Going underground

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Days 22 to 26 of 165

That walk we were debating whether to take? Well, we did take it.

The heat had eased off noticeably by the time we set off, but that didn't help our navigational skills. The site is so spread out and tree laden and the hand drawn map so sketchy at first we couldn't work out how to get to the Visitor Centre where all the marked trails started. Several hundred yards and 20 min later we were there, set off ..... only to find that all the trails went past our van by about 50 metres!

One very annoying aspect of the stop was the flies. There are hundreds of the little buggers. Flies, not mozzies, and the jury is still out on whether any of them 'bite' or not. It can be very tiring flapping arms all the time to keep them away from head and eyes and ears and nose ....

We did come packed with antifly head nets, though these were intended for New Zealand and the dreaded sand flies, so we hadn't dug these out; and also we didn't want to look like the wimpering poms. However it did turn out that we were the idiots as most other people we met on the track were wearing theirs.

Around 4.5km round trip up to the rim was rewarded with a good 300° or so view of The Pound, but probably reemphasised that a view from the air was best.

The next day, after a lazy start we took a slower drive back to Port Augusta. When nearby we detoured back along the main road to Adelaide to have another look at something spied on the way in a few days ealier. Paul had thought it was a solar reflection powered power plant, and in a way it was. In reality though it was a very high tech tomato farm - Sundrop, Port Augusta. It is powered by an enormous field of mirrors shining up to a power plant atop a tall tower, but the power produced is then used to desalt the sea water and then to hydroponically grow tomatoes. The power unit atop the tower is rated at 1.5Mw and the site target when built - it only opened earlier this year - was 15000 tonnes of tomatoes per year, under contract for 10 years to one of Aus big chains Coles.

We had a big Woolworth's shop to set us up for our trip through the centre. Lots and lots of bottles of water, mixture of sparkling, tonic and soda for variety. Woolworth's over here is a major supermarket chain.

Day 24 - Trump the lump, President?! Really!? Just as we thought things couldn't get worse after Brexit.

Our plan was to break the journey a little, so planned to overnight at Woomera, just 180km up the road on the way to Coober Pedy another 450km further on. We turned into Woomera mid-morning.

For those of you of a different age Woomera was best known in the 1950s and 60s as the UK's (and Australia ) missile test site. It was established in the early 50s as a result of the Nazi V bombs technology recovered after WW2. Several UK defence missiles were tested there, and the UK even got as far as launching a UK satellite into orbit atop a UK rocket. But that programme was abandoned due to cost in the late 60s.

As a result the facility is little, if at all, used now and the town was very dead, but had a strange eeriness about it. Whilst houses on the way in looked a little sad the corporate facilities - squash courts, swimming pool, library, theatre, football oval, even a 6 lane 10 pin bowling alley. .... - most of which were there due to a large US influx in the 60s, all looked well maintained and usable.

The museum, however, chronicling the story of Woomera as a rocket test facility, was well worth the minimal $6 entry. Full of detailed explanations, fascinating hardware and old videos we spent a good hour+ there.

By the time we had done that, plus coffee, plus missile park in the centre of town, and a quick WiFi link up parked outside the library, it was still only 1pm and we began to wonder whether drowning in a pool of sweat attacked by flies for the rest of the afternoon was the best use of our time. Coober Pedy was about 4 hours away so we decided not to check in to the campsite but instead continue our journey up the centre.

Not much happens up the middle on the Stuart Highway. The road is pretty good - certainly much better condition than the Great Ocean Road (see earlier blog). Although only one lane in each direction it is a generous lane and there is mostly a good width of hardcore run off if that was ever needed. What it is necessary to get the brain around is the gaps between fuel (well in fact anything). These are often into 3 digits, approaching 200 kms and in fact between the stop after Woomera - Glendambo - and Coober Pedy is the longest stretch on the highway without fuel, 250km. The van can do 450 km between fills, we know because we did that earlier in the trip, but we had already decided to a) fill up at every station, even if only a quarter used and b) invest in a spare, full, 10 litre petrol can.

After that it is just a case of clocking up the miles / kms at a steady 110 kph. Occasionally we did catch, and overtake, a road train, but you do need a good, long, clear stretch ahead to go for it. But with a good road surface it is pretty much plain sailing, if a little hairy being alongside the behemoths for a couple of kms whilst doing so.

Just one or two things of note on the way.

