Ugly Coober Pedy... but going to the rock!

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Saturday started with another amazing sunrise over cloudy sky in Williams Creek. Today we drove less than 200 km (but still on dirt roads) to the miners town Coober Pedy. I had big expectations from this visit - I heard it’s an underground town, built underground because of the very high temperatures in summer. So there are underground house (in fact the name means in Aboriginal “white man burrow”…), but there’s a lot of ugliness above ground. It looks like a Bedouin town in the Negev - all dusty, no sidewalks, no green. But we did have a good pizza for lunch and a good Greek dinner (many immigrants came there dreaming to become reach in the Opal mines), so how can I complain? And we slept in our own burrow - underground hostel!
The highlight of the day was the town tour with the funny voiced Gina. It was the most boring town tour possible, and then we had a tour in an underground house and an opal mine, with some unforgettable quotes from Gina. The most important one: “the size doesn’t matter, the colour does”. Remember that. (It’s about Opals of course!)
Well 3 nights that night and some dancing in the (underground of course) nightclub made it a pretty nice day, together with talking to Shai and Daphna on the phone (first time mobile reception after 3 days).

Sunday morning started with… sunrise over the Breakaways mountains in the desert, of course. And then we had a long day - 750km, to get to Uluru, or Ayers Rock - the most famous place in Australia.

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Photos

Lake Cadibarrawirracanna
Short name, ah?

Crossing the fence
The dog fence, against dingos and also rabbits, is thousands of kilometers long

Greek dancing in Coober Pedy
Kiwi Kieran, Aussie guide Glen, English Liz and Canadian Angela in a Greek restaurant