TRAVELS IN THE TAJ: Coober Pedy – or “Opals are a girl’s best friend!”

4th September, 2014

Great place, great opals. No water!

Drove from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy and stayed at the Big 4 Stuart Range caravan park (yes, I have become a member) and we enjoyed their world famous Nostimo’s pizza in the evening. Yes, it is known by travellers all around the globe – except here. Exceptional. The joys of Coober Pedy are that you get to pay for your water – all the time! 20 cents for a 3 mins shower, 20 cents for 13 litres of water to fill up the caravan water tank. This is not just in the caravan park, but all through town where the tourists need water. It is a rare commodity in CP and sometimes needs to be trucked in.

We did some necessary shopping including a drill and rivet gun as the door handle has finally given up the ghost and we needed to put on a latch and padlock. I now know how to drill, set and rivet. Thanks, Niggle. Ah, the skills I am learning! Bit different to the Gazman with his compressor and big “boofin AK47” rivet gun!

In the afternoon we took a 4.5 hour tour of Coober Pedy from the stunning Serbian Underground Church, the fascinating CP Cemetery (with not too many people living to a ripe old age, that’s for sure), and underground house, the Dingo Fence, (very fascinating as it is 6,000+ kms of fence and is still worked on by 300+ men, mostly station hands, a working Opal Mine (and we got to “noodle” for opals, and the original Crocodile Hunter’s underground abode. Bit of a lad that one! If you were a woman you were welcome, if you spoke German, you were even more welcome and if you were a woman and spoke German, you could stay for as long as you liked!! Very eccentric and fascinating person…..and quite a hunk in his day!

We visited the local golf "dustbowl"course, and visited the first tee off. The only bit of green in this whole place! The Serbian Church was beautiful and all underground. Nigel lit a candle for his Mum and I lit one for Gary. There is quite an art to building underground to ensure that you have the outside rooflines shaped correctly, so that you don't get flooded, when it does ever decide to rain.

After this big day, we had an early night as we were headed to Uluru the next day; a big trip of 8 hours non-stop driving.

NB: So much for the early night! A couple of local dogs decided to set up their own choir and were at it for over 2 hours. We heard the police arrive, we heard the local gentry trading sweet words - NOT. I'm assuming that they are not the best of neighbourly friends anymore. Needless to say, Nigella had some savoury words to expound on this event!!

(As I write this, I am about to commit "hari kare" on Nigella if he swots my head with the tea towel in pursuit of an errant moth!)

Let's look at some pics.