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The Oodnadatta Trak
I am standing in the middle of the road (don't worry no cars on the road at 9am,). And taking a shot looking down the Trak towards Coober Pedy (190km away) Day 5 - The Red Centre - Oodnadatta to Coober Pedy
Today we drive from Oodnadatta to Coober Pedy. This is only a 190km trip which will take about two hours based on our previous two days driving style, remembering Xavier is still in the lead car. We were hoping that the roads won't be as rough as they were the day before. We were lucky. Not too many corrugations and not a lot of rocks on the road. At the beginning of the trip we went past some terrain that was so barren not even the local sparse vegetation would grow. The land was littered with dark pebble type rocks. No chance even the local wildlife would survive here. It is also important to note that some of these rocks were littering the road. This is not good for our tyres as these rocks are as sharp as knives. We were very good at avoiding them as the last thing you want is to cop a puncture in this part of the world. I think Xavier hit one and it hit the underside of his Ranger and it made a hell of a noise. I am sure it was
Tracey's fault. Haha. About 20km in we saw a road train approaching in the distance. Now another explanation required. A road train is a semi trailer with up to four trailers, meaning it is up to 53 meters long. This is about 50 tyres long. That is a lot of truck. Well we passed one. With the dust that it produces it is always a good idea to stop, not Xavier, he just slowed down a little. We stopped and waited for it to scream past in the opposite direction. They do not even slow down. Time to talk about dust. Travelling on these roads means the cars raise a dust storm behind them. This dust penetrates the soul and every single little crevice it can find. Not bad for the lead car, hence Xavier was a happy little camper but for me and for Paul we have to stay back a little so that we are not driving in Xavier's wake. As Xavier would say "eat my dust". This in most cases means we have to stay at least 500meters away from the lead car. It is quite an interesting sight to see. Is particularly dangerous when you combine
this dust with sunlight in your eyes in the twilight hours. We encountered this yesterday. Anyhow we made it to Coober Pedy at 11 am. I had the Caravan Park address in my GPS and when we arrived and got out of the cars the others looked at me and questioned whether we were in the right place. It was somewhat shabby. Luckily we were in the wrong spot and we were sent on our way to the Big 4 Park on the edge of town. The Big 4 Park was 4 star and much better than the "dump" we had first visited. We set up our camp and then went into town. Now a little about Coober Pedy. This town is the worlds largest supplier of Opals. It has over 70 active mines and the Coober Pedy economy is driven by Opals and Tourism. Just like normal tourists we drove into town and went to one of the underground Opal shops. This place is littered with shops selling Opals. A lot of the places we visited are underground. The reason for this is the peak temperatures found here are well over 40degrees and even closer to 50 ( only
Inside the Opal shop
Tracey is looking at all the Opals and the expensive prices. 22degrees today). The way the locals get around this heat is to dig your house underground. Even the churches are underground. The Catholic Church we visited was also dug into the ground. The temperature underground is always the same and is not impacted by the surface temp. The church was St Peter and St Paul which is the same name as the local church in our home town in Malta. Anyhow we bought some coffee from the local IGA and after some groceries headed back to the camp for some great home cooking (stir Fry).
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