At one stage we travelled a section marked as a road landing strip for the RFDS - Royal Flying Doctor Service - around a kilometre of road with double width tarmac and aircraft runway landing markers on the surface at each end.

We also passed Lake Hart, a salt lake. We had decided not to stop at every 'view point' as the views were pretty much the same as we were seeing from the van. However, as we sped past this one we were almost snow blinded by this vision of white off to the right. It seems the road engineers had anticipated this. As Paul braked to a controlled stop for a turnaround the run off area to the left had been tripled in size for an easy u turn. We are sure this was just for people like us. So we were able to pull up, under cover, to view the salt flats - it looked like there had been a perfectly fresh, highly localised clean snow storm, and it stretched far into the distance. But the surprise was to see on a display board a map of the area, including both Lake Hart and Lake Eyre and see that Hart was a small fraction the size of Eyre. Eyre must be quite a sight.

On arriving at Coober we found the Underground Motel we had booked for the following 2 nights and were able to add a third night to our booking.

And it is so so wonderfully cool inside. Coober is around 38° daytime at the moment whilst the motel is a comforting lower 20s.

In fact there are large numbers of underground dwellings dug into to hillsides in Coober as they are naturally a much more stable and pleasant temperature.

The following morning we visited Tom's Mine, a 'working' mine though we use the term lightly as they don't dig when the visitors are in, through which we had a guided tour along with an American family . To a great extent opal mining at Coober would be regarded as a very amateur operation, most precisely because the mining rules there do not allow big corporations in to dig. All the mines, and there are an awful lot of them, are owned by individuals who literally stake a claim - mostly 50 metres by 50 metres - and then dig a metre width vertical tunnel in the hope that somewhere down the shafts they encounter opal. If finds are made then they will expand outwards from the shafts following opal seam if found. We asked what happened if, by mistake, that underground tunneling encroached onto a neighbouring claim, to be told that the offended miner would most probably blow up your equipment.

Better make sure you get your underground measurements right then.

The guide also told us that the Coober police station was the first in Australia to be built bomb proof. Was this because of terrorism? Mafia? Tribal aboriginal wars?

No. It was because of infighting between Serbian, Hungarian and Latvian miners in the 1980s. And when the police intervened the miners blew up the police station at night. Twice!

Later that day we completed a very important part of our reason for visiting Coober - that was to select a piece of opal jewellery - either a ring or a solid bangle - for Pip's 60th birthday in December. There are around 15 opal shops in Coober and we think we did most of them, and came out of each having seen a piece to shortlist. In the end though we were taken with one particular shop where, upon entering, the jeweller was sat in the back, wearing a facemask, making jewellery. His shop, unlike most we had seen, was not stuffed to the gunnels with tray after tray of stuff that was pretty similar to everyone else's. The question though was whether a piece could be made in the remaining 24 hours til shop close the following day, as early the morning after we would be on our way to Kings Canyon. There were certainly unset opals on display that fitted both Pip's colour desires - the paler opal with colour streaks rather than the darker hues - and the budget when including the material and labour cost. So we returned before shop close time, chose an opal, and discussed and agreed bangle design, and the bangle will be ready for us by around 5pm the following day, Saturday. That evening we spent a relaxing and cool hour in the underground bar attached to the 'posh' hotel in town.

Saturday we tried our hand at noodling for a couple of hours on the public noodling piles in town. Noodling is going through piles of discarded spoil from the mining in the hope that you find a piece of useable and valuable opal. And it can be successful; 2 or 3 times in recent weeks there have been sizeable pieces found a couple of which were worth around $4000 in their raw state. But no such luck for us. We didn't even find a piece of potch, rough colourless worthless opal which makes up 90% of all deposits. We also visited a couple of the 4 underground churches in Coober, at one of which an obliging rector - who has clearly done this many times - lined us up for some interesting photo opportunities.

Later in the day we collected Pip's bangle. We didn't allow Pip to see it whilst the size was checked on her wrist and it is now safely secreted away until December 16!

Later tonight we are 'treating' ourselves to a visit to the Coober Pedy Drive In Cinema. We are fortunate - last week it was Bridget Jone's Baby, next week The Magnificent Seven, but this week Tim Burton's 'Miss Perigrine's Home For Peculiar Children'.

Written in a cool underground motel room contemplating the 760km one day drive to Kings Canyon tomorrow.

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