Coober Pedy

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Day 159 Friday 08 September 2006
Coober Pedy
Coober Pedy is surrounded by a moonscape like landscape dotted by shafts and mullock heaps from opal mining activites. It is known as the largest producer of opals in the world. The holes are not backfilled as they claim it is more dangerous to fill them in than leave them open. They claim that people can see the holes and will keep away from the open shafts. If they backfill them in they don’t know where the holes have been dug and you can still fall down them as the walls cave in. The population of this town is 3500. There are over 40 nationalities and approximately 400 aboriginal people. From November to March the weather can reach anywhere from 35 to 48 degrees Celsius in the shade. 50% of the population prefer to live underground in a dugout. It is cool in summer and warm in winter. The aboriginals and Greeks do not live underground as it is against their beliefs.
Today is very cold and windy. Graeme and Duane have been noodling (which is a process of searching through heaps of discarded mullock for pieces of opal missed by the miners). No luck though. The caravan park has good facilities and a huge playground for the kids to play on.

Day 160 Saturday 09 September 2006
Coober Pedy
This night we were booked into an underground motel for the night. Graeme had always promised me some nights in luxury but this is the first night. It was very interesting to sleep underground. Very dark as there are no windows, only the front door for light. There is no heating and no air conditioning as the underground maintains a constant temperature between 20 - 24 degrees. We were able to get into our room about 11am. We then toured around Coober Pedy visiting the underground Orthodox church, Faye’s underground house which was a huge 3 bedroom house that this lady dug out her house in the 1960’s. It has everything ,an inground pool, a bar area, a billard table, kitchen and laundry. In the afternoon we drove out to The Breakaways and the Dog Fence which is a fence that runs from Surfers Paradise to The Bight in WA. It is 5600 kms long and was built to keep the dingos out from the sheep farming area in the south. This night we went out to the pub for tea.

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