mintabie, they produce 85% of the world’s opal.
The displays led into the shop, which had a wide range of opals, some huge and very colourful, and all very expensive. We looked but didn’t buy. We also didn’t go down the mine and underground home as it cost $15 each and we’d seen it last time we were here.
We finished the day by trying our luck in the public noodling area. Noodling is looking through the discarded material in the mullock heaps hoping to find something the miners have missed. You cannot do it on mines that belong to people so they have set aside an area of the old mines that is only for the public to noodle. The surface I was looking through was quite hard packed from age, and I had trouble breaking it up with a stick I found nearby. I only found one very small piece of colour before the sun got too low. You need good sunlight for the colour to show. Maybe next time!
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